Rochelle Potkar's Blog, page 54
February 18, 2017
WordsUP, St. Xavier’s college, Mapusa, Goa, Feb 2017
Lovely interacting with the students of St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa at their festival Words Up, 10th & 11th of February, 2017.
We discussed books, writing and literature related to Goa under the leafy precincts of Writer’s Corner that overlooked a valley of coconut trees.
Glad to have met and shared panels with Fatima M. Noronha, Yvonne Vaz Ezdani, Anita Pinto, Odette Mascarenhas, Isabel Santa Rita Vas and young writers Safina Khan and Nida Sayed.
Things that take time, but ensure your cup is filled & full.
Do not let your peace depend on the hearts of others; whatever they say about you, good or bad, you are not because of it another, for as you are, you are.
– Thomas a Kempis
Even if you have ninety-nine people cheering you, there will always be a hundredth to boo. That is the nature of life, and to deal with it, we need simply to learn not to be always on the lookout for appreciation and applause. If people say, “Oh, there is nobody like you,” don’t get elated. Don’t pick up your telephone and call your friends to tell them what is being broadcast about you. That’s what most of us do, you know; that’s why telephones are so busy. It is also why so many people get dejected when fortune seems to frown.
My spiritual teacher – a simple, straightforward woman who didn’t mince words – used to tell me, “You can’t shut other people’s mouths.” It took me years to understand that. This unlettered lady knew that we don’t have any control over other people’s minds. You can control only your own mind. When you understand this, you know you needn’t be concerned about what people say about you: it doesn’t affect you, because your mind cannot be upset. You may feel hurt, but you will have an inner security that cannot be shaken.
***
While I completely agree with this piece, I am so happy to be surrounded by people who matter: who are respectful, encouraging, friendly, and secure in their own skins. They took their time coming as I faced manipulative, exploitative kinds – who bicker and bad-mouth continuously, because you are of no use to them, because you have taken back your resources to which they felt entitled, because they mistook your humility for servility.
Friends did come in their own sweet time. And while it is good habit to depend on neither the (few) negative people nor the (numerous) positive people you encounter, I cannot be detached. Positivity affects me too. It keeps me buoyant. I feel nourished, loved, wanted. Why shouldn’t I say this? What vulnerability do I fear exposing? I love the friends who have brought me to this place. Today I say a prayer for you from the deepest parts of my heart. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being part of me. You rescued me from coldness.
Thank you!
February 8, 2017
TheNewsminute interviews me…
What kind of films do you see yourself in? What about Taramani interested you? Do tell us about your role.
A 30-something or middle-aged woman in realistic films, if they do exist.
I went to audition for Taramani on a lark, one day getting off my writing couch – giving in to a restless impulse. This one is a small role, in shades of grey.
Read the rest of the interview here:
February 3, 2017
video poem: timely
I had some fun making this:
January 30, 2017
Issue 2 of the Joao Roque Literary Journal is out!
And it is delicious Go check it out!
The Editorial
Sometimes the universe does conspire. This time, it conspired without any design on Rochelle’s or my part, to make this an issue which puts the spotlight on women.
The two authors – Jayanti Naik and Roanna Gonsalves – may at first glance seem to be worlds apart. One is a Hindu Goan and the other Catholic. One writes in Konkani and makes rural Goa her central character. The other is an Indo-Anglian writer who maps the lives of immigrant Goans. Yet, they are bound by that shared element – change – by which we are all fashioned and refashioned into the people and societies we eventually become. And so, in the stories they tell, the woman is confronted with progressive values which question her conservative dogma, her sexual propriety bends in the wake of sexual discovery, she fosters the safety-net of female solidarity but is thwarted by that womanly instinct to moralise and conform. She is a complex being who masturbates, menstruates and navigates her way out of the labyrinth of patriarchy. The sexuality of their female protagonists is not depicted merely for affect: to sensationalise, fetishize or eroticise. Rather, it is that clever and rare thing – emancipatory. A full chapter excerpted from Naik’s book The Salt of the Earth is included here as well as a review of the book. And Roanna Gonsalves’s interview has her talking about the influences which inform and frame her work, the Goan Catholic milieu, female sexuality, and the violence wrecked by systemic patriarchy.
