What are stories but the shapes we paint with our breath

Late evening in a bus. Shop lights and street lamps paint faces in dappled bursts as the lanes trudge by. A scuffle for seats ahead, some heated words, and you giggle. You turn and your eyes meet theirs. It is a moment of synchrony, your matching smiles seal time. Casual remarks turn into musings and stories. Before you know it, you are laughing together. Before you know it, the ride has ended.

You may never meet that stranger again, but you have conjured a story together. For, what are stories but the shapes we paint with our breath?

Over the past year, an invisible virus made us fear the air. In cities, we distanced ourselves from each other. At times, we were left hungering for a hug, the breath of a loved one to fan warmed skin. Our masks fenced air, and in being guarded what we lost were unexpected intimacies - our trysts with strangers and their stories.

Here, dear stranger, is a mosaic of some stories. We invite you to explore awhile, to glimpse virtually into a slice of another being’s life.

Sit, pause, and listen.

Click a shape to hear a story
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Click a shape to hear a story

Would you like to share a city story?

Submitted stories will be published on the website upon ensuring that they contain no personally identifiable information. Stories may be used for further research and game development.

If you were asked to tell the story of a city, whose story do you tell? This is the question that spurred the creation of Kattu Kathe, a game about stories of the city. The stories shared in the game question the idea of who ‘belongs’ to a city; and whose story shapes the city’s narrative.

The game is played with about 50 players in a physical space, and people share stories of the city related to different themes, such as food, culture, jobs, safety, and homes. The stories that have been showcased here in this virtual exhibition were collected during sessions of Kattu Kathe.

Kattu Kathe was supported by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA). It was created under Project560, an IFA initiative to engage people with spaces, stories, and people of their neighbourhood in Bangalore.

We are grateful for the support of all interns who helped us in developing this project:

We also thank all the organisations and institutions for their participation in the game sessions: