Thursday evening ..a packed auditorium ..Delhi’s elite ..mostly women ..sarees, skirts, suits, westerns ..and the lights go out.
Spotlight on a woman in her early thirties on stage ..Avantika Akerkar ..in a black slit ankle-length skirt welcomes the audience ..humbly requests for phones to be switched off ..raises a question to the audience -“How many of you are comfortable saying the word vagina?” ..some hands go up, some half-up, some undecided, some staunchly stay rooted to their seats! ..asks the ones with raised hands to softly whisper va-gi-na to the rest ..then louder ..and louder ..more ..and the whole gathering bursts out into a huge roar of VA-GI-NA, uninhibited!
Cracks a joke about the police denying the troupe entry into Chennai few months back, on the grounds of polluting local sentiments ..to which a woman quips –“why! don’t you have vaginas in Chennai?” ..the policeman fumbles ..the lady continues ..“well then perhaps Chennai is full of assholes”! Follows it up by an announcement that only things that vibrate are allowed inside the auditorium ..no its not what the dirty minds think ..its the beating hearts! A huge round of applause for her wit from the audience!
Lights off again ..three female figures seat themselves on the stage ..the vagina is introduced ..by all the names from across the world ..pussy ..cunt ..coochie snorcher ..some thirty-forty synonyms ..a young woman, mid-twenties, comes dancing on the stage, dressed in a short skirt, very short, the full beauty of her long legs visible to the naked eye in the last seat ..she goes into a soliloquy –“My short skirt is not an invitation to rape me. It is happiness, freedom, appreciation ..my short skirt, and everything under it, is mine” ..music dissolves in the background as she asserts her independence and existence ..later the same girl, Sonali Sachdev, replaces the short with a long skirt, and becomes the fourth speaker on stage.
She imitates a gujju woman, pretty old, 75-plus, who talks about her first time ..and what brilliant imitation! ..how she got turned on by an ordinary man ..how she came when he kissed her for the first time, and wetted the car seat ..how this guy loved to see womens’ vaginas ..how he would just stay there between her legs, staring at the one of the greatest enigmas of human civilazation ..of her hesitation at allowing a man such exclusive and prolonged visual access to her most private part ..how she asked him to just come over her, just do it ..how the man refused, and finally made the woman see her vagina in a different shade ..how her opinion of her vagina switched to white from gray ..how she realised that men CAN fall in love with a woman’s mysterious parting between her legs!
Jayati Bhatia ..an acclaimed TV actor ..playing this troubled woman whose husband wants her to get rid of pubic hair ..he likes it clean ..unhindered ..and who encourages her to use some fragrance to murder the smell of her vagina ..the stench he says ..they see a doctor ..the doctor says marriage is a compromise ..the woman is furious ..why me? the doctor says thats how it has been ..thats how it is ..and will be ..they come back ..only the husband comes back happy ..he has a razor ..he strips his wife ..shaves her ..it hurts ..she bleeds ..husband is ecstatic ..he does not see the blood dripping on the floor ..nor the wife’s painful moans ..it itches ..long after the grooming process ..husband is happy ..he likes it now ..clean ..squeaky clean ..he thinks it tastes better now ..the wife thinks otherwise ..she says NO ..and the vagina is never troubled again ..”love me with my hair, and thats the only choice”!
Avantika is a little girl, fourteen or fifteen [and the adapted transformation to a kid’s voice is as brilliant as it can get] ..has a barbaric mom, who catches her pleasuring herself unconsciously by stimulting her clitoris ..the girl receives a good verbal thrashing ..mom has a friend, a woman in her thirties ..she takes an instant liking to the young girl ..the mother appreciates this ..she allows the friend to take her daughter to spend some time at her place ..the girl’s kissed by the woman, on her tender lips ..she loves it ..she’s then laid on the bed, undressed, eyes closed ..she’s touched, not by her own hand ..she moans ..at the top of her voice ..the stage is gyrating with her orgasmic sounds ..its a never-before pleasure for the girl ..the clitoris has 6000 nerve endings ..the male penis has half of it ..the girl discovers clitoris as an organ present purely for sexul indulgence, and serving no other purpose ..at the end of the day, she has grown up!
Jayati continues later, as a woman who teaches other women to pleasure themselves ..who introduces them to the possibilities with their vaginas ..she makes them lie naked ..a mirror between their legs ..and to stay that way for like ages ..women start to see things ..some have never looked directly at their vaginas before ..they thought it was gross ..the lips were not to be fiddled around with ..she makes them think ..and see ..and feel ..the layers ..the pulp ..the fluff ..the pink ..the warmth ..she introduces the use of fingers ..to discover ..to love themselves!
Dolly Thakore’s [an elegant lady in her late forties] monologue is titled ‘I was there in the room’ ..she witnesses the birth of a grandchild ..the husband is at the bed post ..clutching his wife’s hand ..and counting ..1-2-3- …the nurse, in her white gloves is unperturbed ..to her its a routine ..the to-be mother is crying ..the to-be father has palpable tension in himself ..the granny to-be is right there, at the source of life, watching as it opens ..the vagina changes shape, and gives, always ..opens and its a life ..closes and its pleasure to someone ..it grows ..with the cries of the woman on the bed ..there is red ..everywhere ..its a beating heart ..there are tears ..of joy and pain together ..there is a cry ..and there is a life!
Jayati is at her best ..orgasms ..multiple orgasms ..musical orgasms ..aristocratic orgasms ..whistle orgasms ..she acts them ..all of them ..ten or fifteen types ..they make sense as she explains ..the hall and its people come alive ..men get hard ..they shift in their seats ..women are astounded ..its a perfect climax ..about the climax ..she mixes them all up in the end ..there was never a more profound vocal demonstration of multiple orgasms on stage ..or in dreams!
The auditorium is applauding ..all of them ..on their feet ..a standing ovation ..the four women take bows dressed in red and black ..the black hole ..the red world ..there’s a thrill ..an excitement ..it was vaginas all the way ..right into your faces ..sex, love, rape, menstruation, masturbation, birth, orgasm ..a kindness pleaded for women, and their vaginas ..its not just a body part ..its a symbol ..of female empowerment …of individuality!
And that my friends, was Vagina Monologues!
I’m not exactly a changed man after the show. I’m just more sane perhaps!
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