Read the rest here:
Classified message, but it’s for you.
Welcome
“No,
I don’t feel excluded
alienated.
isolated.
Not even thwarted.
Nah.
I feel
…nothing.
I don’t covet what you covet.
It’s too expensive for my self-esteem.
If I did once, it was because you made me believe
it was good.
You know the secret?
If you don’t covet something, you can’t get disappointed in not having it.
It’s oxymoronish. Really.
[Even if this isn’t a word in the dictionary.]
I never will praise unedited half-baked lines.
Never bend my back.
Never think of myself an un-equal inside my head.
Why would I when I have self-belief…
and proven and endorsed certificates of merit?
But
just,
just,
just… thank our stars I don’t covet what you do.
Because if I had…just if I had
do you know what I would have done?
Think.
Think.
Think.
And Thanks for dropping by.
I’m fine.
Like I will always be.”
January 13, 2017
Launching the ‘Joao Roque Literary Journal’ to promote Goan literature
Dear Friends,
Very elated to share with you the launching of the ‘Joao Roque Literary Journal’. It is my pleasure to team up with its founding-editor, Selma Carvalho, a British-Indian writer and columnist.
The primary objective of this review is to showcase the Goan short story. The secondary objective is to further audiences for Goan books, art and related writing.
Please visit the website. We have managed, just for you, an inaugural showcasing of prose, poetry, articles, and book reviews.
https://selma-carvalho.squarespace.com/ The About and Submit sections will tell you more. Our first reading period is January-February end, 2017.
There will also be an Overall excellence annual award of INR 10000 for the best short story.
Our partners are the Dogears bookshop, Goan Voice UK, and a local daily.
Our Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/Joaoroqueliteraryjournal/
Looking forward to reading your submissions.
Download and share this little flyer, if you like.
Deccan Chronicle, Chennai interviews me over my foray into films
‘The sky is the limit for 37-year-old fiction writer and poet Rochelle Potkar, as she forays into acting, in Kollywood no less, with director Ram’s Taramani.
Her command over her works speaks volumes about her views on several pressing issues — from baby commercials to opinions on women and sexuality. For Rochelle, it all began ten years back, when she was drafting a précis paragraph for her sixth-grade students in Shanghai.’
Read the whole interview here:
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/entertainment/kollywood/070117/donning-a-new-hat.html
January 7, 2017
Street harassment Inc. – 2
Seed (haibun)
My 13-year-old breasts are a growing, budding nuisance that feel weighty and uncomfortable under my petticoat and school pinafore. It is too early for a bra so my mother buys snug cotton vests meant for very young boys.
I wear them for a year before graduating to a bra.
It takes time getting used to this strap of a bandage around the ribs and back, that would always always have to be worn from now on, like a norm.
One afternoon while walking home from school, a group of boys accost me.
A tall boy reaches out, grabs, and squeezes my breast. The shanties around are deserted. Somewhere, a TV set blares.
I watch them go.
For days after that, I search the faces of passersby, wherever I go. Did they see it? Do they know what happened to me?
But not until my buttocks are pinched and breasts elbowed, not until lewd remarks change to lucid pick-up lines in the swelling years of my womanhood, do I realize there is an archive of ‘thesevery common things’, these unwritten norms.
phosphorus sky –
the gulmohar bursts
into flames
This first appeared in PoetryIndia.com.
Street harassment Inc.
Now that molestation is getting its rightful attention at dinner table conversations — something it duly deserved a long time ago — I remember a presentation I made in Iowa (while at the International Writing Program) on feminism.
We were female writers from different countries on the panel.
https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Potkar_ICPL2015.pdf
