If My Body Could Speak

If My Body Could Speak - A Report

IF MY BODY COULD SPEAK

Students of

Radical Poetry of Protest and Resistance

Organizing Members:
Saumya Mittal
Vedika Kaushal
Karan Luthra
Dyuti Gupta
Nathanael Ayeh
Yashaswini Trivedi
Mamta Sharma
Vimmi Verma
Mahasweta Gogoi

PROCESS OF ORGANISING THE EVENT

When the three groups, having three very different ideas for the event, were merged, there was undoubtedly a clash of opinions. To amalgamate the proposals and brainstorm over ways to combine the ideas of all nine people, certainly took some time, but yielded a fruitful result nonetheless. Wanting to work on the intricacies of the performing body through dance, spoken word and theatrical performances, we unanimously decided to keep the name of the event as 'If my body could speak'. We also wanted to bring groups who could perform puppet shows, but due to tight schedules and monetary limit, we had to decide otherwise.

Sabika Abbas Naqvi and Ananya Chatterjee, two protest poet performers were always amongst the people we wanted to call for this event and thus, we started contacting them, one by one. Meanwhile we also started researching on other prospective guests we could call for the event, especially people who have been working in this particular area for some time and could impart us with more knowledge in this field. We decided to try and ask Maya Krishna Rao, the recipient of the Sangeet Natak Academy Award (2009), to honor our event with her presence. A few small things went awry here and there in this process of contacting the guests, as happens with all organizing processes, but together as a group, we finally managed to confirm Maya Rao and Sabika Naqvi for the event. Sadly, Ananya Chatterjee had some prior commitments and therefore could not commit to our event. Post these confirmations, we started to think about ways in which we could arrange the schedule of our event. Because we wanted a thorough discussion session apart from the performances, where the audience could interact and understand the theme in a more conversational, informal way, we decided to have a panel discussion with our guests, after having a bunch of curated performances.

There were many students willing to give various forms of performances, ranging from poetry dramatization, singing songs of resistance and protest, dance performance on verses and so on. We also wanted to call Mandeep Sir (Mandeep Raikhy) and/or Akhil Sir (Akhil Katiyal) to moderate the panel discussion, for both of them are considerably famous names in the field of performing arts (dance and performance poetry), sbut unfortunately for us, neither of them were available on the day we decided to have our event. Through constant help and support from our course coordinator, Kopal ma'am, and our classmates, we got in touch with Neel Sengupta, a gender social activist and an AUD alumni, who accepted our request to moderate the panel.

The next hurdle we had to overcome was getting audience for an event scheduled on the afternoon of the day just before Holi. Through intense promotion in the campus and on social media, we successfully managed to get a room full of enthusiastic people on the final day. The making and printing of different posters and certificates, coordinating with different performers and guests, as well as maintaining the logistics (monetary, IT, admin, etc.) proved to be a challenging task, but with the hard work and dedication of the group members, we sailed through. There were hurdles, disappointments, severe pressure and minor arguments throughout the organizing process, nevertheless the event turned out to be a huge success, with the audience appreciating every aspect of it.

***

REPORT ON SOLO PERFORMANCES

The event started sharp at 1.30 pm on 20^th March, right after the guests, performers and audience seated themselves. As the organizing members focused on analyzing the performances and discussions as they unfolded, the report below follows the pattern where each group member studies, interprets and writes on a handful of acts, so as to do justice to every aspect of the event.

Of the first two performances, Yashaswini Trivedi notes:

The first performance was a poetry dramatization by a student of AUD, Heidi Faye Pereira. She grew up as an obese and an overweight child and was bullied as a teenager. Through her self-composed poem, she decided to stand up and take charge of her life rather than being bullied and ashamed of her own body. Her body movements, synchronized with her poetry questioned the preconceived ideas and parameters of beauty and with her powerful performance she made an attempt to break through and challenge such obsolete notions which have been conditioned and generalized in the society. Her trauma as a teenager resulted in an internal protest which gave her a voice. This consequently stemmed the acceptance of her own body and the beginning of self-love. Her protest through her body and the influential ideas of her poetry dismissed the built notions of body and her voice made it clear that being a plus size isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s as liberating as it can get and is an expression of her freedom, celebrating her individuality. Her poetry instilled the power and confidence of taking pride in one’s own identity and image and find a voice if suppressed or bullied under any conditions. The panelist and speaker, Maya Rao suggested her a couple of performative exercises to let loose and break free which added to her voice and protest through body.

Next up was Saumya Mittal, a student of M.A English, AUD and a fellow organizing member of the event, who performed a dance drama on the poetry of Harivansh Rai Bachchan- “Kaash koi dharam na hota” followed by a Sufi song “Piya Samaye”. Through her bodily gestures and actions she attempted to protest against the constructed ideas of religion, caste, creed, color and race in the society. Her protest resonates in the contemporary times when there are political parties involved in creating divide and disharmony amongst the people belonging to different religious groups. With the help of powerful lyrics of Bachchan’s poetry emphasizing on a world with humanity as its religion and her dance protest, she highlighted the need to be humanly and established an idea of terminating all these social constructs and looking beyond hierarchical structures. Her movements protested for the removal of religious symbols that create disunion and proposed to form a world which is free in its absolute sense. The performance suggested a utopian world where people connect and feel on the basic human levels and look beyond the lens of religion. The Sufi song presented an enactment of the festival of Holi, celebrated in its true essence with a hope to make this world a better place where humans peacefully co-exist in harmony with love, concord and brotherhood.

Of the next two monoacts Mamta Sharma writes:

While resisting and standing against oppression, the individual’s voice becomes significant. Two of the performances of our event captured the burden an individual goes through being oppressed. Remarkably, the desperation to be ‘recognized’ was the essence of both the performances by Sahil and Kartik. However the backdrop of the monoacts was entirely distinct. Where Sahil’s persona of the monoact was of a transgender, Kartik’s persona was struggling with his own ‘other self’ or to say the alter ego. It is noteworthy that the former persona condemning the societal hostility towards him/her demands to be recognized as a living entity who also has his/her ‘dreams’ to fulfil. And the latter one’s vigorous tussle with his own torn and pessimistic self implies the lack of motivation one feels amidst the rapidly advancing society. Surprisingly also we can observe an unintended link between the two monoacts. The first monoact ended while pouring out the angst making it ambiguous whether the protesting persona will achieve the end through his/her protest or not. The second act however implicitly hints at the will power he needs in order to make room for himself in society. This is why he says, “No one can lead you, you will have to lead yourself.”

Post these heavy performances, a small, melodious song was put in, sung by one of the group members himself, to sway the audience into a mood of poetic dissent against all forms of oppressions. It also provided a delightful means to approach towards the relatively heavier part of the event. Of this performance, Karan Luthra writes:

I was honored to perform a song called “Ori Chirayia” for this event. The idea behind singing this song was to show the struggle of all women who are constantly being dominated by the patriarchal society. In our country women are not permitted to do a lot of things and they are just forced to one-dimentionally serve their families and husbands. This song talks about how the woman suffers and how our patriarchal society treats her as an object, while constantly vilifying and denigrating her through its masculine gaze. I, as a privileged male, have personally witnessed this in our day to day life that whenever a baby boy takes birth, many hijras usually come to the house of that new born baby and they dance, celebrate because of that new life which has just come to this world but on the other hand, whenever a baby girl born nobody comes- nobody celebrates. So the basic idea behind singing this song was to showcase the hypocritical ideology of our misogynistic society. Even today, in certain parts of our country the girl child is killed by family members when she is inside womb of her mother. Although this performance was supposed to be a bit light hearted, a break from all the serious acts on ideas of freedom by breaking the chains and moving away from the darkness, it simultaneously was also suggestive of all atrocities committed on women as children and adults alike.

With the song, the first part of the event ended. Following the culmination of student performances, the first guest for the day- poetess Sabika Abbas Naqvi took to stage to give the audience a glimpse of the world of resistance and protest, as experienced by her outside the four walls of the safe-space of a college. Of her performances, Dyuti Gupta notes:

The first poem, a seven minute long piece called Meri Sari, weaved a narrative of the entire nation through the cloth. Sari has been the quintessential Indian dress since ages and the poem struck a chord amongst everybody sitting in the audience. Usage of Hindi as a language medium added to the poem's appeal- it enlarged and contextualised the metaphors used by the poetess. Some examples of the same would be how the idols of Savitri and Laxmi were evoked (both being the progenitors of the traditional Indian naari) and the reference made to Bastar (the historical significance of the same being quite fresh in the minds of Indian citizens). Very interestingly, the sari which has been always seen as the symbol of culture and heritage in India, seemed to play the role of protagonist in the poem, transforming itself into the Indian woman. And through this captivating personification, the audience embarked on a journey to view the world through eyes of the female [Sari]. Sabika tells us that while the personified sari loves to be associated with historical conventions, it also holds potential for disrupting male dominion- the poetess takes the example of Draupadi in this case, alluding to the unclothing of the princess by Kaurava brothers, an act that lead to the great war of Kurukshetra. Thus the entire poem defamiliarizes this simple piece of clothing for the audience, their incessant snapping heard at almost every line of the poem.

