Stories that demand to be told | #26
"I am learning to live with grief… not scream in terror and run away by burying my head under the pillows. It is a work in progress."
This is the 26th 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
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1. How to raise a boy: I didn’t want my son to be like his father… by
I muster up all my courage and fill up my body to be as big as him when his tall frame frightens me. I try and remember that beneath all that teen bravado, he is still a child who is becoming. I remind us both that I am still his mother and that while there will always be love, there is also consequence. That while he may like to pump his fists and fantasise about fighting everything that hurts him, he is also the beautiful young man who keeps trying to “be better”. That even as he relentlessly challenges me, he also celebrates his mother’s new life and dreams about being a “good” dad someday.
When I feel like I am in danger of becoming indifferent like my father or harsh like my mother, I remind myself to choose repair because the only way out of toxicity is forgiveness and effort. We have our past, it cannot be changed. And we have our future. Sons will always have something of their fathers but they will also grow into men very different from their fathers. When I am afraid of losing everything we have strived for, I pray over my fear and remember that life is simple and dangerous when understood in labels. Beyond the labels, where confusion abounds, possibility also takes shape in the muck.
2. Lessons Learnt from something as implacable as grief
I have felt rage (I hope everyone dies), envy (how come they are happy while I am so heartbroken), bitter (no one else has experienced the grief I am experiencing right now) and like a victim (life is so unfair). I have had to work on not judging myself for being human and am learning to be kind towards myself.
As Sakshi lay in a coma, in the last hour of her life on earth, I promised her that I would make her proud of me. That one decision continues to guide me… every single day. In that moment, I knew that I will grieve as honestly and fully as I know, and I will do it for the rest of my life, but I will also not indulge it or be defined by it. It is a choice I made. Life can throw you under the bus, life can throw cancer at your only glorious child and snatch her away, life can turn from a promise to a curse, and life can seem interminably sad, painful, long and unwelcome. But every morning, we get to choose what we are going to do about it. Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher said, 'It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it, that matters.' There are no rights and wrongs here – just what works for us at that point of time in our day and life.
At some point when you feel ready, begin to reclaim the things that give you joy. Be it trekking, writing, painting, visiting museums or parks or meeting up with friends for coffee, travelling. A part of you will be in conflict with this choice – you will feel that you are betraying your loved one by doing things that are fun. ‘How can I have fun when he is no longer here?’ you will ask yourself. But know this – the only way you can betray your loved one, their spirit, their memory is by living a life imprisoned by grief.
3. All We Imagine as Pleasure by
In the movies, only when sex is shown as sinister or a weapon of power, it is uninterrupted, undiscovered, and might I also say, aesthetic?
It is as if the movies at once are warning the audience of the costs of pleasure, just like the sex education, I received in school. Don’t do ‘this’, you’ll get pregnant. Don’t do ‘that’, God is watching you. You know in the Bible, how prostitutes (word used therein) were punished- they were stoned! All we can imagine as pleasure is then just that within the strict confines of what is allowed- within marriages, in a certain way, mostly reproductive and obviously in private. In our book club, one member had mentioned that some of our most progressive conversations on sex and pleasure are limited to consent. Would you like to have sex? Yes, or no? She asks, why not push the conversation further towards pleasure. Why aren’t we taught to say, what we find pleasurable in sex and what we want more of?
I think maybe this is the female gaze in movies- a gaze that allows you to look at life without the punitive lens, no matter what you do. One which believes in your imagination and decision of what is best for you. Where you are not punished because you desired pleasure. You can laugh at the end of your choice- whatever it might be- without the fear of any repercussions. No moosibat on your head, not even a fallen coconut.
4. Julena Meri Jaan by
This wasn’t one of those instances where indignation could play out in private spaces. It wasn’t a time for ideas of micro-activism, nudging someone gently or shifting the needle in small, incremental ways. No. That December would draw lines like never before. It would be a dance of destruction, a fervent frenzy, where we’d get high on each other’s rage and keep dancing through exhaustion.
