Stories that demand to be told | #6
Home and roam are rhyming words and other lessons in intimacy, loss and recovery.
This is the sixth edition of Stories that demand to be told, a curated spread of the most evocative, resonant, real stories. Welcome to Ochre Sky Stories, a home for writers from the Ochre Sky Workshops, facilitated by
and .
1. Being a bereaved parent by
Even though consolations sound hollow, we can still say that when parents or elders go, they leave behind legacy. But when children go, they leave behind shattered dreams, which not just pierce the whole-being of the bereaved parents, but also rob them of their identity.
What would you call a bereaved parent? What would they call themselves? There are words like ‘orphan’, ‘widow’ and ‘widower’ in all languages. But there is no word in any language to describe a parent who loses a child.
2. Good Things, Bad Things by
“But how’re you reaalllly doing?” She was concerned.
“I think I must be very depressed… Do you think maybe this book is making me more depressed?”
I told her the plot. The man who had been uprooted from his land in a war, losing his leg and watching the stump grow gangrenous, freezing in a boat with nothing to cover him, in a constant haze from his heroin addiction while his brother rowed down the river and kept the gun loaded and tried to keep the maggots off hi-
“Stop reading this shit!”
3. Of food and grief by
Try to think about any memory that sits with you, food sits with it and with you. Remember back to the school farewell where many hearts were healed and broken by letting out held-back proposals. The panipuri erupts in a spicy memory. Your tongue burnt, your eyes watery. The day she said yes? The choco-bar surely had a hand in it! The day you got married? The gosht curry, with tender mutton that melted in your hands and your mouth. Heck, even your first kiss. The faint taste of strawberry balm on her lips. Even in its absence, food makes its presence felt.
4. We didn't stay close, but we didn't let go either! by
When we made love, it felt like it would never end. It felt like the beginning of time. Eternity is such a cliché, but it felt like that too. It had been long. It had been also short.
For lovers alone, have the super power of bending time even while it purports to control them and everyone else. For in minutes, they live lifetimes with each other and vice versa.
They dive into each other’s viscera, and then leave parts of them selves in the other. Mainly in the form of words that seem to then echo for eons, creating a life and energy of their own. WHAT THE FUCK is my writing’s business now, to stroll back in?
5. Today, I listened to the stories of a tree by
We have stories about the creativity of the little apes - of how they created things that didn’t exist. The scariest stories are of when we started to feel our families disappear. It was strange and confusing for the trees that lived then. Death has always been a part of life, and we understood how that worked. But this? To be ended in brutal ways, and so many at once?
Ah I’m sorry. Humans are sweet too, you know. Sometimes young ones try to climb me, I see the worry in their parents' eyes, and I try to hold on to them a little tighter. Some humans talk to me, and ask me my stories, I love it when that happens. I’ve seen many people go by, I try to exist with them as I do with others. I always have cool shade on summer days, my foliage can protect you little ones from rain.
6. Well, It’s Not Ok by
My mother would forgive me, every time, I would back answer her. I resented my mother for being so forgiving because she used to also forgive my father as easily. In my eyes, he deserved no forgiveness. What I saw in her was someone who was so unwilling to confront and put a stop to the bullying my father meted out, that I felt she was so weak. I felt like her forgiveness, freely offered, allowed my suffering.
7. Wheels of Wanderlust by
Driving solo with a kid and a dog in tow can be exhausting. There's no one to take over the wheel, no break from the constant focus and responsibility. But every mile is filled with moments that make it all worthwhile. The laughter of my daughter as she discovers something new, the loyal companionship of my dog by my side, and the endless expanse of the open road create an experience that is profoundly enriching.
8. Home and roam are rhyming words by
He told me I couldn’t stay overnight at the watchtower in Thattekad Bird Sanctuary.
“You are alone,”
“But you just said there will be a guide, no?”
“But you are alone, isn’t it? Single?”
“If I were a man, would you let me stay the night?”
“That is very common, madam, so no problem.”
So, I was as uncommon in his forest as the bird I wanted to see was in forests close to me.
“So, you think the elephant singles out single women for attack?”
“Madam, you are making it very difficult.”
“It is not difficult, it is easy. Just give me the permit to stay the night.”
9. Enter and wait by
That’s the funny thing about creativity. You’re afraid like your life depends on it. There are roadblocks and little guarantee that things will work.
But as I reflected on my experience after the day’s shoot, sipping a hot cup of sweet filter coffee, I realised that as creators, our task isn’t to write, paint, or perform a viral hit. Our task is to place ourselves in situations where the writing, painting, or performing can happen.
10. Dear Skin by
Your rashes are an early warning signal that my gut is stockpiling firearms of anxiety. When you burn, you are telling me that I am hovering close to a heat headache. When you clear up, I know I have done well with sleep. And when you glow in the golden hour on the edge of a mountain, you are showing me a future beyond the binds of the city I love.
These days your lines on my face remind me of my mother. You puff up in the mornings and swell into sweet little bags under my eyes. You fall like her sari pleats on my forehead. You feel dry under the lips and sit little Gulab Jamuns around my cheeks.
11. A tale of two names - Naseem and Natasha by
Everyone discouraged us from naming our daughter Naseem. Raza sent me a list of new-age names to choose from. Haider, a friend from Amroha tried to convince me in this way: “Every family has an elderly aunt called Naseem phuphi or Naseem khala. This is not a name for babies.”
I was flummoxed. The elderly aunts must have been babies when they were named Naseem, I thought to myself. I didn’t have a context to understand what our well-wishers were trying to explain to us.
“Ab pata chal jayega,” Sanjeev, my husband’s childhood friend from Jaunpur put it bluntly. “Now it will be obvious from her name that she is a Muslim.”
The unspoken was finally articulated.
12. How to be a Sick Foodie by
Food has been an escape, an illusionary filling-up of the inner void. I have used food to rebel against society, feel less lonely, (re)press the anger in. Until sickness came and took away my favourite coping mechanism.
Without the bliss-point of junk food and numbing over-stimulation of the hot, the salty and the gooey, I could hardly escape. I was a tangle of anger, sadness, guilt, and powerlessness. I was forced to put my intestines over Instagram, my soft sick body over my insatiable mind.
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