🌺 When the Womb Spoke Back 🌺

A Tale of Awakening, Recognition, and Return

What I encountered last evening was nothing short of a miracle—one not only of this lifetime, but of many—of planets and stars aligning across galaxies, of cosmic currents stirring the deepest parts of my being, pulling me up gently, yet resolutely, from the underbelly of the mother’s womb.

The Natak Co. performed The Vagina Monologues at MLR Convention Hall in Whitefield—marking 23 years of its courageous presence in India. For years, living abroad, I had only heard of this radical piece of theatre, whispered about it like a myth, its power echoing in conversations. But it had never happened—until it did.

That evening, the universe conspired. My cousin, with the casual generosity of someone who follows instinct rather than plan, noticed the show and folded me and my closest friend into her invitation. We agreed, not expecting anything more than a pleasant cultural evening. But what awaited us was far beyond the realm of theatre. We arrived early. Almost too early, as if some force had drawn us to be present, to absorb every breath and murmur of the space before the lights dimmed. The hall, within no time, filled to the brim with women—throngs of them, coming in clusters like flocks that had heard the same silent call. Women in sarees, in dresses, in co-ords and kaftans, in tank tops and flowing gowns. Women in colors and textures and intentions. Women who came with themselves, to be themselves. To remember themselves.

And then the lights shifted. Deepthi R. Ayyanna welcomed us into the space, The four performers—Swati Das, Varsha Agnihotri, Dilnaz Irani, and the legendary Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal—took the stage, clothed in solemn black. The red dupattas that adorned Mahabanoo and Varsha were not mere garments but proclamations. Swati and Dilnaz, with subtle red embellishments, stood like quiet embers. Something was about to ignite.

And then it did.

“Vagina,” they said. And we said it too. The word vagina echoed through the hall—some whispered it into their palms, some mouthed it to the void for the first time, others shouted it out like a war-cry of selfhood. A wave rose in the room—a knowing.

The monologues began.

Collected over decades from women across the world—over 200 of them—the monologues stitched together laughter and horror, silence and song, trauma and pleasure, shame and sovereignty. These were not mere performances; they were offerings, truths bared with courage and care. Stories that made you laugh out loud, gasp in shock, close your eyes in sorrow, and open them again with new understanding.

Vagina, they said, was izzat—dignity. Bollywood taught us that. Who thought our very being lay where society told us to hide?

We learned how so many of us—across cultures and regions—grew up with no awareness of our own bodies. We heard of women who had never said the word vagina, never seen it, never touched it, never felt it was theirs.

We gasped, we cried, we laughed—and with every story, another veil dropped.

The stories flowed—from the absurd to the unbearable. The shoving of rifles, the silence of wounds, the hairy disputes of matrimony. Women from Bosnia, Kosovo, Kolhapur, Kashmir, Kolkata. From fields and cities, temples and train stations. The truth, not dramatized, but offered—like a mirror held in moonlight.

And we? We howled. We roared. We nodded with tears and shouted with joy. We were there, present and multiplied, seen and witnessing. Every voice on that stage found its echo within us.

It will take time to process. Perhaps a lifetime. But I know I will never be the same.

Thank you, Natak Co., for persisting despite resistance, for holding this mirror steady even when the world trembled.

And yet, my evening had more to unfold.

After the performance, we took the Metro—through Bangalore’s Saturday veins—to M.G. Road. Then, we walked. Down Kamaraj Road, past Shivaji Nagar, until we reached Sabha Bangalore.

Sabha—a temple of ideas reborn in the bones of a 160-year-old school, CVS Sabha. A place for meeting minds, for celebration, for reckoning. The air there was different—quieter, more expectant. We had arrived for a performance by Nupur Azaadi, titled Where You From.

A question I have forever wrestled with.

I am driftwood, I thought. Born of glacier melt, shaped by rapids, made wide and still and loving by the plains. Always moving. Never the same.

We entered a vaulted hall—its architecture breathing stories of old. At the center, a triangular sheet, an inverted wine glass. The setting already whispered myth.

On the backdrop, artwork flowed—lines, shapes, provocations. I sat still, the weight of the earlier performance still singing softly inside my body. I was full, and yet open.

Nupur arrived—alive, glowing, in a vibrant shirt and black tights. And she began not with a poem, but with a question. A story. A quirk of Pythagoras. Beans. Cults. Death over defiance of beliefs.

And then, she unfolded.

Her show was a poetic theatre—a journey through time, memory, identity. She wove her story through verses, each piece a key unlocking some part of herself, and by extension, some part of us.

She was from her mother. And her mother’s mother. From home, and from longing. From solitude. From rebellion. From everything and nothing.

She spoke of fathers who raised daughters to be anything—but forgot to tell the world to let them. Of falling in love and leaving at airports. Of heartbreak and rebirth. Of solitude and the witch that lives inside every woman until the world tries to tame her. Each poem a lifeline thrown across the audience.

For 65 minutes, she became a time traveler. A magician. A mirror. And we sat there, witnessing, absorbing, breathing alongside her.

By the end, I could do nothing but hold her—grateful, wordless.

We left quietly, back into the night, into the Metro, back to the world. But something had shifted.

Something had returned.

Something now refused to go back into hiding.