Vagina Monologues - A Review

I know the first word might make many of you wince once or twice. But as the actors on stage said, this discussion will either liberate you , shake you or rejuvenate you. Well... I fall in the first category, I felt liberated after watching this play. When 'WHO' took me to watch this play at the Comedy store in Phoenix mall, my bro-in- law who had watched it 2 years ago told us "life would not be the same again". I need to confess I imagined it to be a sex comedy by some lewd men. After all we love sex comedies dont we? with overtones and undertones they masssage our alter egos. What we hate is reality. Hence, movies on domestic violence and rapes dont run as much or mint money as Woody Allen's Husband and Wives would.

The posters of Vagina Monologues told me it was performed by five women and not just any women, women I was so accustomed to seeing in saans bahu serials and ads of Aashirvad atta. There they sat in front of me and spoke about an organ I was so ashamed to mention to my inner self. I have often heard men take pride in their lower self ( their Johnnies) no wonder you find lot of exhibitionists around. I wonder if you ever found a women whistling and shoo shooing a guy to expose her vagina ( I bet that's many men's fantasy) but it never happens. This play unfolded the 'dark secret' the reason why women wont do it. We feel so inferior about our lower part ( Our little Janes)that when the actors asked us to shout the word vagina many of us refused. We are after all conditioned to believe this is not to be talked about and many of us dont even discuss about it to our own mothers let alone the men in our life .

If you ask me what nudity the bunch of five actors spoke I would say tonnes of it but it changed my definition of vulgarity. They told me something noone had before. They told me I need not feel ashamed of who I was and my vagina was not my weakness anyone could invade, it rather was part of my identity. It was my pride and I could decide how I lived with it. I did not have to adorn it to please someone because I was not born for that alone. I was exposed to stories of women who were so worried decorating their vaginas to please partners that they wanted to believe it was not a part of their body and was an external device that could be detached.I learned I need not flaunt it around but my vagina has a lot of reasons to make me proud.

I suddenly realised I had never spoken about the V word to anyone except my gynaec that too embarrassed. And here I was sitting among a niche crowd understanding why I hate the 'V" word how I am happy I am not judged beautiful according to it. We women never chit chat on ' does size matter or not like many men" because deep within ashamed we are ashamed. We are told not to sit split wide open as it sends wrong messages. We are told to hide our panties under a towel because we should not attract men who whistle at our balconies lest even steal nice ones. We are told any violation that happens to our 'V' intentionally or unintentionally disgraces our family names. And imagine the burden we carry on our shoulders from the day we learn this.

But what many of us dont realize is the mutilation of vaginas occuring in this nation as much as Africa. The pouring of acid and chilly powder into the vaginas of uncouth girls and sex workers who complaint ailments. What we do not know is soldiers shoving down their rifles into the vaginas making a women shudder when she pronounces the V word.

I cannot understand a man's fascination to a part of a female's body for which he torments it and creates a scarred female mind.

What I do know is that everyone out there has been very close to this so called dirty part once in his life and no human being can deny his longest journey through the birth canal ended at a woman's vagina. I wish every pervert remembered this and every individual respected it. Then why would this team be boycotted from performing in many places suggesting their theme improper.

Why does sex when discussed by women become vulgar and men makes it literature? Why is Shoba De misjudged and Khushwant Singh applauded ?I know it sounds feminist. Definitely it is my vagina talking.

N.B- No comments by perverts will be tolerated but they will be published for the world to read .

Incredible India through my eyes- Tea shop

Tea was never a favourite during my formative years at home. Though it used to be in demand from Don; Bhai and I were brought up on a healthy dose of Bourvita and later Boost. But once we stepped outside the cocoon of our home, it was not long before tea became manna of life for me. I would not say it was not addictive as cigarettes, gutka or booze but rather it was devoid of all the taboos associated with enjoying one of the former ones openly with friends. An innocuous statement as “let’s have tea” would not unfold itself, into a solemn discussion or a trifling, until the first sip had hit the lips. Our favourite hangout was Mama hotel, but we never took a seat at the place, always stood on the curb, sometimes with purpose otherwise just reminiscing. With our fingers folded, across the glass of tea, we felt empowered to take on the world; sometimes it was just a quickie otherwise across many servings.
Times apart my addiction still goes, and so is Don’s. I remember waking up at five in the morning, during our stay in Kerala, and walk a mile to the only ‘thata kadah’, that opens at that time to serve people like us. No problem if the milkman is still asleep, we will have it black. Hundred miles across, in Mumbai, we walk a similar distance to get our daily dose of evening tea. No thanks, the tea from the office coffee dispenser will not do.

