The Monologues..(contd.)

I'm glad I got a fresh blog.

Its a little bit like a new adventure..

And I'm determined to have a new set to talk to..read with..

We got together last night.

And this morning for what we've termed 'Technical Meetings'..dreaded subjects like funding and grants and advisory committees and not collaborating with traditional cultural bodies that seem interested{Masochistic since they have lots of moolah}.

Last night was a Creative Meeting. We got talking..about the eventuality of creating a script from the narratives that were forming through our conversations( For the record, the possibility of a set of monologues is slim, particularly for me)

We had chai and admired my photographs and the staircase in my flat that leads nowhere( I love it).

The sixth woman came on board.

Even before she rang my bell,( Allow me a little drama please, it is but natural) I was apprehensive. I'd met her before professionally and bracketed her instantly as "the kind of woman I don't get along with". Yeah, I can be judgemental but I do find men less complicated and I have very deep connections with the few women I can forge bonds with. That was that. She had been frosty, a natural reaction to my indifference.

She sits, smiles and I immediatly know that some of the others feel my trepidition. "Give it a chance"..I chastise myself. But I'm afraid. That the beautiful, open energies here will tilt with the politics that certain people cannot help but bring with them.

We talk. Fill her in on last time - the original script, everything we'd discussed, our individal desires from the project... She looks puzzled. " You're asking me what I want from this?" I nod. "This whole thing about My wanting something is all very new to me", she says, shaking her head disapprovingly.

Uh oh. Trouble. She'll tell us how selfish we and this whole free Indian woman with its struggles and identity are. And we dont want to be chastised or trashed for wanting more from our lives.Not any more. We dont want to be berated and reminded about our existing opportunities and gratifying lives. Not here anyway, not in this private sanctum that accepts and understands. I'm vulnerable here, unprepared. I may not be able to fight you as well as I can in the World outside.

She quietly sliced into my fear. " I've never really had the chance to do that, you see. I come from a world, where since I've been little, I've been told what to do and taught not to want"...

A different world tumbled out. the repression of not having ever been allowed to think for herself, the lack of even a stringent private space, the literal fact that she was never allowed to close her door when alone, the torment of not having the luxury of even a journal that would be respected as private..being called dark and ridiculed by family and friends for the color that defines our wheatish race..

And a childhood of sexual abuse that could never be talked about. The inability to confide in a family that had chained her to mythical ancestral glory. Innocence lasting till the realization in a seminar that one had, after all, been violated and abused. The horror that seizes the mind, that can never be articulated in how much it defines. One becomes the abuse, takes it on, gives it a shape, a form , one's own body. And voiceless, nameless, that choking, abused body cloaks itself, in dark colours, shapeless clothes, adipose tissue.....

And the ugly rebellion that came years later..The confused grappling for an individual mind..The storms, the alcohol, the bewildered, frenzied search for some sort of peace..some sort of rebirth..

I told her later how lucky I felt to have the opportunity to be able to be a better person. Through these women, through our search, I might just end up free.