The second poem was a four minute long piece on freedom as presently perceived in the country, a theme that instantly caught the attention of the people in the room. The poetess chanted the famous azaadi slogans of JNU, contextualizing her poem on the Ramjas issue of 2017, where a seminar organized on dissent saw the huge surge of right-wing violence on college students. Sabika Naqvi points directly at the heart of the debate on anti-nationalism through this poem. She points out the irony of India's right-wing politics which chants Bharat Mata, sexist slangs and rape threats all in the same breath. The poem showcases the plight of student based politics at present and how it is constantly being targeted by the fascist powers trying to take over the country. But just as the last poem warns that the sari would now be used to choke the life out of dictators, this poem too, looks up to a positive rebellion. It uses slogans from student marches to sway the audience, to in-turn prove the power of rhymes and naaras. The poetess uses a sing-along voice, along with hand gestures and foot tapping, that manages to articulate into her body language the words her poem speak (“bol ke, gaa ke, naach ke lenge azaadi”). The audience's laugh and snaps could be heard through the entire performance of this witty poem. The other panelists could be seen smiling through Sabika’s performance, and for these 10-12 minutes, the gathering entered into a process of resisting through the art form of poetry.

***

REPORT ON PANEL DISCUSSION

Moving on, of the next sub-event Nathanael Ayeh writes:

The final program of the event, If My Body Could Speak, comprised of a panel discussion which engaged with various issues that people deal with in terms of expression and freedom when it comes to the internal and external manifestations in the physical realm. This was not only about moving one’s self but was also about moving, dancing and voicing out protests against aspects of our society and legislation that aims at silencing our very own freedom of speech and expression.

The panel discussion included our guest speakers, Maya Krishna Rao and Sabika Abbas Naqvi, whose commentary on the event was moderated by Neel Sengupta. The discussion was a major learning experience for both the audience as well as the organizing party as topics such as the purpose of movement art forms, the relationship shared by poetry and dance, the medium of conveying poetry through dance and the context of reaction and action within the movement artforms, with relation to poetry, were some of the highlights of the panel discussion.

The introductory part of the panel discussion was a reaction phase based on the previous performances of the event, which were a mix of dance, song and poetry. From an individual perspective, it felt as though we, as an audience, were being led into the theatrical mechanics of the aforementioned art forms. A large section of the discussion was led by Maya Krishna Rao which was followed by Sabika Abbas Naqvi and Neel Sengupta with further analysis and revelation on the poetic devices available to artists before, during and after a specific performance. Maya Rao began the discussion by engaging with the panel and the audience about the basics of conceptualizing performances. “A very basic thing about performance that would be good for us writers is that the moment we say ‘performance’, don’t think about your body. Think about space.”

An artist is able to own the space once he/she is able to manipulate it and navigate it according to the narrative of his/her performance. This was a key concept in the basics of performative arts that Maya Rao discussed during the panel discussion. In the beginning, the narrative of the performances of the event seemed to be located at the core of the panel discussion, where the body was viewed not as a singularity but as a malleable element that could transcend both space and time. A particular comment from Maya Rao on the poetry performance of Heidi Faye Pereira exemplified this very multi-existential aspect of the body form. Rao explained that Pereira was dealing with two forms of her body during the performance; the body of the past and the body of the present. Depending on the narrative of the poetry and performance associated with it, the body of the past and the body of the present were fluid and dynamic in terms of position and time.

As for more universal elements, Sabika Abbas Naqvi raised awareness on the questions surrounding the making of poetry. Who are writing for? Who or what are we addressing? What experiences are we talking about? these were some of the questions brought out during the panel discussion which led to the panel addressing why it is that we perform poetry or even think about writing poetry for that matter. It was not only a theoretical question of performance but also a spiritual one that interacted with the physical world that we live in.

