Stories that demand to be told | #15
"Does our accumulated wealth ever belong to us? I asked myself, while the sniffer dogs did their job. If it can be taken away so easily, do we really possess anything material?"
This is the 15th 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. The seeds of compassion by Vibha Krishnamurthy
I look to my sister, my friends, and sometimes my children to comfort me. I reached out to them often during my illness. I had to first overcome my inner voice that said, “You are turning into one of those whiny old ladies who talk about their illness all the time.” I turned the volume down on the voice and called upon my tribe. Then I allowed myself to sink into their caring like I would into a warm bath. I was amazed at the tenderness that was poured into my depleted reserve of well-being.
2. Mother Prayer by
Playing the harmonium and singing ghazals, my mother was the life of parties—as a child and as an adult. Over a decade older, my father was never fond of her scintillating hues. Defiant, she embraced her choices anyway, flaunting a personality that was impossible to ignore.
So when my newly widowed mother recently came from Mumbai to Abu-Dhabi to visit us, I felt jolted to witness the mere echo of her former self. It wasn’t just the absence of colors and lipstick. As a woman in my 40s, I found the purposeful dimming down of her radiance since my father’s demise quite perplexing.
3. Reading: Dil Chahta Hai by
His feelings for Tara upsets Tara just as much as it upsets his mother. Sid is his usual calm self and first gets her to sit down. He then sits in front of her and apologizes for upsetting her. ‘But it’s true that I love you. I am not sorry for that. It’s also true that I never wanted you to know about it. I knew you wouldn’t understand. I just want to see you happy. And if knowing the truth has caused you pain, that was not my intention.’
When he returns to his mother, he falls into her lap, and they make up just as easily.
Sid is completely aware and secure about his own feelings, about his relationship with his mother and offers that same stability to his other loved ones.
4. The Glasses He Left Behind by
Appa looked so vulnerable without his glasses. The time lag between his bare eyed and bespectacled self probably never exceeded 10 seconds when he was awake. I know because it is next to impossible to exist in that nebulous, and unfocussed zone without feeling utterly insecure.
His glasses made the round trip with him: Chennai to Chennai via universities in Norway, Germany, Canada, and the UK. They didn’t accompany him to the other world though. You don’t cremate glasses do you?
5. Konkona Sen Sharma’s Feminism by
Finally, when the anti-CAA-NRC protests had reached a crescendo, a twitter account had made a list of all actors and celebrities who had taken a stand against the act. The idea was to create a ready reference for right wing people to boycott these artists. Sen Sharma’s name was missing to which she sassily tweeted to them to include her. It’s not easy to be a woman who anyway has limited roles on offer to willingly take a stand that has material repercussions. Her interview with Smitha Prakash of ANI, where she speaks of Animal, exemplifies her anti-misogynistic stand.
6. How Dancing Helped Me Fix My Broken Heart by Deepika Sharma
That first month was like learning to walk for the first time. Being held by someone, the touch was healing in ways I hadn’t imagined. I danced with different people in the class. There was a boy who always avoided conversation because his English wasn’t very good and he refused to converse in any other language. But when he danced, he was Patrick Swayze from Dirty Dancing. He was a charming lead, who always made eye contact at the start and never sighed if the connection was not established in the first minute. He gave himself and his partner time to connect with each other’s bodies.
7. Sipping water slowly by Aishwarya Shrivastav
Sipping water slowly
is declaring
I will not chug this life.
Afternoons feel too long
Good days seem far
I am so tired of being strong
My soul only a dimming star.
8. Glowing in the Dark by
While the rain-kissed beauty of Goa and the Western Ghats are well-known, the forests too come alive in the monsoons, particularly at night.
As we walked along the slippery trail, still wet from the day-long showers, we spotted five types of frogs – bush frogs, skittering frogs, tree frogs, burrowing frogs, and the elusive Malabar gliding frogs that glide from branch to branch of trees during the monsoons. We saw numerous spider webs with spiders attempting to catch their prey, including the giant wood spider. We also spotted a giant millipede, a hump-nosed pit viper, a snail eating a polka-dotted caterpillar, several scorpions, fireflies, geckos, slugs, stick insect, and a blue forest tree crab, to name a few.
9. Akbari Manzil by
Once when I was home visiting with my baby daughter, we slept through a robbery. We woke up in the morning to see the downstairs bedroom completely turned topsy-turvy. The cupboards, shelves, and dressing table drawers had opened themselves in the middle of the night and vomited out their contents, onto the floors and the bed. There were muddy footprints on the white marble floor. The backdoor lock had been broken to force entry. My mother lost all her gold jewelry that night. Does our accumulated wealth ever belong to us? I asked myself, while the sniffer dogs did their job. If it can be taken away so easily, do we really possess anything material?
10. A Moment in Three Frames by
I bought the cassette. My first of Nusrat. I listened to it every night. And in my mind’s eye images surfaced. Many many years later these images became my first film, a heartbroken ode to Nusrat, made a month after his death. Nusrat Has Left the Building…But When?
That was 25 years ago. The Nusrat I loved was pre fame, drum machines and Afreen Afreen. He was singing the lyrics of obscure poets in obscure locations. Can one begrudge him his fame though? It’s a bit rich to romanticise an artist as long as they remain struggling and poor and feel betrayed when they’re ‘discovered’.
11. Languages that flow in our veins by
My fourth language is Urdu. Ammi, my mother-in-law used to speak to me in Urdu. She blessed my children and me in Urdu, enveloping us protectively in her world. When Ammi and her son spoke to each other in Urdu, sometimes I only understood the prepositions. And yet, Urdu poetry illuminates emotions that are inaccessible to other languages. It touches unacknowledged grief and nameless pain. The voices of Nayyara Noor and Rekha Bhardwaj, of Ghulam Ali and Ali Noor, flow like river water breaching through the crevices of dams.
“Dil dhadakne ka sabab yaad aaya, woh teri yaad thi, ab yaad aaya… (I suddenly remembered the reason why my heart was beating like that, It was your memory, I suddenly remembered that).”
12. Confessions of an English Teacher by
I wish the language that dominated the world was easier to read and gentler to the mouth. I wish every rule did not have twenty exceptions and the spellings did not leave us with googly eyes and the pronunciation did not give away caste and class.
English has to calm down with its perfect tenses and modal verbs. The silent letters can go and chill in another room if they don’t want to be pronounced! I get it though. I feel like a big silent letter myself. In many gatherings where English, fancy coffee, and money flow but not ease, not a sense of being at home.
URDU se DOSTI, a beginner's workshop facilitated by Vimal Chitra
Urdu is a language of love, history, and poetry. Discover the jaadu of Urdu with poet, screenwriter and spoken word artist, Vimal Chitra in our 2 day workshop, Urdu Se Dosti
Discover the transformative power of personal writing with Natasha Badhwar
and Raju Tai at Ochre Sky Stories Memoir Workshop.
Thank you Raju, Natasha for this love and support :))
Such a wonderful collection of essays and poems! Thank you for the feature this week 🌸