National Webinar on Kashmiri Folklore & the Relevance of Story Telling Traditions, Speaker: Ms. Onaiza Drabu.

The third webinar in the national webinar series conducted by the department of Political
Science took place on the 25th August 2020. The webinar was held via the digital platform
Google Meet. Speaker of the occasion was Ms. Onaiza Drabu, anthropologist, former
UNICEF consultant and author from Kashmir. She spoke on the topic Kashmiri Folklore &
the Relevance of Story Telling Traditions. Teachers and students from different colleges and
universities participated. The meeting started by 11.00 am. Dr. Basil B Mathew (Head of the
Department) welcomed the gathering. Ms. Drabu opened her session on how her career has
been marked by storytelling, even when working with UNICEF as a digital transformation
consultant. She spoke about how advertising and other modes of communications can be
perceived as story telling too. She moved on to the ubiquitous nature of folklore, their
universality and how the same tale is being told from myriad of regions as their own. She then spoke about Kashmir and its folklore, its overwhelming
goriness and inherent patriarchy. She read from her books, some of the most interesting tales
and discussed them with the audience. Ms. Jocelyn Jose proposed the vote of thanks at the
end of the webinar.