Awareness in Writing – A Workshop with Koyel Lahiri & Rahul Shingrani
Through some sunny days of May in Deer Park, in the presence of the infinitely graceful Vidya Rao, a few of us got together to write. What began as a five-day workshop on “Writing Life” emerged, over the months, into a writer’s community that sought to practice awareness through the written word. In the months that followed, Koyel and Rahul co-hosted two experimental online workshops that brought together writers of varying backgrounds and experience. They spent Saturdays discussing great writers and writings, and workshopped each other’s attempts at capturing the immediacy of the moment, the fleeting act of becoming, the sounds emergent from seeing. From these experiments arises a new potentiality – an ‘Awareness in Writing’ workshop at Deer Park. Here we explore the craft and heart of awareness, expressed in the form of fiction, essays, and poetry. We invite you to walk with us on this journey.
The question we pose ourselves, in our often-transactional interdependence, is if we can go beyond and create; create a space for writings that see awareness, circumambulate presence, and illuminate the subtle being? Can we come together to seek and know possibilities, our own, and for the world? Can we see ourselves as a writing community unapologetically and joyfully anchored in an awareness of the self and the world that transcends the materialist framing of experiences, both inner and outer? In other words, can we take our craft as seriously as we take our inner journey and spiritual practices, all with a sense of playful query?
What, then, is awareness in writing? We may have a sense of what it is not. This is not deep materiality in the way of plot and outcome, setup and climax, and such sureties that craft can contain. These are not tangible rewards like published stories or recognition, or any kind of monetary compensation. This is not to gain anything at all from the writing process other than the act of writing. How can we explore the maxim that the largest hurdle to practice is the expectation of outcomes? We would like to curate a space that is not driven by tangible completeness, only one that chases the act of the moment, the writing, the contemplations about writing, the community of writing practitioners, and their presence to each other. Our reading and writing embrace the exploration of consciousness and ways of being and becoming. Our stories spring from the borderlands of mainstream culture and living, and we seek to seamlessly transition back and forth from the secular to the sacred.
We invite you to draw from your life and write. We invite you to explore form, in the way of sound, in the way of utterance, in the knowing that the written word is instantly experienced as the inner monologue of spoken thought. We invite you to meet your own container of expression, explore when your voice craves a poem, an essay, layered storytelling, and everything in between, and continuously hold on to an awareness of the infinite possibilities of seeing, being and becoming.
The format:
Times: 9 am to 12 pm; 2 pm to 3 pm
We will begin with a short awareness meditation and emerge from this practice with a discussion on chosen texts. We will then spend time writing – either through prompts or without. We will spend the second half of our session reading out our work and learning how to offer our feedback to the writings of others.
There will be writing exercises that require us to write in a notebook. Please bring a pen or a pencil and a notebook.
Some of the great writings that we have lined up come from India, Latin America, and the West, from the classics to contemporary works of written art, from poetry to essays, short stories, and all that defies categorisation. A sampling of writers on our radar include Paul Kalanithi, Yasunari Kawabata, Pablo Neruda, Herman Hesse, Matt Haig, Leisl Schwabe, Jorge Luis Borges, Samantha Harvey, Ursula Le Guin, Tracy K.Smith, Anne Waldman, William Stafford, Denise Levertov, Italo Calvino, Roberto Bolano, and so many more.
Your facilitators:
Koyel Lahiri was at an unexpected fork in her life when a synchronously timed writing workshop at Deer Park Institute in 2023 helped her come alive to just how much she needed her spiritual practice AND writing in her life. Dormant knowledge awakened, she took the path that would let her keep writing. She will grow old and die sharing this dual joy and purpose. She has a B.A. (Hons.) in English from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, an M.A. in Globalisation and Labour from T.I.S.S. (Mumbai), and an MPhil and PhD in the Social Sciences from the Centre for Studies in the Social Sciences, Calcutta. At present, Koyel has the privilege of making a living by helping create English Learning materials for children as a freelancer with Oxford University Press, India. Aside from academic writing, she has had a couple of essays carried by SheThePeople and a (very) short story by Bricolage Magazine. She’s working on a couple of non-fiction manuscripts and discovering the gift and power of true community in the writing journey. Along the way, she has happily handed over the problem of herself into the willing, patient and affectionate hands of Paramahansa Yogananda and his yogic lineage of Kriya Yoga masters.
Rahul Shingrani is a biomedical engineer and a writer. His day job is in the realm of health and technology, and he has been involved in the invention of medical devices, building young companies, and finding ways to take health innovations into rural communities. He has, for as long as he is able to recall, written. Rahul has published his short fiction and prose poetry in literary magazines such as The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Four Quarters Magazine, The Stupid Bird, and The Bangalore Writers Workshop Anthology. Some of his work has been and is still being considered for adaptation into theatre and television. Rahul has previously facilitated the writing process through self-designed, independent workshops and also at the Bangalore Writers Workshop. He intends to bring into being his awareness practice, learned under the guidance of teachers from ancient lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, and his continuous love for the written word and its emergent sound, into a creative confluence and present it as an offering. Mostly, he’d like to spend time with friends who share such joys.