Chota mota actions seemed so courageous and dangerous then, like reading the Preamble in groups, standing in protest at Shaheen Bagh, lighting candles in Gadda Colony and Zakir Nagar. Writing, coaxing, doing the grunge work of protest—turning up and mobilising others. I was there too as often as I could and more. My eyes always waiting to spot one old-time church acquaintance or a Malayalee—one who is above 35 and not a student.
I heard there was praise in church circles for Kerala’s political shrewdness against saffronisation. But where were the voices in Delhi? Where were the collectives that once nurtured young people, the communities that claimed to love their neighbours? When Julena erupted, where was Jesus?
5. Bad Mamma by
With every meal I noticed something else happening. The urge to wipe, tidy and neaten was beginning to fade. I was enjoying S’s delight at the way pumpkin would squish to a pulp in her hand. How she would angle her palm to get most of it into her mouth. The way she’d examine what remained on her fingers. Her singular attention. I grinned back at a face smeared with dahi. Eyes glinting, nose crinkling as she began to enjoy this new flavour. Her surprise at the way juice squirted out of the first tomato she bit into. How she traced the trickle down her elbows. Most of all, I began to admire how utterly unconcerned she was about how she looked. Or who was looking. Just the single minded focus on what was underway and her pleasure/surprise at every discovery.
For someone whose first response to any uncomfortable emotion is to scrub kitchen counters, re-organise cupboards and clean fans, you can imagine my surprise at where I now find myself. Happy to clean and tidy up around S but not the chief architect of said mess. This unexpected situation has emboldened me to bat away other voices. The ones that say Wipe her mouth. It’s going to get all over her clothes.
6. Earth - A Sonnet by
I sit in the lap of this giant tree, Roots of amoebas made of stone and grit - braided across others like lovers’ limbs. But what’s the tree’s name? Genus or species?
The tree doesn’t care that I don’t know this. I am grateful for this absolution - to not live in fear that I may offend. It just is - it is it by existing.
Sitting by its roots, I rooted myself. It asks nothing of me, but tells me this - only because I requested it to - a blessing of calm, I become the earth.
7. LIKE WATER FOR LIFE by
I saw myself as water falling down, flowing over moss and rocks, transparent and playful, reflecting the sharp sun. If I was going to have a new name, it would be Sarita. Fresh every day. Sometimes serene, always nourishing.
Logistics around forms, applications and government offices is every the urban parents’ nightmare, specially a couple who already have one out of their three children admitted in a hospital and later tethered to the physiotherapy department for 6 months. It was complicated enough to negotiate attendance, waivers and exams with my school. I had no idea how awkward and embarrassing it must have been for my parents to narrate my story and edit it for form and narrative depending on who they were speaking to. Changing my name everywhere would be an additional layer of expecting concessions from the rest of the world. After their initial fears subsided, they didn’t really have a conviction in the traditional things they seemed to believe in overtly.
So I remained Natasha. I got to keep Neeru. We forgot about a new name as other urgent details preoccupied us. Though I did become a brook. A bubbly, self-inventing, rejuvenating, child-like, cheerful body of water. Never still, always saying something for passers-by to tune into. The nature of water became me.
8. Pregnant with a Litter of Essays by
If essays are furry puppies with the entire universe in their eyes, school essays are low quality stock photos of such puppies. Schools have a passion for beating the life out of something, and essays, like most writing, haven’t been spared.
Unless you were in a school which encouraged original, honest writing about one’s own life, or about the world with a sense of awe, you grew up believing essays were five heavy paragraphs sitting on top of each other and repeating someone else’s ideas until you get full marks.
I remember the essays we were supposed to memorise and reproduce in Hindi exams. Strange essays like ‘Cow is my favourite animal’ and ‘Are computers a boon or a bane?’ were compiled in a book called the nibandh mala — literally translating to a garland of essays. English essays would sound even more fake and polished, as if we were still colonised and committed to lifeless I’m-a-good-girl writing.
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Dear Natasha and Raju, thank you for sharing this post. I am having a backlog of Ochre Sky essays to get through - but it is a delicious backlog akin to the dark chocolate cake slice you save for the last.
To sit along with such rare and stunning voices. The beauty. Uff. Thank you Ochre Sky.