We dedicate this part of Incredible India to the humble tea shop. The genuine ones, where the guy would prepare the brew in front of you, on a wood burner or LPG, with milk and water all going in fresh and the aroma just so entrancing that you wish it would touch your lips soon. Take a trip across the length of the country and you would find one of this in every village, town or city. Once, on one of our early morning cuppa in Kerala, Don pointed my attention and asked me to decipher the clicking metal sound coming out from a water filled tumbler at the tea shop. Puzzled and not in my senses at that early hour I gave in easily without much care. He said that the tea guy will place a coin inside the water tumbler and once the water starts boiling the coin would start dancing inside, making the weird noise against the tumbler. This lets the guy make out the water is boiling without even opening the lid. Smart, huh!
I am sure that there are such tea provisions in other parts of the world, especially our neighbours, but the larger world is devoid of the good sense that the tea shop brings to a being. I am sure the west can relate to it through their pubs and cafes but again we have them too. This is over and above them. When you don’t really have the time to sit around lazily, don’t have the bucks to pay for the cover charge, you need something to go well with your puffs and when you really need to take a tiny tiny break or just want to go for a walk and muse over the world passing by, you look for a tea shop.
Such is the reach of the humble tea shop that it has bridged times, distances and cultures to become an imprint on the psyche of our everyday life. That’s why every time I go back to Bhopal, Justin would still always suggest, “Let’s have tea”. And I know it’s just the perfect beginning to whatever is to follow.

Is it Common Wealth or con our wealth games!

Nine lakhs for a treadmill, eight thousand for a chair, a refrigerator for fourty thousand, four lakhs for an air conditioner. I can assure you that inflation has not gone through the roof nor are these rates quoted in Zimbabwean Dollar. But what gets my goad is that these are not even buy prices but ‘give it back to me’ rental prices for two months. So much so for getting our own rupee symbol last month. I am sure these figures will look good with the new symbol but it really hurts to know that these numbers somehow tie back to the tax money that went out of my pocket.

Welcome to the Commonwealth Games, Delhi, 2010. The fireworks have already started, allegations are flying thick and fast and it’s still not opening day. But one look at the common wealth of nations and you see a list of countries that hold no sway in the current milieu. I am not sure what’s the fruit in competing against countries like Barbados, Belize and Botswana. Beats me! Oh wait. No, on second thought, we might still not be able to come on top of the medals table. It’s like calling your old bar buddies, from your blackjack days and treating them to three fortnights of fun and frolic in your backyard. And I sure the wife’s not happy at all. She wants you to focus on the rising prices and the unruly neighbour.

I was always of the opinion that we are not a sports country. To start with, there is very little support we get at home to play a sport recreationally, forget about sports as a career option. A lot of this stems from the preponderance of the parents towards pushing their wards to have a crack at the entrance exams rather than at an opponent or a team. Further our schools also see it as just a leisure activity, one ‘games’ period in a week, and behave no different from the authorities at home in their commitment towards sports. As a result, the two institutions which should act as the cradle of sports fail us.

Once into adolescence, we do take up sports, but again as a distraction to steer our mind away from back breaking homework we get from school. Or if mom gets too worked up because of our pestering she would ask us to get lost for an hour or two. Now, in the company of similarly challenged kids from the colony, we don’t really get the kind of exposure which makes champion sportsmen, but rather fist fight and abuse leads us crawl back into our homes. And as time passes it is not long before we stand at the cross roads of choosing whether it would be science or math, for bread and butter, and say our final goodbyes to the ground beneath our feet. The thinkers of our land suggest that talent needs to be discovered early on and nurtured through proper training and support all through. But in a land where the parents are discussing if it’s going to be Yale in the summer or Carnegie in the fall, even before the spermatozoa and ova have fused, leaves no space for the little guy to play around once he is out and about.

Next in line is the attitude of the sponsors or the so called marketers of professional sport. They spare obscene amount of money for the Dhoni’s and the Sachin’s but not a thought for that unknown guy in the track and field event. Actually, I don’t know his name either and that’s because the sponsors never streamed him live into my living room. But let’s not spill all the venom on the sponsor because they only feed us what we love to gorge on. Which puts us in the spotlight and the million dollar question is - why don’t we like anything other than cricket? I know its clichéd, but so it is true that we don’t like any other sport so much, to watch or play, and if the marketers are only keen to sponsor what we like and if supposedly with their support we can bring about the change in the state of other sports in the country, this question is very relevant. I am of the opinion that, universally, contact sports (boxing, rugby, football, basket ball) are more popular along with ball and stick ones (baseball, cricket, tennis) and followed by the speedsters (F1). I am not saying that this is the norm because I contradict myself by pointing that Judo as a contact sport, snooker as a stick and ball game and MotoGP as a racing sport has not made us as crazy as the previous examples. I am trying to deep dive into our psyche to understand that if given a chance, to watch or play, why we end up choosing boxing and not judo, cricket over long jump and F1 but not swimming. Why some sports will make us spend top money to buy tickets and some we don’t want to watch even if it comes free on national television. If we get answers to these questions we can steer the big guys to focus on the bottom feeders and give them some premium treatment.

