Losing the plot
The media's distortion of the theatre performance Thoda Dhyaan Se in Jaipur last week as 'obscene' was a travesty.
Theatre performer MALLIKA TANEJA expresses her anguish in this first-person account (Pix: National Duniya).
Thoda Dhyaan Se was devised and performed in September last year as part of the NDLS (‘Nobody Wants My Love’ -- a collection of comic, dramatic, musical and nonsensical sketches about states of life in the capital) show presented by the Tadpole Repertory.
Following its positive reception, the show was performed regularly at various venues in Delhi including colleges at Delhi University. The piece was covered widely by the press and featured in a number of films on gender. Many journalists spoke with me about how I went about creating this piece, why I made it and how it has been received.
Thoda Dhyaan Se is a satirical piece on the idea that women should dress a certain way in the city in order to avoid trouble. The performance begins with me in my underwear, as if looking at myself in a mirror in an appreciative manner. I then get down to business and begin the daily routine of dressing myself, while talking about the importance of a woman being careful and responsible in the way she dresses.
As I dole out advice on the do’s and don’ts of dressing and behaving in the city, I pile on multiple layers of clothing, trying to hide the form of my body, transforming myself into a shapeless structure, complete with a helmet, sunglasses and what have you, so that no one can tell anything about me.
The performance on the 14th of December at Jaipur was the first performance of this piece outside Delhi. I was invited by the Jaipur Theatre Festival to perform it, along with another work. I stitched the two together in order to make the show seamless. I clubbed my piece ‘Devi’ to the end of this one, taking off the layers one by one, rejecting the deification of women, and asserting my individuality. By the end of it, I was left in multiple layers of T-shirts and shorts and I remained dressed that way for the discussion as well.
The auditorium was brimming with people at four in the afternoon. Just before I began, the organisers announced that the performance was not suitable for children below the age of 12 as it deals with gambheer (serious) issues.
The curtain opened, my performance began. I played to a very attentive audience who heard everything I had to say and giggled at the ironies in the piece. If the reception and subsequent discussion at the end of the show were anything to go by, I would say that Thoda Dhyaan Se was a great success.
Before I went on stage, I had been sceptical about the response I would get at Jaipur. I had no idea what to expect and prepared myself for a number of different scenarios. Perhaps I had fallen prey to the notion that Jaipur, not being a metropolitan city like Delhi, might therefore be more conventional.
The curtain opened to a silent auditorium. I could see people shuffling in even after the performance began. I stood there in my underwear, listening to all the shutterbugs clicking away. This was not particular to Jaipur. This happens everywhere I perform. Some of it is just people documenting a performance and some is excitement generated by a scantily clad woman. I was curious to know how people would respond to this opening image at the end of the piece.
Soon the performance was underway and the audience seemed entirely engaged. One could sense this from the energy that enveloped the room and the laughter that punctuated the sketch. The performance ended slightly differently from usual. I performed my second piece as an addendum to the first, taking off the clothes I had piled on one by one. By the end I had left on me, several layers of tops and shorts.
I was, by no measure, down to my underwear again as the reports in the papers suggested. If my word is not enough, I have a video to prove my claim.
But this is not where it ends. As I have in Delhi after every performance, in Jaipur too I asked the audience for a discussion after the show. It's important for me to know what people thought about the performance and answer any questions. And this is where the real success of this particular performance lay. I was delighted by the response that I got from an engaged, informed and open-minded audience who spoke freely about the issues raised in the two pieces and about the performance itself.
I was asked many questions: How should a man should support his wife on the path of equality if his family is extremely conservative? How long did I think we had to keep fighting for our space as women? Should women not have to make any adjustments to society? Why do women get perturbed by how men look at them?
One man commented that, as we have become 'modern', we have piled ourselves with clothes and called ourselves ‘civilised’ and forgotten that human beings were always without clothes. Another man commented on how he thought that no one sitting in this audience would look at me ‘vaise’ after having watched my performance, even though they might have been tempted to at the beginning of it.
Total misrepresentation by the media
I left for Delhi that very evening and I woke up to a controversy the next morning. Some local newspaper reports painted quite a contrary picture to my experience of being part of the Jaipur Theatre Festival. I am deeply shocked and disturbed at the reports I read as they totally misrepresented my performance and the audience reaction.
Instead of conveying the positive energy that filled the auditorium, reporters resorted to the most convenient word of our times -- ashleel (obscene). It is a loose and easy word to throw around. Whenever there is someone who does not toe the line or behave according to the convenience of the patriarchal powers, that person is branded ashleel. Women who assert their independence and individuality are often victim to words such as this.
This word was used to summarise my performance. One wonders then, what exactly was ashleel in this entire event? The fact that I appear on stage in my underwear? Or the fact that small-minded reporters could not move past this opening image, disregarding everything else that went on that afternoon? Is it what I was showing or is it the gaze with which they looked at it? Had the audience objected to my attire, I think they would have said so during the discussion.
It seems to me that none of the journalists who wrote these reports were actually present in the auditorium. Had they been present, perhaps some of the energy might have found its way into their reports? Journalism has great power and with power comes an equal amount of responsibility. To present a one-sided, libellous and predominantly false picture of an event is a great shame.
The report in National Duniya, the newspaper that labelled me ashleel, is factually incorrect and offensive. Even the picture carried with the story is not of me.
Finally, I feel the greatest disservice that the reports in National Duniya, Dainik Bhaskar, and Rajasthan Patrika have committed has been to the people of Jaipur. Instead of lauding their progressive and open mindset, it paints a regressive image of a conservative audience embarrassed by my performance. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hope the people of Jaipur continue to speak up and speak louder than these reports that frame them in such a poor light.
Mallika Taneja is a former student of Delhi University. She was inspired to put up this performance after reading about the gang-rape of a photojournalist in Mumbai in 2013 and the 2012 gang-rape and death of a physiotherapy student in Delhi.
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