Stories that demand to be told | #4
A doorbell rings. On one side of the door, a 12-year-old injured child, still in shock. On the other side, her unsuspecting mother...
Featuring the minutiae of road rage, forgotten recipes of delectable mutton curry, bodies that surrender to dance, connections that erase borders, making love tangible again after 40 years together… and other remarkable true stories.
This is the third 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
and1. A Childhood Theft and a Guilt that Lingered by
Spread out on the floor was a spotless tablecloth adorned with an array of miniature white things resembling tiny spatulas, spoons, brushes, and more. We hadn’t seen anything like them before. The ones in our toy kitchen set were pale before these shiny, polished little things.
S delicately examined these miniature treasures, her eyes eventually meeting mine. “Rakh lein?” she inquired with a mischievous spark. She proposed that these splendid miniatures would make an excellent addition to our humble kitchen set. The six-year-old in me was pulled in.
2. Karna and Kannada by
When the tempo increased and our anger grew, my Kannada started deserting me. While they heaped insult after insult and volley after volley, gone was my Kannada fluency of a few seconds past. I was fumbling and stuttering. In that moment they sensed my weakness and swept in for the kill. They demanded I get out of the car. I refused. The driver of the two-wheeler lunged into the window for my car keys. He wanted to take the car out of the equation and force me out. I needed the sanctuary and escape it provided. He had my car keys in his right hand but I held onto it with both of mine, trying to pry open his fist. His friend in the meanwhile used the small opening in the window to land a few blows on my face. But because of the small gap available to him, they were firm taps rather than blows. In the meanwhile, the driver tried to use his left hand to free himself from my double-handed clasp. I fended off that attempt but now we held opposing hands, fingers intertwined, faces separated only by a partially lowered window. Despite everything, while it lasted, I almost chuckled at this weird intimacy between strangers that only rage can create.
3. Noise by
Within a few days of moving back, I was unequivocally annoyed with one thing above all: the noise and sound in the house. The bell, the kitchen, the footsteps, the phone calls, the conversations. It was like living inside a moving organism. Homes have people and people have their rituals- patterns of everyday practices. Ultimately, it is these rituals that make a house our home. It sets the people in the house in motion every morning, every day. Every home is a set of unquestioned and unfailing practices of habits and rituals. These are usually noisy in my home. At 6 AM, my mother tiptoed around the house cracking open all the windows and sliding open the balcony doors for fresh air. Soon, a polite request for tea is accompanied by a sharp clink-clang of metal saucepans and Borosil cups. The newspaper pages flipped with sighs, remarks, and commentaries. The Aquaguard water filter was turned on and bottles were refilled. Around 8 AM, after his bath, my father walked the length of the house with incense sticks chanting.
4. Waking the Sleeping Giants by
Dance has been a space not for flailing arms and legs and learning rhythm and control in the body; but for doing all that physical work so I can free the emotions within. I practice control until I am not afraid to lose it. You learn this revolutionary act by failing at it regularly; this is a new feeling for me, a tenth rasa, you could say. Failure frees my fear from its comically large shadows.
When I give myself permission in dance, to show my emotions (and fail at that everyday), eventually it also shows me this: The child in me was never wrong. This Odissi of emotions affirms the rondumal in me, who felt a lot. Who didn’t try to stuff her emotions into watertight compartments called words. All I needed to remove the dams holding back my river of emotions, was a witness.
5. Falling and Rising by
This is the love that will happen not with stolen glances across the classroom. This is the kind of love that will resemble the tome that was the holy grail of the curriculum when the journey to becoming doctors began– the book with over a 1000 pages and florid illustrations which remained unread in the most part, but demanding possession. This is how the latter half of the journey of 40 yrs including the 8 yrs of unlicenced possession will read. Many years passing by with nothing to mark them but bookended by memorable events. Lines from Jack Gilbert’s poem describe it perfectly. "Our lives happen between the memorable".
6. ۱۰by
These are hard times to navigate one's identity no matter which continent you find yourself in. When it comes to India and Pakistan, the narrative is hostage to ignoramuses, right wingers, bigots, and defence budgets, but if you were to grow up in a house like mine, you’d know the system cracks more every time some of us come together.
7. Time without beginning and end by
We take some events in our lives that have been difficult and choose to tell them in grand detail. This is similar to how a storyteller would spend words, images, and time on a particular scene that they considered important, magnifying details and heightening emotions. The other things, which may not be in alignment with the idea of “life has been hard”, begin to shrink away into casual mentions as the teller of the story becomes the hero and the victim, and the goal of the re-telling becomes a search for solidarity. But repeating the same story can also solidify our identity as the eternal victim, searching for the temporary high of another’s empathy. Are friendships sustainable when we only talk about our problems? You tell me. My experience with this is that the high begins to eventually fade away and unless there is more to talk about, the connection fizzles out.
8. Pice Hotel Mutton Curry by
Longing for home is an eternal human craving. But when home is in a land separated by a national border, truncated by a line drawn by the colonial masters, guarded by men in arms and barbed wire, when visiting is nearly impossible, memories take on special significance. Both sides of my family, like millions of others, were forced to leave home, land, trees, crops, livestock, river, ponds, the sunrise and sunset, the soft eastern breeze, the family Gods, and migrate to a new place. Not quite as refugees, but as dispossessed certainly. Loss ran so deep that I, the two generations away, can describe the family home as though I have seen it. I haven’t. Naturally then food became one of the few surviving connections to a way of life lost forever. A life mourned like death. Food is nostalgia after all.
9. Did I mention that I love to dance by
I low-key convulsed in my chair at birthday parties when “Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhen” came on the B-Side of Baazigar cassette and no one asked me to go for it. And felt intense FOMO upon discovering that another girl gang had snagged “Rangeela Re” for the school's annual function.
Once, after observing me for a few weeks during the summer break at my grandparents, an uncle pulled me aside to say that I should wait for people to ask me at least twice before launching into impromptu performances.
10. The Sarees She Left Behind by
Nani looked ethereal in her wedding chanderi saree, glowing with the delight of love and togetherness. During their days of social work, Nanu and Nani, two deaf individuals met at a community gathering. It was love at first sight. It was a love they nurtured over the years. A love marriage, an act of rebellion, was a way for them to build something of their own in a world designed to deny everything to those with any form of physical impairment. But, with their love, marriage and children, they transcended all barriers, building their own little world of joy and togetherness in this big, wide world of despair and ruthlessness.
11. Letting Go of Hurt, Restorying our Lives by
Later, I’d survey the mess and try to make sense of it. Did I just lose my temper with a four-year-old for the sake of pleasing her six-year-old sibling? I’d sit myself down.
Sweetheart, Natasha, I think you misunderstood your role a little bit. The older children don’t want you to traumatize their sister. They are saying: “Be lovey-dovey and cootchie-cooey and weird with us the same way you are with the little one.”
12. I'm Struggling Financially by
Some of the writers were already ideating, “Let’s walk to the Tibetan restaurant..” I had never been to one, nor had I ever had lunch with writers. I hesitated but tagged along. Once we reached there, I studied the menu as if it were a puzzle. Everything was out of my budget. I couldn’t have had the bamboo rice, the pan-fried noodles, or even the fancy tea. I chose to have the soup as it was cheaper, while others ordered with abandon. I had hoped the soup would fill my belly, but the naughty fellow acted like an appetizer. I felt more ravenous than before.
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Thank you for the feature :).
Wah wah and wah!!!❤️❤️❤️ But I keep looking at the picture and am not able to get on to reading! The picture is full on Bavaal!!!😎