Somewhere in all those questions lies our answer to why we languish, if not at the bottom, of the medals table at every international meet. And rather than understanding the basic psyche of our outlook towards sports, how many of us would really watch the games on television let alone go to a stadium, we have brought home a jamboree, which is more about showcasing our organizing skills rather than our sporting prowess. And now looking at the graft charges, sub standard stadiums and incomplete infrastructure I am not sure how many medals will we get even for our organizing expertise. The ideal alternative would be to spend this money in upgrading the sporting infrastructure, starting from schools but not ending with SAI. But again swanky stadiums and hi-tech equipments will not bring the best in us until we get our motivation towards sports right. Somewhere in us lies a gene which abhors the thought of venturing into professional sports and is satisfied with a nine to six job, which pays handsomely enough to buy a flat screen and DTH and enjoy a game of cricket at home.

It’s good news that the guys in Delhi have said no to the Asian Games in 2019. Hopefully the inflation will not take away the gains from this move by then.

Happy Birthday Who

When I said missing you is part of life and you said meeting me is part of your life my stupid brain was doing some analysis. Missing is not expensive but meeting definitely is with our present state. So I was not expecting you on campus on a tuesday night and there you were asking me to leave every work and join you for a chicken biriyani at Olives without anything ( luckily i had my toothbrush). I was baffled because the planner came unplanned and you looked different. I dont think we ever enjoyed our planned trips as much as we did these 2 unplanned days.

Marriage does funny things to people and I think I have acquired nausea, crying and head aches as a result of this venture. You keep worrying as to why I have nausea early mornings but what you dont know is I only have them when I am with you and when I know you are leaving the next day. I dont like coming to the airport when you leave and I never did it before and you thought I was strong and never cried when you left. You tore my facade yesterday and I admit I have cried every time but only after you left. I have had co passengers watch me all the time wondering if I was going for a funeral. And when I tell them I have just left my husband behind they smile making me wonder what was funny.
Despite so much love how shallow we are when it comes to trust. You remember I tried walking with my eyes closed holding your hand at Beasant nagar and could not close my eyes for long . A part of me told me it was foolishness in peak hours of traffic while another part told me to learn to trust and i realised learning to trust is not so easy. And I realised life is full of distractions and sometimes we lose trust in the turmoil. But we will not do that exercise again.

The ride to main gate in that small bus was filmy I was the only girl clinging to a man and women stared at me wondering why I was hugging you and I was irritated coz I had space to stand and at some point of time I felt I would tear your shirt each time the bus hit a bump. That was some ride. would have given you goosebumps 8 months ago nahi marriage stole away all those pleasures :(

You amaze me at times like you did when you told me you met my ace enemy and you sounded cool about it, when you are excited with me when I acquired my friend's stamp collection, when you hunt down the snack bar at MSB while I invigilate to experience a part of campus I have been to, you amaze me.

I wish I could list down the endless words you invent each day and the narcissistic comment you make( tumhare poore khandan mein mujhsa handsome koi hai :0 ). Your popularity among my female friends does worry me not coz I am jealous just that I dont want them to make you and archetype and make a biggggggggggggg mistake choosing some guy like you :)

I just wish I could see you standing outside my hostel shy to enter and sit among all those girls in the lounge. I wish to see those eyes twinkle when you take sigmu and kunjoose and play with them. And I wish you give me a shock of my life again by flying down unexpectedly and tell me you want to eat a chicken biriyani from Thiruvanmiyur at 10.30 pm.

But I dont ever want to stand outside the airport and see you through the glass and feel like a ghost not being able to touch you. When you called me and we stood looking at each other with our phones and placed our hands on the glass it was so painful i could just run to you but the security would not allow me and you were right in front of me yet so far away. I wish I had some supernatural powers like time travel, or invisibility , dream travel but that's too much of science fiction.

I know I met you yesterday morning but I cant stop missing you can I?

Hmmm could not post anything on your birthday and I am not happy with the scraps all the girls sent you. This is my birthday post for you. May all your dreams come true ( offers involving other women are invalid)

