Stories that demand to be told | #12

When I saw a bottle of Mauve — being sold independently at the shop, literally out of the box, like purple’s first cousin — I was smitten. It was both a friend and a lover.

Natasha Badhwar

Raju Tai

Ochre Sky Stories

, and 10 others

Sep 01, 2024

This is the twelfth 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

Natasha Badhwar

and

Raju Tai

1. Dadi and Punjabi by
Ayush

You can’t mourn what you don’t know. Even if you believe it to be a loss. I have felt that way about both my grandmother and Punjabi. But when Hindi replaces Punjabi, it offers a window. The languages are so close that to look at Punjabi through Hindi is like looking at scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A lot is familiar yet out of place. You can see a nose here, an eye there but they cannot be put together outside Punjab. When I started learning Punjabi folk songs, I had thought of it as a way to reconnect with a world I should have inherited. But I now realize that was never possible; there is no reconnecting without the people. I was learning them so that once that world was on my fingertips, I could begin to experience its loss.

2. To the difficult girls by Shelja Sen

“Bigdi hui ladki”( Difficult girl)! That’s what my Dadi called me with an equal measure of tenderness and perplexity. Either of these sentiments would see-saw in proportion to the trouble I had got myself in. Every morning Ma would make sure that I started off to school like everyone else, hair plaited, skirt pleated but by the time I would return, kicking that one stone all the way home, I would be rearranged by a hurricane. Missing pieces of myself – sometimes a sock, a tie, a shoe and once the whole school bag. I would rather run than walk, speeding through days as if always hungry for more. We would finish our lunch in the Physics class, the pickles and the paranthas being passed around with the same level of skill and familiarity as the teacher’s diagrams on the blackboard.

3. Freedom at midnight by
Sai Raje

I was 6 when I watched my mother whip out her shoe to hit a man who had made a crude pass at her at the railway station as we stood in queue to buy tickets. It was in broad daylight, and she was draped in a sari.

I was 7 or 8 when I first experienced sexual assault at the hands of a 20-something year old man. A child that young doesn’t have the language to begin to describe that experience to caregivers and parents. To this day, I dream of finding him so I can publicly shame him. That burden of shame isn't mine to bear.

4. My Bovine Adventures by
Supriya Devarajan

So I hand expressed with a vengeance while my son lay in the NICU trying to get stronger with the white gold I provided. I threw myself into researching how to create the best quality milk. Methi seeds were soaked overnight and swallowed, garlic was thrown into hot milk and also swallowed (yuck, yuck, yuck). I bought measuring cylinders and checked how much milk I produced (it is true, you produce very little when you haven’t slept). It was a big family effort. My mother- in-law ensured we had freshly sterilized steel dabbas to act as suitable receptacles, the dabbas had time stamps and were placed reverentially in the refrigerator. The husband would rush to the NICU at 5 am, carefully holding my latest secretions thus earning the moniker “Milk Man” from the nurses in the NICU:-). I continued the process once my son came home weighing a whopping 1.2 kilos.

5. On Longing, Belonging by Pustakha Puzhu

When Dad passed, the city had become my refuge, it gave me comfort. When Mum passed, the city only reminded me of her, of losing her. I hated the city, I wanted to run away.

Eight months on, I’m learning to make peace with my loss, and with this city... More than two decades after I moved to this city, I’m still delighted by the flowers that carpet its streets. Even as the city becomes a site for contested identities, what’s being contested is the idea of Bangalore and who has claims over it.

6. Dupattas be Damned! by
Sanobar Sabah

I despised wearing dupattas. Even at that tender age, I found it ironic that a piece of cloth that is supposed to ‘cover’ a female’s modesty is also a blaring siren screaming to the world of a girl’s blooming bust. I remember feeling brazenly exposed.

With only a year’s difference between us, my brothers were still roaming around in shorts as I was being conditioned to ‘cover up’.

My priorities included matching my brothers’ pace in football and not worry over my growing curves.

7. Ek girti huie aurat by
Roshni

I’m getting to be okay with my hyperactive story-weaving brain. I look at the impossible places we go to and feel grateful for the trip when we come back. We also spiral, not just in anxiety but in anticipation of joy. As I judge lesser and let myself roam in the park and in the mind, I realise—there are fewer leaps of fantasy involving terrible people, slaps, and angry retorts to imagined insults. Instead, there’s more of: What if that tree is magic? Does the dog in the park recognise us from 50 metres away, what about 100 meters? Does she like her name? Is she half-cat, cause she can ignore us at will? If we were to adopt a dog, will Begum ride it like a horse or forever live on the ceiling-touching perches we’ve made for her? Everyone is plucking this tree bald, it must be magic!

8. Un framed by
Ajay Kelkar

For the last ten days, I have been walking to Parang La Pass in Ladakh at a height of 5600 meters. Walking at high altitudes can sometimes be about an elaborate slow motion, taking care to slow down enough not to gasp in that oxygen-starved environment. During this trek, mountains often surprised me with a lovely splash of sunlight on a slightly hidden rock face. Yet our days would usually be unending; walks were long and tiring. It was a challenging journey with rugged terrain, high altitude, and fickle weather. Mountains are often considered symbols of strength, stability, and permanence. Though I was part of a group, trekking is an activity you must do alone. It’s about how you navigate whatever nature has to offer. And much of it is a slog when you descend 800 meters only to realize that you have to earn it all back and then some more. And you carry your judgments with you, and like an onion being peeled, the journey does the peeling for you.

9. A ear for the birds by
Doel

I’m novice-ing and toddler-ing with my neighbourhood birds since. This morning I spent minutes watching a small brown bird, unable to figure out if it’s a sparrow or someone else. It’s definitely sparrow-like, but not quite. There’s another rust coloured bird I've been noticing, which looks different but I don’t know who. Sometimes I also mistake crows for other birds, and look away most embarrassed after all that careful study.

If crows are obvious and pigeons mundane, mynahs are the loud neighbourhood uncles and aunties.

10. Hope this finds you well by
Karthik

I have started feeling that my newsletters are more like my father's letters and less like my friends' letters. I realise that I have trained myself to make connections from everyday happenings - my way of reading the world. But I am now telling myself that I don't need to do this all the time. Sometimes, I could also write about how early one morning I saw those two kids on a little bicycle repeatedly going up and down the street while shrieking in joy. It made me stop my morning walk, take off the earplugs and just stay there a while.

11. When did you last go home? (part 2) by
Natasha Badhwar

How has this finally become home for the vagabond who was sharing her essay on feeling homeless just last week?

Part of the answer is that the global lockdown during the Covid pandemic brought me home. This is where I was with my children. This is where our dog and cat were and other cats from the neighbourhood turned up, asking for their share of food. Afzal returned home, here.

The other part of the answer is that roots grow on their own, just as wings sprout on their own when the time is right. When I had to run and fly, I found a way to do it. When I was stranded, my feet and the earth beneath them became familiar with each other. Plucking bhindi and cherry tomatoes for dinner and taking photos of Rahat, our cat, in the spinach patch brought me home.

12. Being Besharam with Rangs by
Raju Tai

I was already into many colours in the Camel Poster Colours box at school. Vermillion, Cobalt Blue, Bottle Green. But when I saw a bottle of Mauve — being sold independently at the shop, literally out of the box, like purple’s first cousin — I was smitten.

I didn’t buy it to paint. Just to see the thick colour make the brush plump with fluid, splash it on the paper, and spread it thin with my index finger. It was both dark and bright, soothing and energising, a friend and a lover. Uff..how many hours I spent that summer in the company of a single colour.