Can Birbal even win the contest for biggest fool?

Once Akbar, having bored of his Head Minister, Birbal's wisdom, announced an unprecedented contest, "he, who proves to be the biggest fool, will be my next Head Minister". The whole ministry shedding their egos and self respect participated in this unique event. Birbal, the wisest of all, also filled the nomination.

All the ministers were given seven days of time to bring up evidence of their foolishness. He, who makes the public laugh at him the most, shall be the winner.

On the day of the contest, one minister took an child's IQ test and deliberately answered all questions wrong. Thus he got zero IQ as a result. He told the king "your majesty, I am the foolest of all as I could not score any points even in a child's IQ test".

Every one laughed at him but the King listened patiently and then asked the next minister to prove his foolishness. 

What did Birbal bring to prove his foolishness? Did Birbal win this unusual contest?

write your suggestions here and you can win exciting prizes from runjhunstory.com

Importance of stories for children

Storytelling and listening to a story have always been my favorite 'utilization' of time. I sincerely feel that the role of stories in making a good character is immense. If my father told me thousand times that lying is bad, i wouldn't have understood. But listening to the story of wolf's cry just once, I dare not lie in my life ever. The impact of such moral and inspirational stories on a child's brain is so much that he may forget the storyteller but he will remember the moral all through his life. Can you recall how your mother used to give you bitter medicines? By mixing it with some sweet juice or offering you chocolates after it? That is exactly how the moral stories need to be delivered to the children. The story needs to be made so interesting and entertaing that the child enjoys listening to it. Nowadays the IQ level and comprehension skill of children is so high that you cannot fool them by telling the same story again and again. They need new stories, new heroes, new vilians and new plots.

Jhitiyan, a small goat kid

Jhitiyan is a small goat kid. He wants to go to his granny's place in his summer vacations. But on is way comes a very dark and dense forest and there he finds three life-threatening enemies - Fox, Hyena and Wolf...
oh! poor jhitiyan's life is in danger. But do not worry, our is smart and brave and intelligent. Listen to the story of Jhitiyan and his adventure...(in Hindi)
http://www.runjhunstory.com/story/listing/?custom_id=3&filterBy=category

In the search of writers....

wow! the craig's list posting was an amazing accidental idea. So many 'writers' willing to write stories for children. Well few of them even sent their sample writings. It was good to read a lot of creative cute childrens' stories. And there started the conversations and feedbacks and negotiations. The writers from all over the world sent their replies, New Zealand, USA, India and from where not...Wow! World has shrank! really.
Advantages of such collaborations are many:
1. You get to have content from so many people and you can choose the best one.
2. You get to interact with a lot of people. You impvore your communication skills.
3. They become your brand ambassadors when they know about your website.
advantages are many....

complete the story ...Princess Fiona

Our princess Fiona is playing with her little kitten, in the royal garden. Here comes the courtier bringing the message of the king. The king asked Fiona to come to the palace as the prince of Maryland has come to ask for Fiona’s hand. The king wants them to meet each other and decide about their lives themselves. The Prince is very dashing and intelligent. He impresses princesses Fiona by his wit and humor. Fiona impresses Prince by her beauty and kind heart. They decide to marry next summer.
Every evening the Prince comes to the garden and princess and her kitten meet him near the pond. They keep talking and the kitten keeps running and jumping near them. One day the prince asked Fiona for a date. Mad in his love, she forgot to tell it to her father. With her little kitten she got on to his car. Soon they were on the highway. Suddenly the smart and dashing prince turned into a crooked old man. The princess got scared and started crying….

[complete the story and get it publish/released on runjhunstory.com]

complete the story 2...Rohu's misadventure

Start can be, our hero, Rohu is sitting in an airplane. He plays a song on his Ipod but it doesn’t play. He remembers that he did not charge it before boarding. So he starts reading a comic. Suddenly there are two guys standing in front of him with the gun pointed at his head. One of them asks Rohu, “Give me the Holophonic Mercurial Chip. The two evils after hijacking the plane, want to take the plane to wicked world of weapons. The chip has the address of the place. In this new World they will conduct testing and experiments on these humans and develop more dangerous weapons. They had put the chip in Rohu’s iPod during security check. After they saw Rohu fiddling with the iPod, they thought that Rohu knows about the chip and scared that he might throw it; they quickly came with the gun.
“Give me the holophonic Mercurrial Chip” he shouted again. “Give me the damn iPod.”
He snatches the iPod and opens it…. alas! The chip is not here…
[complete the story and get it publish/released on runjhunstory.com]

