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Once the preserve of people who had lived long, complicated lives — ageing film stars, war survivors, Nobel laureates — memoirs now follow a different timetable. From bookstore front tables to literary fest panels across India, writers in their twenties and thirties are redefining what a memoir looks like, and who gets to tell it.These are not tales of epic achievement or reflections after retirement, but lives still in motion with millennials and GenZs sharing their tales of growing up queer or disabled, surviving political violence, navigating family expectations, illness, ambition, and the ordinary challenges of becoming an adult, somewhere mid-journey.One such writer is K Vaishali, who was just 24 when she first thought of writing her life story. Growing up as a lesbian and dyslexic person in India, her life had been a tug of war between secrets and confessions — at home and on university campus — navigating double marginalisation. Even as the urge to pen her story grew, so did the hesitation.“I thought hiding under the garb of fiction would be easier. It was my editor who pushed me to make it a memoir,” says the author, now 33. While working on the book, Vaishali discovered queer memoirs by Western writers but struggled to find Indian reference points. “I wanted young people to know there is hope. I didn’t have that growing up,” she says.
Writing from middle, not end
While many writers wrestle with questions about the relevance of their life story, Sanjana Ramachandran never did. Growing up in a Tamil Brahmin family, she was just 17 when she knew her “filmy” life had to be written about. Ramachandran never climbed Everest or entered the Limca Book of Records, but did something many women of her generation would recognise: appeared for competitive exams, pursued engineering followed by an MBA, clashed with a strict father, and explored her politics and sexuality. Titled ‘Famous Last Questions’, the memoir came out last year. She was 31.“There was no way to not write it,” she says. While working on the book, Ramachandran realised how closely her experiences mirrored those of other ’90s kids in India who lived double lives at home and struggled to be themselves. “I knew it would be helpful to me and to some others, no matter how small or large the number.”A similar zeal defined Tarini Mohan’s ‘Lifequake’, which traces how the young development professional’s life was turned upside down after an accident that led to a traumatic brain injury at 23. A decade later she began writing the book, eager to capture the details in case they became blurry later. “I didn’t want it to be inspiring or a success story about ‘overcoming’ limitations, just a normal girl’s journey,” she says. “I hate that word. You don’t overcome disability. You live with it.” In the book, Mohan is vulnerable as she talks about not just slipping in and out of coma, but everyday things she took for granted. “Like going out dancing.”
Moments over milestones
While personal stories are the staple of memoirs, some writers are also trying to find a balance between the political and the personal. Zara Chowdhary’s ‘The Lucky Ones’ recounts her 16-yearold self navigating the Gujarat riots of 2002 with family, and how that violence changed their lives.“I was always keenly aware of the lapses and voids. Memory, whether my own or that of survivors within my household or the larger community, is pliant. The gaps often tell a more profound story. Different versions only reveal how all nonfiction is also ultimately fiction,” she says.In the memoir, which was recently awarded the Shakti Bhatt Prize, the writer not only documents her family’s story but also braids it together with other witness accounts, and how the aftermath of the violence was navigated over generations. “It’s about keeping one’s conscience at the centre of one’s writing,” she adds, “and asking what is still urgent or relevant.”
Power of the ordinary
Tara Khandelwal, editor and founder of storytelling agency Bound, says such examples show that the definition of ‘memoir’ is finally changing in India. “There’s a growing awareness that a memoir doesn’t have to be the chronological story of your life from point A to Z. It can be about a year or a particular episode in one’s life,” says Khandelwal.To tap into this curiosity, Bound recently launched a new imprint, ‘Moments’. The submissions so far range from grandchildren writing about grandparents to a young cybercrime specialist documenting their cases. “Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction,” Khandelwal says. “That’s what makes it tick.”Another is “personal branding” in an age of algorithm-driven social media platforms, points out Karthika V K, publisher at Westland Books. “There’s a change in the way that personal experience rubs up against public expression. It’s no longer only the very senior or obviously successful person whose lives are worth sharing,” she says.This, of course, means that there are shallow narratives and vanity projects alongside many more courageous and inspiring attempts to articulate lived experience of conflict, growth, achievement and failure. From startup CEOs and social media influencers to therapists and young parents.“Selective or partial memoirs are now far more popular than the conventional autobiography,” she says. “And where readers are interested, publishers will follow.” Go to Source
