Thoughts from a vagina.
I am a woman and I have a vagina.
Did I just make you uncomfortable?
That's the idea.
You know, last night I went to watch a performance of the Vagina Monologues (Bangla) by The Shriek of Silence at the ICCR as part of the Youth Theatre Festival 2018 in Calcutta. Actually it does not really matter who performed or why or where. Neither am I here to discuss or laud Eve Ensler as an activist or her ground-breaking attempts to globally stop violence against women. You will get all that on the internet. I am here to talk about my reactions, my fears and my hopes: as a regular working woman, as a woman in her late forties, as a mother of teenage girls poised to fly, as a mature woman with no time for people who judge her, and also as a woman, who, by reason of her profession, is well aware of and acquainted with the awful violence (subtle and not-so-subtle) perpetrated on women every day.
Yes, the Vagina Monologues make you think. Of yourself as a woman, of other women , of your mothers and daughters and thousands of women you have known, perhaps closely, perhaps fleetingly, who have shaped your life.
There is much that resonated with me. You know, at first I was hesitant to go when I heard it was in Bengali. I admit that I am not as fluent in my mother tongue as I should be. I confided in a friend and she laughingly told me I should carry a dictionary, in case I needed it. Turns out, throughout the ninety odd minutes of the play that had me glued to my seat, there was not a single vernacular word that I did not understand. You do not need a language to understand when another woman speaks, you only need a heart. I know it was all playacting, but why then did the words of those women stay with me long after I left the theatre? Was it only because I knew that this was no fiction but the real words of women across ages and times and continents?
I remembered so many things that we hide within ourselves. Like when I got my first period. I have never told anyone but my girls about it. Or maybe I have. Maybe it's not relevant. Maybe nobody cares. Or maybe THAT is what is wrong with our society. The fact that nobody cares.
I found myself reliving each of those times in the labor room when I gave birth to my two daughters. I remembered once again the joy that burst through me when I held that blood slicked body of my first-born in my arms. I remembered being oblivious to the surgeon's needle in me for there had been no time for an anesthesia when my second child was born, she was a week early and chose her own pace (she still does). I also remembered the horror of a PAP smear, it was the first time I ever called a friend just to sit by my side and hold my hand for a stupid test. I remembered feeling small and helpless when I was groped on the road, I remembered the safety-pins and elbows that were never enough to keep us safe. I remembered every client or friend who has cried to me that she has been molested or beaten by her husband, I remembered the drug induced smiling eyes of the pretty prostitute I chatted with on the streets of Pattaya, the one who taught me locusts are tasty too! I remembered those women on the supermarket aisles urging me to buy V-wash. AND then I remembered the harsh lights of the OT and the gynecologist smiling down at me and telling me I was doing the right thing. "God will bless you," he said, his exact words. So did He?
Did He bless all of the other women too, when he gave them vaginas?
What about the woman who is forced to have sex with her husband even when she does not want to? What about the one that got raped and thrown by the roadside, the ones that are abandoned after childbirth? What about the 18 month old baby, did you read about that? How wondrous and enticing was that mound of flesh on that tiny girl? It doesn't matter if it was in India or Pakistan or in Timbucktoo, do spare a thought for the teenager on the bus, the hands that grope her and violate her in the crowd. You know, we cannot forget, we cannot let ourselves forget. We need to think about these things, we need to remember. I won't even mention sticks or rods or glass bottles, I promise I won't talk about how the bodies were dumped. Forget the cases you read in the newspapers. Read your own life. Read the lives of the women around you.
In a book I read by Stephen King as a teenager, I remember there was this expression: "Woman: a life support system for a c**t." Indeed.
From a very early age, women are conditioned to be suppliant, to play second fiddle, to place the needs of others before theirs. Why do women have to prove their worth, either by bearing male children or by earning or by career? Men prove themselves just by being born: they are worthy. Women, on the other hand are constantly being judged. It is not enough to be "just" a housewife. If you have a career, aspersions are cast on your home. Are the children being looked after? Ooh, obviously, she has to keep three maids. She? Her mother-in-law takes care of the children! Have you seen how messily they live? She cannot cook, can you imagine! If the child is unwell, or does badly in studies, everyone looks accusingly at the mother, so THAT's what happens when you are a working woman, see, she cannot even look after her children! Being a woman is like 'heads you win, tails I lose', there's just no way out. People love to point fingers and of course, the woman is to blame.
And in addition, women are judged on the way they look. The colour of the skin, the contours of the hair, the size of the breasts, the dent of the stomach, the curvature of the thighs, everything is up for scrutiny. On the other hand, the man may be stick-like or paunchy, hairless or beady eyed, sport hair like King Kong or have breasts the size of Madh Island, he is still a prize catch. Just because.
No, don't stop caring. But do find a balance. Stop, pause and think. Find time for the things you love, for things that matter to you. Laugh with your friends, take time out alone, make time to explore yourself and your needs and teach the women you know and your daughters to do the same. Make sure you look back one day and are happy with the woman you are and not just a receptacle for the whims of men!
