Nostalgia trips → digital storybooks
The stories you grew up with. A book to pass on.
Some stories only your family can tell. Immortalize them in their own words, in a book you can share and pass on.
Charpai is live · Sign in with Google or email
Your recording
A voice memo over the phone. Or a call recorded across cities.
Every family has someone who tells the stories. Most families have a recording of them somewhere on a phone, and nobody has played it since.
Charpai turns that recording into something you can hold, read to the kids, and hand to the next generation, without spending weekends transcribing it.
How it works
You bring the conversation. Charpai does the first draft.
- 01
Upload the nostalgia trip
Record it in Charpai, or upload one from your phone or computer. It works in eleven languages.
- 02
Charpai finds the family
It listens for the details that make the story yours: who’s who, where they lived, and when things happened.
- 03
Shape it into a keepsake
Read the first spread, drafted from what was actually said. Change a word, a line, or the whole thing. When it reads right to you, it becomes a digital keepsake to share on the family group.
It’s their story. You get the last word.
Every line is editable.
Nothing goes into the storybook that you haven’t had the chance to read and change. The draft is a starting point, not a verdict.
Built from the recording.
The draft starts from the names, places and moments in the conversation, so it sounds like your family, not a template with your surname dropped in.
Made to be kept.
What you get is a digital storybook, illustrated and ready to read on any screen, pass around the family, and come back to for years.
Your recordings stay yours.
Your recordings and the illustrated storybooks made from them live on Charpai, ready whenever you want to revisit them. All of it is completely owned by you.
Haven’t recorded yet?
Charpai gets the conversation going.
Charpai suggests ways to start the conversation, then steers it toward stories your family member may not even know they have. The ones they’d never think were worth telling are often the best ones.
A few ways in
- What did the house you grew up in look like?
- Who in the family were you closest to as a child, and why?
- What did your family eat on festival days?
- How did you meet the person you married?
- What was your first job, and what did it pay?
- What do you wish your grandchildren knew about you?
Why “Charpai”
The rope cot in the courtyard, where the elders sat after dinner and the children were told who they came from.
चारपाई पर सुनी कहानियाँ
Stories heard on the charpai.
A note from the creator
I’m Sreechand — a tinkerer and a lover of stories.
I have always loved stories. They have been a constant in my life. I’ve been a longtime listener of The Moth and Story Collider.
I grew up hearing stories in courtyards, kitchens, on charpais, and during long journeys. I often think about being part of the generation between oral traditions and digital life.
Now, those stories are disappearing with the people who carry them, while my phone fills up with everything but what matters.
I’m building Charpai on my own. It began while I was talking to my mother about her first job. That conversation became the first story.
A recent tweet by Sahil Bloom was another inspiration to build Charpai.
That’s what I want Charpai to be: a bridge for the stories I don’t want to lose. A gentle way to keep the conversation going — gathering the voices, memories, humour, recipes, places, and lessons that make a community, then shaping them into something that can be held, shared, and passed on.
Follow @storygultQuestions people ask
Does the AI write the story for me?
It writes the first draft, not the final word. Charpai transcribes the recording and shapes it into a story that keeps your family member’s own voice: their words, their phrases, the way they tell it. Then you read it, change anything that isn’t right, and decide when it’s done.
What kind of recordings work?
Whatever’s easiest. Record the conversation right inside Charpai, or upload one you’ve already made on a phone or a computer.
What if the conversation isn’t in English?
No problem. Talk in the language the stories were lived in. Charpai understands eleven:
- English
- Hindi
- Telugu
- Tamil
- Kannada
- Malayalam
- Marathi
- Bengali
- Gujarati
- Punjabi
- Urdu
Can I print it?
Not yet, but printable keepsakes are on the way.
What does it cost?
₹200 gives you 4 credits. Each credit can be used to create one story. No subscription.
Someone in your family has a story only they can tell.
Charpai is live. Take the nostalgia trip this week. Turn it into a storybook tonight.
Start a storybook