The Body when it Dissociates
In my dreams, I am always falling. Into a haystack, a tree-hole, a sack of white rice. I have no memory.
My body becomes an empty door waiting for someone it doesn’t know. Its otherness wraps around me like a dark beige coat. For as long as it lasts: it feels warm. I am surprised by how easy numbness can feel. How safe. Like your best friend’s embroidered black shawl you’ve borrowed multiple times. Dust-shrouded. Worn out.
The body longs for itself. A seed waiting to ripen. The sun never beams. It never rains. You fall asleep at your half-broken window. Your body tries to crawl out of the night of itself. It keeps misremembering its address.
The Body as Someone still trying to be Friends with You, Hard as it May be
Suppose the night weren’t to last forever. Suppose there was an end to it. Suppose there was a threshold at the fork of a labyrinth. A river named after your grandmother. (It is not true that the dead don’t return. You just have to lure them in gently.)
Far from the river: there is a boulder behind which you can still see her hair flying under the sun. And along with that, all the versions you’ve lost of yourself in your childhood’s triangular streets. Ones you’d pass by everyday, but still couldn’t learn the name of. A street where the sun burnt your skin red: right down to the veins. A path half-broken as the ruler you’d use for your maths exam. Gifted to you by your mother. That would somehow help you sail through every test.
The Body as a Voice calling itself Back
O dear child, drenched in the rain. There’s still time to turn on your heels. Retrace your steps to me. You haven’t gone all that far. You’re still mine. I’m yours. You can always come home. Run back into my arms.
The body, I’m reminded, aches not just with pain— but also the possibility of all the hands it is yet to touch.
The Body will not Fall
The body is not a vase to fall from the hands. It’s not a vase you brought home from some antique store. Having unboxed it from its cardboard case, forgot about it there for the day. On your white marble kitchen top.
The Body Reaching out to Itself from the other end of the Glass
When does the body become a memory? A stranger knocking at your door, desperate to be let in? Is it possible for you to be locked in by your body that’s standing outside the door: shivering in the rain? Can you feel the pull of it from the other side of the glass? At the end, can you feel the body giving in— folding into itself, learning to shush itself up? How a baby wails her lungs out at night. And then curls right into her mother’s chest to sleep.
Workshop on Food & Honouring the Body (even in grief)
Being physically & spiritually well fed go hand in hand. Come join us in this Food Writing workshop where we‘ll do both together.
If you’ve been liking my series on grief: I invite you to my Food Writing workshop that explores how we can nurture ourselves, and our bodies (especially on days of pain). This is a safe space where we explore the threads between Food and Grief, Food and Psycho-somatic Healing. Food & childhood nostalgia. Wafts of smells & textures you remember in their microscopic particularity. The memory of your mother or father in the kitchen. Stories you love to return to. Or which you haven’t revisited in a while, but are waiting to re-open.
Do you recall how a particular scent would cling to one nook of the kitchen more than the others? If I asked you what your childhood smells like, what would you say? I love the intimacy of such details. I love how they can bring us closer to a person.
I just finished facilitating the first cohort of the Food Writing workshop last week. My heart is still full from it. We laughed, cried, became friends with each other, wrote poems that are letters to, & prayers for our loved ones.
This is one of the things I love about writing. How it documents memories that would otherwise be lost forever. For generations ahead to read. This becomes even more significant in the context of food, & culinary traditions. The food choices we make in our homes shape so much of our domestic fabric. It’s politics.
Food is intimate and personal. But it’s also political. Feeding yourself well is an act of resistance. Of learning how to walk again, when in grief.
Here are some of the things (amongst many) that we will be working on in our sessions:
1. Dig out our family recipes: weave poems & stories out of them.
2. Learn how cooking can be a way of mothering ourselves, tending to our pain.
3. Honour the histories of our specific food traditions (both filial and cultural).
4. Delve into our first memories of food as children. What we loved eating, what felt unforgettable.
5. Explore the threads between Food and grief, Food and Healing. How food can be a prayer. A way of caring for ourselves. Explore the kitchen table as a revolutionary space.
6. Read an exclusively curated list of amazing food poems and stories. Write at least 5-6 poems/essays/stories of our own.
7. Be part of a beautiful group of writers from all over the world. Share poems, trivia & recipes with each other throughout our six week course!
Want to join us?
30% off (Last 8 Days to Register)
Here’s the registration link for currencies from over the world.
Here’s the registration link for Indian residents & citizens, in INR.
Workshop dates: July 20th, July 27th, August 3rd, August 10th, August 17th, August 24th. Time: 9 am EST to 12 pm EST (which is 6:30 pm IST to 9:30 pm IST, and 2 pm UK time to 5 pm UK time). Three hour long sessions. For more details on the workshop & what you’ll get out of it, click the link below. DM me if you have any more questions. I’d love to see you there. ✍️❤️
How aching and marvelous. The body holds so much pain and wonder too. I love that it can feel like a home, safe and sound, even when it may not necessarily be so. Thank you for reminding me of that. Such beautiful, sublime, touching words.
Just last night I made Roti for a dear, out of town friend. The relationship I had with this specific act was always one out of forced necessity. Survival. But just 3 days ago I re-claimed it. Ancestry weaved with cooking weaved with poetry - the holy trinity. The synchronistic timing of this piece - wow I love the universe.
A line that I loved so much I forgot that I did not write it.
"The body, I’m reminded, aches not just with pain— but also the possibility of all the hands it is yet to touch."