Memory

Memory is a strange thing. It will find you in the most unwitting times, when you’re not expecting it. The tapping of the rain on the window, the discovery of a wrinkled leaf pressed between the pages of a book, your favourite song playing on the radio as you drive back home after a long day at work, the rustle of a sari…

The rustle of a sari — I remember ma wrapped in a sari — of her quietly walking into my room; the crackle of the starch as she sat down beside me when I was half-asleep. She always looked beautiful: long dark hair falling on her face, which she tucked behind her ears before pulling the chaadar away from me. The fan always stirred with a lazy whrrr and the sunlight from the window filled the room with a lovely light. I remember her eyes gleaming, her face lit up, earrings pinched to her ears, her spectacles sitting at the crown of her head like young girls with shiny hairbands. I’d mumble, whine, curl my toes and cringe my nose, hold my throat and cough so loud that I’d almost scare the pigeons off the window pane. But my drama was pointless—somehow, she always managed to send me to school.

*

My father had big, strong hands — the kinds in which my tiny chubby hands would disappear every time he held them, and I’d always feared that they've been eaten up. So I would wriggle my hands out every time, just to make sure they were still there. I remember going to school, skipping and hopping with my hand wrapped around his sturdy finger, my long hair galloping on my back, the pleats of my skirt ballooning with every thump of my feet, my shoelaces untied, and my socks which my mother made me pull up every morning before sitting in the car, sagging at my ankles. Very few kids like going to school. I probably belonged to that “strange” lot. I loved the drives with my dad before he dropped me to school. We would sing songs throughout the journey. His big, puffy red cheeks which I always thought were filled with cotton candy, his thick black moustache which curtained his smile, his wisp-like curly hair spiralling out and spiralling in by the wind from the pulled down windows, his thumbs drumming on the steering wheel as we sang: “I’m Henry the 8th I am, Henry the 8th I am I am, I got married to the widow next door, she’s been married 7 times before and every one is a Henry. HENRY. Henry the 8th I am I am, Henry the 8th I am!”

These excerpts were a part of a collaborative project titled Memory: A Visual and Musical Performance for DesignxDesign closing party at Alliance Francaise, New Delhi, 2015.

{memory, childhood, stories, Diaries, autobiography, notes from memory, prose}

Remembering

Every Sunday morning, Yoginder visits this particular restaurant and sits by himself. His thoughts sweep him to another time. Fifty years ago, he met Zaira for the first time here. She had come with her family for breakfast, and he had instantly been smitten by her eyes: pale blue, curious but intense. She had caught his gaze and dipped behind her father's shoulder, watching him suspiciously through the crescent cut of her burqa. He smiled unknowingly, holding her for a few moments with his eyes; the staff occasionally disturbed his view with the haphazard scurry of early morning. She looked away, of course, but her eyes kept returning to him, like a person curious to know the end of a spinning top.

Distracted by her presence, he took a sip from his chai and accidentally burnt his lip. There was a momentary scuffle with the saucer; the tea leaped from the cup, broke against the glass table and made thin lines of dirty brown. Zaira giggled noiselessly, bowing her head. Embarrassed, Yoginder struggled to wipe the table clean with the corner of his sleeve, smearing it further. A waiter with bushy brows and dark eyes rushed to his rescue. As grunted he cleared the remnants of the chai. Zaira had not looked in Yoginder's direction after that, behaving like strangers ought to, ignorant of the other's presence. Yoginder began to wonder whether there was something between them or if he had unnecessarily made up stories in his head. 

A few moments later, the family finished breakfast; the father licked the final crumbs and lifted himself from the chair. His wife and daughters followed suit. With bowed heads, they formed a line behind him and discreetly disappeared behind a door. Yoginder remained in his chair, speechless, watching the wiped tea stains vaporise like ghosts on the glass table.

{Fiction, Scribbles, Notes, Stories, Tiny Visual Tales, Love, Memory}

Unmade

In unmade beds we lie unmade
naked, sweaty palmed
wet eyed with wet insides
lying across the wrinkled sheets

moments ago
you had dug your fingernails
altering the lines my palm contained
becoming the cartographer of my world

outside
the owls hooted and spied wide-eyed
inside
I feel into your arms and you slipped
into mine

I gave you my world in kisses and rhyme
and you gave me
memories--

memories
that lie on my bed
like torn out pages

crumpled, abandoned, silent,
unfinished

{love, stories, heartaches, scribbles, remembering}

Around the Corner

She walked passed him, unaware of his presence, but his gaze followed her. It was love at first sight, even at this age. And as she turned around the corner, he realized he would never see her again. Their eyes would never meet, her heart would never skip a beat like his did moments ago. They would continue to exist in their own little worlds, and that's where their story would end. He accepted, lifted his gaze, and moments later saw the next love of his life, walk past him.