Carrying the reportage further, Vedika Kaushal notes:

To an event dedicated towards practising and experiencing performance and poetry together, panellists Maya Krishan Rao and Sabika Abbas Naqvi brought an exhilarating vigour with their own unique understanding of performing poetry in different spaces to the audience, as they talked about adapting our bodies in accordance with different spaces and situations as well as allowing it to navigate in them. Maya Rao recalled one such event that she had been a part of quite recently – ‘Artists Unite’ at Lal Quila (Red Fort, Delhi), where she was required to not only navigate the spatial realms of performance but also to travel across the past, present and the future of the location where she performed. Her performance called upon an investigation into the historical significance and presence of the Red Fort, as well as its current position in a democracy that is being constantly challenged. “Put yourself in tension”, she said as she repeatedly urged the audience to challenge the stereotypes and use their bodies, their creativity to break free from the chains of exploitations.

Further into the event, Sabika shared her experiences regarding teaching young children in schools and creating a creative curriculum for them that is wholesome and incorporates various aspects of poetry, performance and education in it. She stressed on the fact that it isn’t necessary for children to understand the world outside through heavy words like ‘democracy’, ‘sedition’ etc, but in their own classroom, they can interact and participate in certain exercises that will help shape their experiences and a wholesome understanding of the world around them. Maya Rao said something similar, as she talkeds about the curriculum she created for one of her drama classes, for people of any age group to practise. She shared her beliefs of how drama employs all our sensory conscience and faculties and allows us to learn and grow in a way that is not possible elsewhere. She went into detail about a certain activity she created for her students, which involved employing our imagination, our senses as well as the skills of reading and writing in a setting that allowed multiple interpretations to flow and take form. One of her arguments suggested that unless we employ all of our sensory faculties towards the process of creating a narrative, our performances cannot be fully actualised into their potential.

One of the most important elements of the discussion remained the distinction that exists in writing for an indoor setting and writing for an outdoor setting, as well as the process of preparing for either. Sabika related some of her experiences of writing for different segments of an audience and her experiences in performing in a multitude of different spaces, where she found that each spatial scenario brings with it, its own set of challenges. Performing for an audience inside a park is much less daunting and challenging than performing on a street, in front of thousands of people who are constantly moving in and out of the audience. There were technical arrangements to be made in such settings, as well as the question of limiting yourself to think what one can and cannot say in front of a public that may or may not welcome certain opinions. Performing in ‘mushairas’ had been another challenge in its own sense, since traditional poetry events do not allow and accept free verse with as much enthusiasm. On a similar note, Maya Rao delved into certain technicalities about her creative process, the music that inspires her (moves her), and working with collaborators in certain performances. Giving a detailed account of her experiences as a classical dancer, and how it has been incorporated in her personality as a theatre artist, she intrigued the audience with her anecdotes about establishing rhythm and tension in a performance through one’s body.

Of the final segment of the discussion, Vimmi Verma writes:

During the panel discussion, Sabika Abbas Naqvi referred to the performance of Ananya, who is a Bharatanatyam dancer, about which she remarked that she had never seen Bharatanatyam. So, for her, Ananya Chatterjee is a star understanding different forms of rasa, which were present in Bharatanatyam. Sabika discussed the location of that rasa in a specific poem written by her and elaborated on the process for Ananya to recognize, as a Bharatanatyam dancer, how it translates into performance. Sabika Abbas Naqvi and Ananya had spent six days performing on a street and then they both decided to do all the rasa ranging from movement to anger and everything in one, which also included a demonstration. They were both quite familiar with each other’s skills and work in a particular art form, which resulted in a very new, exciting and language-oriented experience while performing the art form.

For a performer, who may not have worked with the poetic language that Sabika Abbas Naqvi expresses, there is a question of how to navigate their space so that it comes together and binds with each other. Even though it is separate at its core, it doesn’t appear to be separate and different because we still have the same agenda of performance that was decided initially. So that experience itself turned out to be a very rigorous exercise. Sabika Abbas Naqvi expresses that she did not understand certain aspects of Bharatanatyam to arrive at the performance aspect of it. Similarly, Ananya had to learn and understand certain meanings that Sabika used while performing with another person, which was also a major learning experience. Sabika Abbas Naqvi stated that she is still eager and wants to collaborate with another person like Ananya.

