Memory Games

Babo and Sian’ s story is based on Doshi’s parents,the “original pleasure seekers” as she describes them in the dedication to the novel. “I did not grow up with lots of stories so I had to make them up on my own. It takes off from their lives but a lot of it is fiction,” says Doshi,35. A memoir is risky,she says,being so inconveniently close,so the book turned out to be an “alternative history”. The probing was gentle,the narrative relying more on the “beauty present in wisps of memory”.

Dance gave the Chennai-based Doshi the rigour and discipline necessary to become a writer. It was 2001,and she had just come back after completing her masters in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her review of a book of poems by the noted danseuse Chandralekha brought forth an opportunity to meet the latter. “I was mortified,she seemed so intimidating,” Doshi recollects. There was an immediate connection though,despite the 50-odd years separating them,and Chandralekha became “not just a guru figure but my best friend”,she says. She gained from the open house of writers,filmmakers and sculptors who gathered at Chandralekha’s house too; the latter treasured her as a “non-dancer,an open slate”. Doshi was one of the two dancers in Sharira,Chandralekha’s last piece,a 65-minute non-stop production that explores the idea of femininity.

For now,Doshi is happy to be back in the world of poems,a medium that is “more containable” (her first collection,Countries of the Body ,came out in 2006). She looks forward to living like a nomad for a year,travelling with the book. “I haven’t worn a watch for the last 15 years. I guess I don’t like to be reminded of time,” she sighs.