{stories, lonely series, travel scribbles, lovers, tiny visual tales}

Bookmarked: Call Me Ishmael

Remember that crazy, indescribable feeling that you experience when you've just finished reading the last page of a book? That feeling when you cannot wait to tap your friend on his/her shoulder and say, "Oh, you absolutely must read this book!"   Books are a necessity for the soul, I believe. There is some overpowering sense of magic that exists in them. The magic of touring our fingers across the book's spine; in opening the first page and reading the first line; of living with the characters and imagining ourselves to be like those characters; of escaping our world and existing in another one, just for a while. And sometimes, just finding ourselves in those pages and smiling while sipping on a cup of masala chai.

Call Me Ishmael is a website that is a quasi-book club which also functions as a repository of beautiful human stories and experiences. It invites anonymous people [bibliophiles like you and me] to call from random parts of the world and narrate an experience about a book they read that changed their lives. The callers are nameless, yet all of them share that remarkable bond of treasuring books and keeping them close to their heart. Every day, Call Me Ishmael handpicks one voicemail, transcribes it and sends it out to the universe, for souls like us to listen to. 

To me, each voicemail is like a billet-doux dedicated to the unceasingly imaginative and phenomenal world of literature. These letters exist, I believe, to inspire us...to the extent that, in some strange, inexplicable way, there is always something that hits a chord within and I always have something to take away after I've finished listening to an experience. My favourite is the one on The Diary of Anne Frank, and I think that a lot of people are inspired to survive in this terrifying world through the books they've read. 

I managed to reach out to Logan Smalley, a TED fellow who is the Director at Call Me Ishmael. Thankfully, he was ready to give me his time of day, so I picked his brain about the inspiration behind this simple, yet beautiful idea. 

What sparked, Call Me Ishmael?

Call Me Ishmael actually has a somewhat bohemian origin story. At a pub in the West Village in New York City, some friends and I were discussing books and websites we love over beers. We were riffing on an idea about creating a blog named, Call Me Ishmael, and thought: what if Ishmael had a cell phone? We launched the site six months later. 

"Call Me Ishmael" is the opening sentence of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. We have, of course, taken a bit of liberty to re-imagine that line as more of an invitation to pick up a telephone than a mysterious start to a Great American Novel. At his core, Ishmael is the perfect narrator. He's open-minded, has a constantly evolving view of the world and doesn't judge the characters and stories that unfold before him in Moby Dick. Likewise, our Ishmael (or at least, his cell phone) isn't a critic of the calls and stories he receives, but a curious observer and collector. The CMI team is also fascinated with the lore of Moby Dick, so yes, if you spy a stray wale tail, it's in homage to that great book! 

Many callers use Call Me Ishmael as a medium to share their feelings, narrate their darkest secrets or talk about a life-changing moment. Do you believe this project is therapeutic in some way?

Sometimes the best therapy in the world is simply to say something out loud. However, it can be very difficult to share secrets with friends, family or people who see you on a regular basis. Call Me Ishmael is anonymous, so there is a freedom to say things that might otherwise be very difficult to communicate.

How do you curate the posts? What draws you to a particular voicemail?

Our favourite calls are the ones that tell a very specific story about a book. We get tons of enthusiastic, intelligent, funny calls that review or summarize books, and those are amazing too, but what our listeners are really drawn towards are the calls that tell one unique story that no one else in the world has experienced. We like calls that answer questions like: How did you come to own your copy of the book? Were you in a public place when a book was so powerful that it made you embarrassingly burst into tears? One of the best examples is a caller who loved a book of poetry so much that she decided to read it out loud to the trees in a public park.

How many calls do you receive on a daily basis? Have there been instances where the callers have returned?

Our call volume varies; on slower days we average about 25 calls, but when one of our favourite authors shared the site with his Facebook fans, we got over 400 voicemails within an hour of the post. All calls are anonymous, so it's tricky to tell for sure if the same storytellers are returning to talk about different books, but readers have repeatedly asked if they, "can call back again?" The answer, of course, is yes. 

Where all have the readers called from?

We've added stories from all over the world to our library of calls. Everywhere from Ecuador to the UK to the Philippines. None from India yet, though, we'd love some of your readers to be the first!

Lastly, where do you see this project heading? Do you intend on compiling these letters and publish them in a book?

In the coming weeks, we will be launching a new program that inspires our community to call in about specific themes, authors or books. We've been imagining how Call Me Ishmael could use technology to reinvent book clubs. In a way, a book of the typed transcripts is always in the works. We just haven't bound them, yet. The typed pages are currently scattered all around my walls and living room, like a bookish version of A Beautiful Mind. 

If you have a story to share about a fantastic book that you just read, you know who to call. 

{books, Call Me Ishmael, narratives, stories, voicemails, anonymous}