complete the story...give a name

Start can be, our hero, Venky is studying in a school. The Mathematics teacher is a monster and she hates Venky. She has a very strange way of teaching. She takes out everyone’s lunch box and finishes one by one, explaining what is the meaning of subtraction by one, two, three….(and a couple of more such examples). Venky is a dude. He outsmarts the teacher every time she tries to put him in a trap.
Once, Venky’s parents went out of town for one week. The teacher knew that now there is no one to help Venky. She gave one very tough question in the class and asked everyone to get the answer within 3-4 days. Venky had no way of solving this question. He came back home and thought, “what can I do now, now the teacher will kill me”. He asked his maid/domestic to help him, but no one knew the answer.
He thought about the punishment and got scared…
Later in the night Venky gets an idea. Next day morning, he goes to the teacher’s place and secretly puts a letter in the letter box…
Then ...[complete the story and get it publish/released on runjhunstory.com]

what story a child 'needs' today

Well, I was thinking what sort of stories a child needs these days. Its difficult to answer this question like this. Lets start thinking in a different manner. What are the common problems parents sense in their children? Stage fright, shyness, insensitivity, inobedience, bad company, etc etc. What interests todays children? Action-adventure stories, super natural characters, magical powers, fairytales, heroic deeds etc etc. Now when we look at the two answers together, we come to the conclusion that we should have stories with the body of what a child likes or listens to and soul of what parents want them to understand. I came up with a few categories - 1. Bindas Bittu - This girl is a street smart. She talks to the strangers very confidently, enters the cockpit with utter innocence, bunks classes and still manages to study and pass. Every time Bittu goes to school she faces a new problem on her way. She fixes that up and reaches the class late and outsmarts the teacher and continues classes. Everyday is a new story...
2. Responsible Rony - A very responsible, sincere, obedient boy. How does his these qualities help him get wins and wins over his competitors. How he always succeeds. The stories will make kids more sensetive about friends, elders, teachers etc.
3. Chatur Chintu - Sharp, witty, clever and more is our Chintu. His wisdom makes him everyone's favorite. His judgements solve all quarrels. His ideas create history. And his stories leaves children wondering...
4. Fairy Fiona - She is the beautiful, supernatural fairy. She has various magical powers. Her stories amuses children and streches their creativity. In her world birds swim and trees dance, donkeys talk and ghosts are sweet.
We are striving to produce something children not just need but want too...
Soon you will see stories in these categories and a lot more at runjhunstory.com.

what all it takes to create an amazing audio story

Have you seen www.runjhunstory.com ?
Have you ever wondered what all it takes to create an amazing audio story like the ones available here? I will tell you.
1. First of all you need to choose the category for the stories you want to produce. Categories are of different kind - genre (mythological, action-adventure, sci-fi etc) , age group (3-5, 6-8, 9-12) et. So once you finalize that you need stories in this particular category for this age group children, you move to next step.
2. Then you look for stories. There are plenty stories available on net in various forms - text, audio, video, animation etc. You have to choose the stories which are not copyrighted by anyone (Panchantantra, folktales etc.)
3. Once you have short-listed the stories, you need to write the script for it. The script needs to have following properties:
a. Very easy language
b. grammatically perfect and semantically correct.
c. possesing lots of variety of moods and tones - should not be monotonous.
d. short and crsip - should not be dragged
e. possesing scope of dramatization while narrating
4. Once you are ready with your scripts, you need to read the script a couple of times. Now along with reading it, you need to imagine the story happening in front of your eyes. With that imagination, mark the places in the script where you think any specific sound effect should come. Also mark the lines where you want the narration to be in some specific tone.
5. Then comes the narration part. You have to narrate the story as if you are telling it to 10-15 children sitting in front of you. Whenever there is any description of any motion/movement/activity in the story, create some sounds yourself. Narrate the story very slowly and clearly. The pronounciation should be very very clear and immaculate. Leave some space for the sound effects you had planned. Also in case there are multiple characters, in your mind decide how you are going to modulate voice for each of them. While narrating every single line, understand the meaning and give the pauses at the correct places. Do not break the rytheme while narrating a single sentence. Be present in the story and not outside the story.
6. Once the narration and retakes are complete and you have enough footage to complete the story perfectly, you start editing the story.
7. The editing, dubbing and mixing is very important task. it includes the following steps
a. First round of editing is just to remove all the re-takes and take the best out of all retakes. You put together the best of the recordings and complete the narration part. Then you remove the air noice and balance the dB level of the complete story.
b. Next you start digging in your pool of sounds and picking up the ones you think can be relevant to any part of the story. Simultaneously, you need to think in the other way. You need to revise the story in mind and think of the sounds you need. And then look for such sounds. If you are not able to find any specific sounds,create such sounds using various audio editing softwares.
c. After you have a good collection of sounds, you need to start putting the sounds at the correct place in the story (on another channel) using the audio editing softwares.
d. Now you may also need some music in the background. Search for (or create) the music you need and put it along with the story in another channel.
e. Add reverb to the narration, whereever you think it is needed.
f. Now complete the story and listen to it for speech-music-sounds balancing. Correct in case there is any problem.
8. Congrats your story is ready. Enjoy

about runjhunstory.com

Stories are a unique way to explore the past and the future, to live fiction and experience myth, to learn lessons and teach morals, to know tradition and spread culture. It is an enriching alternative to television and computer games for children.

