About us
Meet Dr. Janardan Ghosh — the mind behind Kathabhinaya, where stories aren’t just told, they’re embodied.
A powerhouse of performance, Janardan is a rare fusion of storyteller, scholar, and stage sorcerer. With a PhD in Performance and Spirituality from Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University and postdoctoral research diving into healing narratives from the Bhagavatam, his work lives at the intersection of ancient wisdom and contemporary creativity.
Trained under global legends, from Wlodzimierz Staniewski (Poland) to Badal Sarkar (India), Janardan’s artistic journey weaves through the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Goethe Institute, the British Film Institute, and beyond. His screen presence spans award-winning films like Kalkokkho, cult series like Byomkesh, and international festivals including Cannes.
Whether he’s performing Kathabhinaya in a remote Jharkhand village or leading a workshop in Greece, the Philippines, or Canada, Janardan’s mission remains the same: revive the primal art of storytelling as a force of healing, transformation, and learning. His teaching stints include the University of Winnipeg, NHSM Kolkata, and Madhusthali in Jharkhand, while his papers have echoed in global academic circles from JNU to Rome.
As Creative Director of OGLAM and Culture Monks, and founder of the Akāśa international storytelling lab, he continues to guide artists and seekers through voice, movement, and myth.
This isn’t just performance. It’s presence. It’s pedagogy. It’s Kathabhinaya , where stories breathe, awaken, and transform.
A Short Story About Us
Healing Through Stories
Welcome to Katha Aushadhi – where stories aren't just words; they are medicine. Rooted in ancient Ayurvedic wisdom, we believe in the transformative power of narratives to bring emotional and spiritual healing. Just as herbs restore balance to the body, stories realign the soul. We are storytellers, healers, and listeners, inviting you into a space where tales meet therapy.
Why We Exist
Our mission is to rekindle the age-old tradition of storytelling as a pathway to wholeness. From personal journeys to folktales, from mythic epics to silent struggles, each story is a salve, each telling an act of care. Whether you're here to share, listen, or simply breathe in the quiet magic of words, Katha Aushadhi welcomes you. Let’s journey inward together, one story at a time.
Who is the storyteller?
The storyteller is commonly imagined as a travelling figure: one who moves from village to village, memory to memory, myth to myth, character to character. Yet another figure of the storyteller is equally powerful: the storyteller as tree. A tree hardly moves from its place, yet it is never inert. It receives light, responds to wind, bends under pressure, shelters other forms of life, bears wounds, flowers in season, produces fruit, records time, and returns matter to soil. It is still but not passive, rooted but not isolated, silent but not without expression.
Kathāvṛkṣa begins from this paradox. It asks whether the storyteller can learn performance not only from theatre traditions, psychology, rhetoric, dramaturgy, or textual interpretation, but also from sustained observation of vegetal life. Can a branch teach syntax? Can leaves teach gesture? Can bark teach vocal texture? Can shade teach healing presence? Can roots teach memory? Can grass teach resilience? Can rhizomes teach non-linear narrative composition?