Essays that worked!

Lakshmi Kannan '10
Mahindra United World College, Trechur Kerela, India

Wagina... wagina... wagina... 'w' and 'v', two different letters; w, curvy and sexy; v, touching your lower lip with your incisors. It is two whole hours since I have been trying to master the perfect way to master the word "vagina". I am three days away from performing Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" and I still don't know how to pronounce the word 'vagina'. My director says that I don't get the difference between a 'v' and a 'w'. Apparently I say wagina and willage. Maybe it's my Indian accent or more pronouncedly my south Indian accent, or that I am just not paying enough attention to my director who by now is perspiring from frustration under the sub-continental sun. It seems like a preposterous prospect to master this skill.

Coming from a conservative Brahmin background in Southern India, I would have been close to socially ostracized if I had even mentioned something as 'outrageous' as the Vagina Monologues, let alone perform it on stage. But I was three days away from performing the play to a live audience. I remember thinking the world of Eve Ensler when I first read the play; I was thirteen then. I also remember reading it again this year and realizing that my views on it had changed a lot in the past three years. Focusing women's issues around the vagina seemed like a reductionist argument. I remember being outraged when I had to say the lines, "My vagina ... me." I was surprised at how demeaning and condescending the whole concept was. Focusing on how the vagina is affected deflected the attention from looking at how women's psyches are affected by everything from abuse to general ignorance and intolerance which were the actual issues. I wanted to scream "I am not just my vagina" instead of "My vagina was me." I thought the play patronized and objectified the 'victim culture.' I disliked the word 'feminist' as it felt very ambiguous and redundant. I did not have a definition for a feminist myself and I was alarmed that I would be referred to as one after the play.

Much as I disliked most aspects of the play, it had an undeniably huge impact on me. I was glad for my role as the Bosnian woman who had been gang raped and the monologue on childbirth - the only two monologues that I thought were the strengths of the play. The rest of the monologues seemed very embellished and ostentatious and I could not personally relate to any of them.

The disinterest for the play being performed in a supposedly 'liberal' place like a UWC came as an unexpected shock. I wondered what kind of response it would receive back home where girls and boys holding hands would be the height of impudence.

I have no inhibitions about the word "wagina" anymore nor do I hesitate in using the word 'feminist'. I have defined it for myself - someone who does what she wants to without inhibitions.

I feel like I would undermine the whole process that I went through if I boxed the performance into "good" or "bad". The endless nights with coffee and cigarettes, freezing to death on the stage which was out in the open, driving two absolutely wonderful directors insane with my 'wagina', Aretha Franklin when there was low morale and every single second spent on the rehearsals was more rewarding than the actual performance. I don't remotely remember going up on stage and performing my part, but I do recall the swarm of hugs in the end. And of course I have mastered 'vagina' and 'village'.

Last Modified: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 16:13