Stories that demand to be told | #16
7 Realisations on 7 Years of Writing Morning Pages, My Pantless Life, Fat Shopping in Mumbai, Gossip About Gossip... and other precious personal essays
This is the 16th 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. Salim-Javed in ‘Angry Young Men’, Yash Chopra and ‘Romantics’: The perils of nostalgia as PR by
Nostalgia is having its moment. Multiplexes are re-releasing older films. OTT series are being made on the greats of Hindi film history. If everyone is interested in diagnosing the “crisis” of the Mumbai film industry, then this official remembrance feels like an intervention. It is seeking to remind us of our relationship to cinema-going’s joys. It makes financial sense to the theatres and emotional sense to the fans…
I saw a re-release show of the 2001 film Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein and surprised myself by remembering each and every song from start to end without any effort. It was a memory untouched by passing time.
2. My Pantless Life by
When we dance, what we really become aware of, is our body in relationship to the space around it. We begin to understand perspective, from the inside out. As I danced, I fell in love with the ways my body took up space — in the classroom, on stage, and in the world.
As a woman, all my life I had been taught that the body is a piece of nothing - a shell, a trap, a degenerating asset. It was my mind — I was told — that I needed to cultivate: my intellect, my knowledge, my powers of reason and analysis. This was my superpower, my individual worth, my chance at equity in a man’s world — the promise of control over anything in the future. The body was something I needed to improve, chisel, or hide: it was merely a puppet animated by my mind.
3. Tell me how you are by
In this parallel universe, I imagine the women-mothers-caregivers feel free to say, This is what I need. Let’s go for a walk after dark. A drive. Let’s eat dessert in quarter plates that have been tucked into the back of the drawer. I’ll pull out the special cutlery. A place where there is no guilt, no apology, no judgment for the having wants. For saying the words out loud.
I started writing this while remembering a particularly gruelling period of sleepless nights with S. That week, when my physiotherapist asked, ‘How are you today, Deepika?’ I was surprised by a sudden mistiness in my eyes.
4. Fat Shopping in Mumbai by
The attendants look at me out of the corners of their eyes. They are in the middle of a conversation they do not want to break, or they are doing something interesting on their phones. They are not motivated to attend to a fat woman they know will not find anything in their store. Oh no! She would have to lose at least 30 kilos first. I am looking at this top and that shirt, but actually, it is them I am watching. They are waiting for me to leave. They are throwing me impatient glances - this lady does not seem to be getting it! With a sigh, one of the young boys walks over to me. He is silent. He is still waiting for me to give up, and wondering how to tell me that nothing in their store will fit me. But I am playing my own game.
5. The Gossip about Gossip by
Gossip, as it turns out, is good for my physical health. It powered walks at my previous job and helped me achieve my daily 10,000 steps. Work from home has me hitting about 2500, unless I get a call, “You’ll never believe what just happened…”.
My close friends and I gossip. We are social media sleuths with a disturbingly keen eye for patterns. We are constantly in possession of pointless, superfluous information about the lives of distant classmates and their loved ones. This pattern analysis isn’t available for free on Substack of course, you’ll have to contact us privately.
6. Haunting absence, Abiding Presence by
This morning’s crow was special. It had come as the carrier of hope, and love. My soul meditated as my hands instinctively cooked Poha (an Indian dish made from flattened rice) with rich helping of matar (green peas), just the way my son loves. The crow’s caw grew calm, as if it was ready to partake Utkarsh’s favourite breakfast meal.
The rest of the day fell still and silent. In that yearnful silence, I am ruminating. And I am re-membering. And I am foraging memories. And I am yarning reminisces. And I am trying to affirm my cry of love. And I am dreaming more visitations. Ah, dreams! Of a child. About a child. Why should they break, and become memories?
7. Aligarh-bound - In conversation with Zeyad Masroor Khan, author of ‘City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh’ by
The book is not without humour, though. With such a deeply personal work, how crucial was it for you to render lightness to the text?
I am one of those unsophisticated people wary of reading something too grim. If City on Fire was one incident of communal violence after another, very few would have read it outside of serious readers and academics. I didn’t want it to read like a long journalistic piece, or a long preachy chunk of text. I wholeheartedly believe humour and nuance work better than self-indulgent righteousness. By the time the reader picks the book, they already know there will be a lot of traumas inside. My role was to tell it like a tale from Aligarh should be told, including the satirical and politically incorrect elements that are a part of its culture.
8. In the embrace of fireflies by
That firefly signal—that tiny glow in the dark—was a permission. The kind that says, It is safe to break a few rules and bend a few norms. No one is watching! The fireflies we caught and released during those delightful vacation nights would find me in completely unexpected ways..
..We were a bunch of writers inching toward a pond to check our reflections. When we finally peered into that pond, we found ourselves flanked by other writers stepping up and doing the same. We held hands and danced around in the crescent moon’s light. Like twinkling fireflies.
9. The Ochre Sky Writing Circle of 2023 by
Talking of sparks, a year back I met a bunch of large hearted people squeezed into tiny windows of a computer screen. If someone had said to me, “You will make new friends in your fifties, or you may not meet them in a hurry but they will occupy your heart,” or “That you will share with them what you have buried away in your most tangled intestine,” or “That they will gift you the eyes and ears that you have felt deprived of as long as you remember,” I would have pooh-poohed and turned away from that person for saying foolish things.
10. I Didn't Know I Was Looking For Them... by
our best friend, Bose, who wears new clothes on my birthday, my anniversary and my book launch;
Dr Mattoo my orthopedician who was in the ER the day I had my whiplash injury 17 years ago;
an older person who is not a Bhakt;
smart, courageous, brave and inspiring women of this country (and everywhere else);
Natasha Badhwar and Raju Tai’s writing workshop;
new friends at a writing workshop;
and, the Ochre Sky Writing Circle.
11. Things I didn't know I was looking for till I found them by
A PDF of a book you always wanted to read stored in the Documents folder of your laptop. A window seat in a train when one is travelling alone. A dupatta in one’s bag that can serve as a headrest. Sweet children who spend the journey trying to get you to play peekaboo with them. Moments of clarity. Expressions of kindness. Fragments, miraculously intact, of a fractured innocence. The sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. A cloudy day in May. Fog on your doorstep after a night of intermittent rain. Someone gracefully overlooking your silly mistakes. Teachers who are expert listeners. A day when the news features stories of justice.
12. 7 Realisations on 7 Years of Writing Morning Pages by
Your multitudes contain multitudes. Slowly along with art and lists and letters, I wrote observations for an essay, ideas for teaching, therapy homework. I parked prompts for myself on the last page. I used them for cathartic, therapeutic, creative purposes. I discovered new tastes, areas of interest, topics I would like to write about. It was a new kind of mental agriculture where seeds of ideas were sowed into the privacy of the journal, mixed with the manure of emotions, and poems appeared on the page like fresh, green shoots.
I had no idea that I could go in so many directions with one practice.
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.
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