Rochelle Potkar Email & Phone Number

Pune, Maharashtra, India

DO READ. DO REVIEW.16 immersive, entertaining short stories about characters across caste, class, and religion in Bombay. Some of the stories nominated for prizes: Fundação Oriente Short Story Competition, 2015 (shortlist); Open Road Review 2016 (winner); DNA-Out of Print Contest 2017 (longlist), and DISQUIET International Literary prize, Lisbon 2019 (notable entry).These stories are laced with the grit, sleaze and dynamism of Bombay. They explore the nerve centre of a great metropolis with caustic wit and uncompromising realism. From the red-light corner of Kamathipura and the race course of Mahalaxmi, from South Bombay where a perfume maker works on exotic fragrances to the throbbing epicentre of Thana and the township of Kalyan, from Bandra to Andheri, the city is brought alive through memorable characters, piquant situations and no holds barred language. With the occasional foray into Goa, the poet Rochelle Potkar makes an impressive debut in short fiction, a genre unfairly neglected by most publishers in India.--Manohar Shetty

Mumbai Area, India

India

Shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2020.“Rochelle has the haibuneer’s gift of vivid succinctness: ‘Manojji is a curious man. His eyes and ears are always shifting.’ The author could be describing herself, who and what she is—her senses alive, feeding on each other, wanting nothing more than to capture our world in the honey-trap of words, a world that is slipping away from us: autumn whirlwind . . . / a child grabs at her / candy floss.” Gabriel Rosenstock“There is something very unique about Paper Asylum that continues to draw you in. . . . Some of the haiku in this collection would be standouts on their own, but when combined with her fine-toned prose they just sing the haibun form. . . . A wonderful read indeed!” Michael Rehling“Rochelle Potkar is the ideal travel companion—adaptive, incisive, witty—and in Paper Asylum she invites us to pay closer attention to our surroundings, with delightful results.” Christopher Merrill

Stirling, Scotland

I will be devoting time to writing, and engaging with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the Centre of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

Mumbai Area, India

A first book of 60 free verse poems.Blurb:Potkar speaks with the cutting clarity of a woman wholly engaged with the world. She writes from the gilded moment vulnerability becomes knowledge, and then when knowledge becomes wisdom. The result, in all cases, is the poem: clever and crafted to a kind of broken perfection—the cracks show, but the shattered places are dusted with powdered gold. “If a day is a life, a word is a story,” Potkar writes. Her poetry condenses life into a gilded day, a story into a single word, as only a masterful poet can do it, or a woman can feel it. Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta Four degrees of separation is a book to be opened like pulling down the covers of a lovers’ bed, pages of poems like sheets to be inhaled, scents that will invade dreams. Jaguars stalk through these poems; mangoes, the sweet, salty vinegar of bodies in love, bodies falling out of love--and the city of Bombay too is omnipresent, ripe with cats and blossoms, heaps of saris, “anklets clinking to camel bells.” This book is a conversation, an invitation to heed the advice of a wise grandmother, who says, “Don’t love a man more than he knows what to do with it/like chocolate over a child’s face/or a small body in a large shirt….love him a little less/So he comes, wagging his desires.” This book is also a cry of lament to a grandmother who “cherished sons over daughters.” The tangles of lovers, of love lost, and of family relationships, all fuel these poems. We are all connected, for better and for worse, these poems insist, as an aunt “searched for zeros in every person/like ingredients in a soup.” “A grudge is a wound that never seeks healing,” writes Potkar in one of the many wise observations guiding this collection, where even amidst the chaos of life and love, “every tree holds the silence of the earth/under its armpits.” Rachel Rose[This book is available on Amazon India and Paperwall.in]

Flipart, Amazon

This cluster of 7½ literary short stories presents to you the romantic-sexual facets of: Narain who lusts for Munika, hypnotized by her bosom in The Arithmetic of Breasts, and old Jaganlal who wants a favour from young Dia in The Room with a Sea-view. Jackie who is in love with Nic in Sky Park, and the surgeon in Dr. Love who is changing much more than Sneha’s hairline, nose, lip and chin. Shonali and Neel who are realizing that infidelity might not be such an easy thing in The Scent of a Conscience, and a woman who walks the tight rope between tradition and sexual exploitation in A place they call Scary. And, Sunil who meets the woman of his desires in What Men Want through an adult dating site. Through these stories, Rochelle Potkar explores the intensely personal ‘unrelationship’ that exists alongside its conventional and socially articulate twin, the relationship.

India

All is not well at Lovely Sadan. Nathan, growing up in a dysfunctional family, has a breakdown at 14 when his mother dies. Three alter egos help him cope with his lonely and battered childhood. His real-fantasy life with Leonara comes to a halt when we meet him next in a hospital. A few years later, at art school, he is declared a genius. His paintings have become the talk of the town. His powers of mind allow him to enter his subject’s body, living their lives in flesh and blood. When nightmares of his mother’s death haunt him, Nathan decides to use his special skill of getting the consciousness of his childhood friends into his mind. With his musician mate Chuck, Nathan draws Leonara into his mind-milieu, where we enter a mind-bending fantasy world with Mihir, Firoz, and others. Is Nathan doomed in his love for Leonara? Or is he doomed by the need for his alter ego – Larz, who once dismissed from his mind, is living the life of a sensuous woman in Leonara’s body, loved and craved for beyond her wildest imagination? Will her need to feel the warm touch of David – Leonara’s husband - on her skin, be Nathan’s undoing? Or will Dr Oak, his caring psychiatrist, help him survive? Meet the hitmen – mind magicians - Raj and Ned, hired by Larz to eliminate Nathan, thereby ensuring her survival. They’ve already entered Nathan’s mind-milieu in an attempt to shut down his mind. Witness Nathan’s will to survive. Witness his battle against the demons out to get him. Will he triumph? Will there be love at the end?Part fantasy-fiction, part-romance, part-thriller, Dreams of Déjà Vu reels the real trauma of a disturbed childhood in language glowing with intelligence, invention, and nail-biting suspense.

Pg, Advertising

Activities and Societies: Post Graduate in Advertising and Marketing Communications (PG-AMC) Wigan & Leigh College, Mumbai Subjects.

Mba, Marketing

Activities and Societies: Masters of Business Administration (Online) La Trobe University, Australia Subjects studied: Marketing, Project.