I, Me, Myself

I am finding it difficult to keep my eyes open. I can feel heaviness on my eye lids; as if someone's trying to shut it by force. But I won't give in that easily. Between these moments of fighting with the unknown enemy I could see that the surroundings feel a little eerie. It's not the darkness; I have been in darkness before, but it's this silence which I have not felt before. I try to move my body but there is no response. I try to shout but I do not even hear my own voice. I am starting to get worried. Soon I start hearing voices, though they feel like coming from very far. Suddenly there is light coming from a corner, as if a door has been opened. I can now here the voices much clearly but there are too many people speaking at once. I try to move my head but I feel a weight holding it down. I am now able to make out that I am lying on my back, not on something, but may be suspended in mid air.
Then slowly I am being moved into the light, by the people around me. It's now that I am able to recognize those voices and see their faces. They seem to be lifting me up but I don't feel their hands touch my body. I feel of an invisible space between them and me. It takes time to come to terms with my surroundings and I suddenly feel a knot in my stomach. I have seen a morgue before but not from where I am lying now. What does this mean? My heart skips a beat. I try hard to move my body, a hand, a leg, a finger but they are beyond my control. I feel like a prisoner of my own skin. It doesn't take long for me to realize that I am in a casket and that explains the separation between me and the others. Suddenly I see my father coming forward and looking straight at me, expressionless. I scream out but the voice again just dies in my head. He closes the casket and I am in darkness again. I could not even get a proper look at him; he seems devastated.
I feel strongly about my father. I have been an obedient child to him. Not because I am one but because he is a hard taskmaster. Our relationship is more driven by fear than out of love. I would usually try to stay out of his sight and only approach him if it was about school or about money. It was a matter-of-fact kind of relationship. I am the subservient son and he being the omnipotent dad. He was directing my life; through the script of do’s and don’ts, with very little scope for re-takes.
My thoughts break with a question; am I dead then? What happened to me? I don’t feel hurt anywhere. I don’t remember anything fatal happening to me. Before I could go deeper, looking for answers, the casket opens and light floods around me. I am at home now and I can now hear wailing sounds. I see the fan rotating above me, same as how it used to when I used to lie on my bed. Mom comes and wipes my face. I yearn to feel her touch but I can’t. Something invisible still blocks my senses. I want to touch her hand but I can’t move an inch. She has always given comfort in times of pain. She is like fireplace on a snowy day; warm and accommodating. She is embodiment of God himself, who could take away all my sufferings and fulfill all my wishes. She knows all my little needs and my big wishes. She would look right through my eyes and know that I have been naughty. There is nothing to hide from her. If there’s a bullet for her I will happily take it. Then I want to ask her - what happened to me? And as if she heard my question she starts to weep heavily. I always knew there was a deeper link between us.
My brother grabs her; stops her from falling over in my casket and consoles her. He has always been our support system. From our ‘I hate you days’ to ‘brothers in arms’ years to ‘friends for ever’; the journey has been wonderful. He’s like a bridge between two river banks; providing a solution, dependable and resourceful. We always talk on stuff and share ideas. Sometimes like mentors; often like novices. Friends? May be more; there is so much we share in common that often I feel one with him.
I hear a prayer being read out. There’s no mistaking that it’s for a dead person. My ears want to listen to it but my mind won’t agree that it’s for me. Then I see an apparition standing next to my family. It looks exactly like her. Somewhere in this confusion I had forgotten about her. She is the one with whom I was to spend the rest of my life. We came together as a whirlwind, she then set the sails right and took control of our lives. She had everything to give: love, life, laughter, courage, calm, care, time, temperament and trust. My eyes fill up, but only in my mind. She comes closer and touches me. I feel her, on my face. She embraces me. I feel her. How? Is she also? She looks at me and blinks her eyes and assures me. She smiles, just a little. I smile back. We are finally at peace. No distance separates us now. Alas we are together!


The casket is closed and there is darkness again. I am being lowered into my final resting place. I feel my eyes becoming heavy again; I don’t fight this time and let it close. I am at peace with myself now.

Animals are beautiful people

The new entrant in our hostel i have christened him Kunjoose :P thats my nickname . Ain't he cute?????? He is playful and a mama's boy and lovesssssssss chocolates. That's Kunjoose

Candid Confessions

He said I am scared of being lonely and I am a loner

You would never find me alone for I am always in the world

But I was never of this world, and I knew I was a misfit

Perhaps it is because I am estranged from my loved ones

The ones who know me yet do not for they are of this world too

I prefer being hideous

when things are perfect I withdraw into the oblivious

I fight a lot and argue even more but

what my friends you do not know

is that i buy everything you say and get hurt

though I never show it

They have the power to hurt me and

yet they beleive I am invincible.

I still cannot sleep without lights on and

I am scared of the darkness.

I love animals more than human beings

and my books more than my friends.

I can be very demanding and nasty at times

and I am labelled possessive.

And why am I writing it here?

because its my catharsis and

I am supposed to be venting here

rather entertaining readers alone.

Yeah I am melancholic but we all have the right to be so.

What will I gain by not writing it here?

A pain noone can fathom and bear

What do I gain by writing it here?

I can soothe my soul and wipe my tear

Fallen have I many a time

But never felt so hurt and grime

Worthless I feel not worth a dime

Something's changed forever and this is no rhyme

Someone has broken my heart and I can tell no soul

Someone has changed me forever and I am no whole.