Stories that demand to be told | #7
"A posh locality in Bandra. A clinical psychologist charges 11,000 rupees to confirm my suspicion. I have ADHD."
This is the seventh 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. Speaking for myself: In defence of ‘spoiling the mood’ — and making family members uncomfortable by Deepika Singh
My mother and I agree on most things: Our views on marriage, career, our hobbies, everything align, if anything, she is much more progressive. But it’s only her submission to patriarchy and bigotry in the interest of saving a family gathering where we don’t align. So, I came up with a plan: I will carry my headphones with me for every family gathering and put them on in the interest of larger “mahaul” and of course, my mother’s happiness.
But the plan was punctured the very next day.
2. A List of Things My Mother Has Broken Recently by Ronita Chattopadhyay
Several cups and mugs and plates.
We now have tea cups without saucers and saucers without their tea cups.
She has beheaded a Buddha bought from a curio shop in Kolkata.
And a snow globe from Salzburg is now empty of its make-believe snowflakes.
She has also burnt food. And countless utensils. Even though she knows she no longer needs to step into the kitchen to cook.
3. The Father of All Masks by
My being able to pick up a moth did not cause a blip in the space-time continuum. The question was, what had brought about this shift? Why, or rather, how come I had felt such absence of fear, such casual courage.
The answer is so obvious. It happened because I was in love. I was consumed by its totality, high on it, flying beyond the clouds of trepidation into the naked sky. The kind of love you’ve waited all your life for, and when it docks, the heart forgives all and the mind accepts all. Everybody and everything became my friend and I to them, including moths.
4. Kids Know by
I succumbed to my subconscious Indian conditioning, wired to prioritize family even at the cost of your own inconvenience. “Mamma, can you please inform Khaala I already had plans? I’ll call her as well.” Maybe it’s time we step back and listen to our kids. Maybe this is how we break the cycle, one “no” at a time.
5. You owe me hope, I owe you rage by Gurpreet Kaur
I carry rage when my queer-ness remain unseen,
Rage when my body is erased, as other queer bodies get violently hyper visibilized
Rage when we continue to live in and create binaries among the ‘progressive liberals’
Rage when connections formed with so much emotional labor slowly die; in the midst of neoliberal and capitalist aspirations
6. Morning Goli by
Bhagya looked at the fork in her hand and wondered if she should she get herself a spoon as well.
Oh cutlery in both hands? Now that would be proper gentry behaviour!
She shuddered.
Bhagya was confused now and she also realized she was getting late. She surely didn’t want to make any more blunders now. So she took the fork in her right hand went gently at the goli while using her left hand to lightly hold the goli from popping out of her plate. Aah! She then dipped that half goli into the bowl of chutney and took the fork to her mouth. Finally, she was eating her breakfast!
7. The Power of Human Decency by
By my window, a couple on a scooter spoke sweetly to their toddler and fixed his hat. Behind them was a man with a cart of oranges just waiting around, shouting out loud about god knows what to no one in particular. On the roadside by a sweet shop, this little girl with pigtails put a marigold garland on a puppy. The puppy was delighted.
These little performances of humanness are cool. They feel like the thing that holds us together. You are reminded that everyone is doing their best, and you feel called to do your part in contributing to this tenderness.
8. Why I write by
I write to be the cloud in my own interactions and my own universe. I start, bursting with emotions and by the end my cloudiness has poured itself out on the page. Now I am a little less heavier, and I can fill up again with tiny dewdrops. Once I was scared of the fill up and the release, but now I feel okay to ease myself across both sides, almost feeling compelled to do this time and again.
9. Driving into Covid by
It will be two years and three months before my father becomes one of the more than 70 lakh people to die of Covid or its complications worldwide. He will spend the last two years of his life helping my mother with household chores, learning to do them as precisely as a surgeon. He will sanitize groceries, wash fruits and vegetables, and line up the dishes he washes neatly in the draining basket. He will cook eggs and cut salad. He will gargle with salt water, take steam inhalations, and urge his family and friends to wear masks all the time.
He will call for an ambulance himself when his Oxygen level drops after a mild bout of cold and cough. He will die of a cardiac arrest the next day, at the fag-end of the pandemic, leaving his detailed last will and testament on his perfectly organized desk.
10. Ochre Sky by
Waiting as if we were on the lip of a precipice
Speed writing from our daily, stratified lives
We dug and brushed out
The relics, the ghosts and ourselves
Letting out with cautious abundance
In quivering yet clear voices
11. Words. Rising like kites, falling like drones by
Scrolling on Facebook, he stops to read a friend’s new update. The friend has a fancy new job. He picks up the phone and calls.
“Hey, congratulations,” he says. “This sounds great.”
“Oh it took this for you to call me,” says the friend.
Some conversations hit a wall and lie crumpled on the floor. You pick them up, trying to nurse them back to recovery. Others soar like a kite, making a whooshing sound in the breeze.
12. On Having a Kite Mind by
A posh locality in Bandra. A clinical psychologist charges 11,000 rupees to confirm my suspicion. I have ADHD.
It’s a joy to have a kite mind. I can soar high, cruising across the hills of thoughts, gliding next to the clouds of intellect. I can move in ways my body can’t, flying fast into imaginary worlds and dancing with philosophical questions, escaping the drudgery of being on the ground, where tasks must be completed, clothes folded, bills paid.
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Ochre Sky, you consume my weekends! Your selection of essays is like a warm hug. What a beautiful community of writers you have nurtured.