Panchami
The first memory I have of stories is the afternoon sun shining through my seventh grade classroom as my Kannada teacher entered a rowdy classroom, commanding it into silence with the power of anticipation. She was the most loved teacher by generations of students for a reason. No matter how heavy the day’s lunch, or how tedious the day’s studies, those forty minutes of coercing her into telling us stories instead of reading or writing grammar rules made every student in the class delirious. It wasn’t the stories themselves that brought forth in us such a strong appeal. It was the accompanying warmth, a sense of calm—that time can stand still in the four walls of this classroom and we may depart from the expectations of an education—that seemed to demand of us mechanised learning. She would recite stories of kings, queens, poets, authors, activists, gods and goddesses from memory, and in that moment she would transcend from being merely a teacher to being an anchor that held us as we let our guard down to the captivity of imagination. It is incredibly funny or painfully horrific that in twelve years of school education the only memory I hold close to me is the warmth of stories that were told as an incentive to get us to finish ‘syllabus’ faster—stories which other teachers admonished to be a colossal waste of time.
It is only after you grow up, leave your childhood behind, tucked away in a corner, and enter this world to find a place in it that you scramble to find something familiar, something safe to hold on to, an anchor to ground yourself against turning tides of responsibility, expectations and life happening. I didn’t grow up with parents who read bedtime stories or grandparents who recited tales from their time. But somehow, stories found me. I became a voracious reader and still remain one. It is trite to believe that stories find you—especially if you are a lonely child and on the verge of becoming a socially awkward miserable adult. Somehow, you enter the world of imagination and are captured by words, stories, poems and tellings that save you. In the wise words of Mary Oliver:
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.” (‘Wild Geese’)
For me, stories have always announced my belonging, despite the harshness of being an outcast in most places of my life. It was only within stories that I felt that I belonged to this world. That I, too, deserved to be here. In the silent corners, tucked away, in a faraway land of pixie dust fairy magic. Even then, this world still offers me a tender place to belong—my place—in the family of things.
It was during my university years that I encountered the work of Elif Shafak. It was in these years I was heavily captivated by West Asia. The wars, the horrors, the violence in the region—painstakingly blasted on television channels and newspapers—drew me in. And soon, what began as reading ‘about’ the region transcended into reading ‘from’ the region. Shafak’s work was a beacon, my entry into literature from West Asia. Her novels drew me in their complexity, the use of ancient languages and contemporary characters—both flowing in a mutual harmonic bliss.
Soon enough, she became for me a reminder of the warmth I felt all those years back in my classroom. I felt as though I had been held close and tucked in as she told stories about nations, women, wars, genocides, forgotten histories and collective memory. The stories, while carrying the weight of contemporary urgencies, always narrated tales of historical beginnings. Reading Shafak has always felt for me a permission to look at this world with curious wonder, despite the horrors, the violence and the despair.
To be reading There are Rivers in the Sky in 2025 is no different, now that it feels more often than not that we are living the cusp of an ending. Our rivers are drying up, forests are being razed, the scorching heat of the sun no longer feels warm but instead feels painfully harsh, not to mention the cries of war, the banality of hatred becoming our medium of communication, the loss of childhoods, and must I speak about the bombs and open graves? In spite of all this, our generation is admonished for feeling despair, as though happiness is a choice we are resisting out of pure spite. But what must living amidst drying rivers evoke in us if not despair?
We all seem to be captured within a race that demands of us to set our experience of this world aside. What an unproductive exercise to feel the heavy weight of our own existence. Instead, we are asked to produce something of value. Make something worthy of this world. A world we know nothing about. A world which is slipping through our fingers into a painfully slow destruction. Perhaps the most disconcerting of all this remains the loss of our collective memory. Our neighbourhood trees don’t sing in the litanies of historic memories. Our communities find themselves on the cusp of never beginning in the fast pace of this world and its seamless productivity. How severed are we from our own humanity? From the litany of our own memories? Our own stories? And the stories of life around us?
Shafak in There are Rivers in the Sky doesn’t look away from this horror. Instead, she invites it in, lets the horror linger in the room. Sometimes it rests bickering in the periphery, and other times, it announces its presence and commands our attention. But never does she look away. The dams built on the river Tigris, the extinction of the Oryx, the death of rivers as we know it, the banality of evil, the elimination of defenceless communities carried out in silence. All her characters narrate these contemporary horrors, bear witness to it, and never turn away, reminding us that the art of storytelling—‘witnessing, experiencing and narrating’—is central to resisting the erasure of our humanity.