Stories that our great grandparents used to tell our parents and our grandparents to us had many morals and lessons blended with humor and excitement. Such classics and folktales are not available to all children due to new trend of nuclear families. http://www.runjhunstory.com/ is an effort to collect and preserve and to create such stories and to substitute for the missing education of a child.

These stories entertain, educate and enchant children and even adults. Children can listen to these stories
a. On long car journeys
b. On the school run
c. At school as part of a project set by a teacher
d. At bedtime
e. By children and adults learning English as a second language
f. As therapy for special needs children including autistic

Team that made it possible –
a. Creativity
b. Passion
c. Last but not least, Money

Spectacles:Unwanted Lifetime Companion

I agree that watching too much TV and playing games on computer is destroying the eyes of children. But when the parents are busy with their work, who bothers to see what the kids are doing. Recently i came across www.runjhunstory.com. It has very interesting and entertaining audio stories. I started listening to one story, and for almost 10 minutes, till the story lasted I forgot other things.
I immediately got the solution for keeping children away from eye-burners.

a story from www.runjhunstory.com

This blog is about an experiment I did last month. My cousin's son, Arya is 8 years old. And his sister Nishi, 6. I have always seen Arya snatching away things from Nishi. Even if both are given same thing in same quantity, Arya will be compelled to take away Nishi's share. It was a serious concern for my cousin. Well Arya is not very old, but you never know, which habit of childhood becomes the character later.
So now coming to my experiment, I gave one chocolate to each of the kids and before Arya could snatch Nishi's chocolate, I caught him and started telling a story.
Once upon a time there were two brothers - Golu and Molu. As the name suggests both of them were very fat and lazy. Golu was very greedy too. Golu was 2 years older than Molu. Their parents dint have too much money. Just like old days, they had to go to the forest and cut trees to get some wood. Once their mother sent them to get some wood from the forest. As an incentive, mother told that for every 1 kg of wood she will give them one candy. "A candy! wow", thought both of them. Without the incentive none of them would have even moved from their chairs. "But candy is a good reward for some trouble", they thought.
So they went to the forest. Now who will cut the trees....they started picking up the logs and tags lying around. Both collected almost equal quantity. It was dark by then. They thought of staying back in the forest for the night. they found a shelter nearby and kept their collected wood near their head and went into a deep sleep. While Molu was busy dreaming about the tasty tasty mouth-watering candies, Golu was planning something altogether different. His greed was knocking his mind every minute. Finally he got up, took some wood from Molu's bundle and tied it along with his. He looked back at the Molu's bundle. It dint look very different from what it was earlier. After some time, when Golu's greed knocked again, he got up and took some more wood. "Every kg of wood is a Candy". He again looked at the bundle and was satisfied to see that it was looking not very different from what it was previously. The greed kept on working the whole night. And Golu, kept on steeling wood from Molu's bundle. In the morning when Molu got up, he saw that his bundle was not even half of what it was when he slept. He woke up Golu and asked him, "Golu brother, did you take some wood from my bundle?" Golu shamelessly replied, "no my dear Molu, why would i do that. I have collected a lot myself". Lazy as he was, Molu decided against arguing with his brother. Upset Molu and delighted Golu started their journey back towards their village. The distance was a lot. It was night again. They had to find another place to sleep. This time they dint find and shelter. So they decided to sleep under the tree. Scared of Molu stealing back his wood, Golu suggested that we should tie our legs with each other's. So when anyone will get up to steal other's wood, the other person would get up. They tied their legs and kept the wood bundle close to their heads. Both went to sleep. In the dark night, came a thief. He saw two of them sleeping and tied. But he saw the two bundles of wood kept untied. Now it was difficult to carry both the bundles. Greedy as he was, he picked up the bigger bundle and ran away.
Sun came at its time. Both Golu and Molu woke up, looked at each other. Golu was happy that Molu dint move from where he slept. They untied their legs and got up to move ahead. But Alas! Golu shouted, where is my bundle of wood. He saw someone's foot steps near the place he kept his bundle. They realized that some thief had come in the night and stole Golu's bundle.
Upset Golu and delighted Molu reached home. Their mother gave many candies to Molu and none to Golu.
Then Golu confessed his story to his mother. Mother laughed and told, " you should not be greedy. You should enjoy what you get. And if you want more, work harder, but dont steal"
So that was the story!
Arya dint speak a single word after that. He was thinking. I liked it. But just after a few moments, i gave him another chocolate. And said, if you want more ask for it. But dont be greedy!!!
What do you think folks, will Arya change?