Anecdotes and Digressions

The second session began with a brief recap of everything we had discussed initially and then slowly progressed into a very interesting discussion regarding anecdotes and what they constitute. We understood that anecdotes are autobiographical stories that people tell, summing up their experiences and the consequent memories associated with them. Some interesting anecdotes were shared in class and they led to subsequent discussions and laughter broke out. We were then introduced to the book “Travels through South Indian Kitchens“ by Nao Saito and how it so beautifully captures anecdotal mapping. The idea blew my mind because we very often look at maps as nothing more than informative objects, but bringing in a tinge of emotion and familiarity to them makes it so much more interesting. That and the commercial for the Apple HomePod encouraged us to think about how we interact with spaces and how there’s a story in every nook and corner if only you look close enough. We then went about to draw anecdotal maps of our own homes and took a stroll down the memory lane trying to remember all the stories that we hold close to our hearts. Midway through, we also took a detour from the class and engaged in an interesting conversation about an unrelated topic, which we realized was a digression from the topic that was meant to be discussed. But then again, what are stories if they do not urge the listeners to remember and share similar stories that further urge some others to look back and find similar stories in their lives and so on?