Amidst sea levels rising, growing water scarcity and destruction of rivers, Shafak follows the lifespan of a raindrop as it is transformed across continents and centuries. The droplet falls onto the hair of King Ashurbanipal in ancient Mesopotamia first and then moves rather swiftly to mid-Victorian London. The raindrop by now has become a snowfall which settles on the tongue of young Arthur, son of a destitute mudlark, born on the banks of the river Thames. The river Thames eventually flows, towards the novel’s second protagonist Narin, a Yazidi girl who is being baptised beside the Tigris, who then embarks on a journey to the holy land of Lalish amidst the 2014 ISIS attacks in the region. The novel’s final and most contemporary protagonist Zaleekhah is a hydrologist fascinated by the thesis that water might have memory. She moves to a houseboat on the river Thames after a difficult divorce. Water, the raindrop and the rivers unite these unlikely characters through thematic parallels and recurring motifs. The horrors of the present, the endurance of the past and the uncertainty of the future is all survived by the resilience of water.
Reminding us that despite everything that seems to always spiral out of control, stories of water have much to offer in their wisdom of witnessing. That everything we are witnessing, is everything that has once passed and left us a telling. In the words of Besma, the novel’s honorary grandmother, a story is a flute through which truth breathes. And we must let it breathe and anchor ourselves in the strength of its surviving. Stories always hold us in generations of belonging. To believe that the world we are experiencing is only one of the many worlds possible. That this world doesn’t need saving as much as it needs remembrance. That this too shall pass somehow in the company of everything that has passed before us.
It is perhaps the lack of stories, the lacking of articulation of the truth of our collective memories embedded within the stars, the rivers, the trees, that makes it so easy for our imagination to be captured by authoritarian governments today. For all the logic that runs this world. At our fundamental core, I like to believe we remain passionate beings. This world needs passion to survive—something to fuel us as we continue to live amongst unanswered existential questions. This passion can be captured by hatred, vengeance, ignorance and the abrasiveness of misplaced rage. Or this passion can be captured by love, poetry, literature, kindness and compassion. It is stories that grant us the permission to be captivated by our own imagination and be anchored in the delicate compassion of our own humanity.
There is so much efficiency, we are told, in the fastness of life—getting things done, moving quickly. ‘Don’t think, just do.’ That’s what our education has mostly become—an endless production of consistently enhanced efficiency—to what end? No one knows. Having grown up as a child who was consistently chided for her sensitivity, her attachment to books, fantasy, imagination, being bullied and mocked for the worthlessness of such pursuits, I find myself constantly marvelled by the centrality of stories to my survival. Their incredible ability to hold space and accord value to the tenderness of my human experience. Reminding me what a serious business it is to be alive.
For years, Shafak, through her work, has been reminding us that we live in an era where there is too much information and not enough knowledge. Too much stimulation, urgency, numbness and saturation of emotions and experiences that ought to offer us a portal of transformation. Anybody who has picked up a book would know the painful slowness of reading a novel. The time it takes to invite yourself into the world beyond this world in those pages. The time it takes for the characters to invite you into their minds. And the time it takes for you to make sense for your world through their world. The blissful back and forth finally leading to a contentment that can only be described as harmony. Harmony of not memorising information or gaining knowledge but the harmony of being transformed by the sanctity of wisdom that can only be transmitted through the gifted art of storytelling.
If I could, I would turn back time and pester my Kannada teacher for one more story in the corridors of my school. If I could have one wish it would be that we told more stories. In our houses, in our communities, with our friends and especially in our classrooms. I wish we didn’t read stories only to enhance our vocabulary or knowledge. I am sure all those things are somewhat the ancillary gifts of being a reader. But I hope we read stories as a way to rest—to create for ourselves an alcove of safety and belonging during the harsh weathers of life.
I hope we read stories as resistance to oppression that demands from us unquestioned obedience to endless productivity. I hope we read stories as a celebration of our capacity to experience all the powerful complexities of life. And in the end I hope and pray stories remind us of the power of our own witnessing. The strength of being transformed amidst our own pain and the pain of others. Of extending care, love and compassion without conditions. Of feeling joy while hurting. Of tiny raindrops falling in beautiful symphony while scrambling to find lakes to fill. That it is possible, for joy to exist like this, resting in the hope we carry for a burning world. Look around in the rubble of all this horror: there is wisdom to be pursued, and in that pursuit, hope will arrive, and so will love. This too shall pass until the next story begins.
Panchami lives in Bangalore, writes poetry and essays (sometimes). Mostly, she is thinking about trees, books and cats. She can be found on Substack.
Featured photo by Shikha S. Lamba