Later on, there was an open house discussion about the theme of our event, that is, “body politics” where few students raised their questions about how marriage can objectify body politics. Maya Krishna Rao explained that, firstly, she, as a performer, doesn’t like the word “illustration”. It’s a word that she had thrown out long ago. The word that she prefers was stated to be “trigger” and she questioned the position where her own body became a trigger for the proxy body that she projected or formed. So, Maya Rao suggested that it could be an exercise for Heidi Faye Pereira (one of the performers at the event) to begin looking at a poem with a different set of violence if she located her own body at the centre, which would ultimately lead to a broader performance. Maya Krishna Rao later commented that, currently, many poets want to perform only with their voice. There are allegedly not many poets performing in their body and they need gesture. She exemplified this by saying that love for her father and any other expression may as well be equivalent without the addition of gesture and expression through physical aspects.

Maya Rao continued to discuss about how one can relive their own poems from an internalised view in different ways. Her performance on her poems is executed in a way that we (audience) were both listening to her poem and finding our own path way to her poem. In spite of the fact that she was speaking as such, parts of the discussion by the speaker was conveyed in an enunciated manner to highlight the aforementioned points to the audience. She advised the audience through the following “Don’t be attracted by words. There are a lot of words put out in social media”. We all know that, unfortunately, children from young age slip into any imaginary world without anybody promoting us. So, it was a very wonderful experience and an engaging session where we came across various aspects of body politics through our panellists and their experiences on the theme of our event. We look forward to certain events through which we may be perform in a certain way. I hope everybody had the same learning experience in our event and also engaged into certain aspects which we wanted to portray through our event.

***

VERBATIM OF PERSONAL INTERVIEW

Post the panel discussion, some select group members interviewed one of the panelist, poetess Sabika Naqvi, in order to understand and know more about her first-hand experiences in the domain of writing as well as performing radical poetries of protest and resistance. Given below is the transcribed verbatim by Mahasweta Gogoi and Saumya Mittal, in conversation with Sabika Naqvi.

Interviewer: Why do you distinguish your work from that of Spoken word or Slam poetry?

Sabika: It is very, very rare for me to perform on a Spoken Word stage, I don’t. It’s very recently that there are a few poet friends of mine who thought that I should do it too. When I started writing poetry honestly, I was writing in Lucknow. I had no clue what spoken word or slam poetry was. So when I started writing I had no clue about all of these things. I didn’t know how it fit into Spoken Word or Slam. And not to devalue Spoken Word and Slam, they are amazing because the space has given voice to so many kinds of political conversation and how to narrativise those political conversations. But my poems I think is of a different kind. I write letters, so letters as a form of poetry – that is one thing that is very, very deeply personal. It’s at very few places, there are a few documentary theatre spaces where I perform those letters, but that’s real theatre performance that I do with them. All the other poems –what happens very often is, the people that we are protesting against or the spaces that we are protesting against tend to co-opt and appropriate our conversations. So I might write a lot against brahminical consumerism, but it’s the brahminical consumerist stage that gives me the space to talk. So how do we create that thing? What do I do when Spoken Word organizers say- ‘come and perform on my fancy stage’, which is what usually happens in the geo political, capitalist world we are living in, how do I navigate those lines as a performer? For example, Melbourne is really famous for graffiti, and there’s a lot of protest graffiti that happens. It was an act of protest, an act of resistance, act of reclaiming and subverting public spaces and talking and politicising the public. But now the government has made graffiti legal. Does it still remain a form of protest? I might be giving a lot of poetry performances in a lot of dharnas, but if the government says- I really like your poetry and please come on our stage and perform because we really appreciate artists and we want to make them go forward in life and recognise them and acknowledge them, then what? That is a very big thing. If I am talking against media and Zee News tells me- please come, we want you to have a session with one of our team about poetry- what do we do? How do we navigate that?

Interviewer: It’s interesting actually, if you know about Black Mirror, in season 1, episode 2 of Black Mirror, there is this sort of dystopian world and everybody just lives in different compartments and have their spots and exercises – they exercise and get points for it. One guy wants to protest against what’s been done to a friend of his and he ends up being a part of the system because it’s a much better life than the one he is living in those compartments. He gets to see the outside world, eat whatever he wants etc. A lot of times we too go towards these things, better lives, better jobs etc.

Sabika: Better life, better job is something that in this world we will have to aspire for, especially as women. Now there are a lot of shades. For a person who is coming from a marginalised background, also economically marginalised, then what is your priority? Getting education itself is an act of resistance. Getting a job itself, to be a decision-maker is a protest and resistance in itself. That is why there is a whole critique of a particular kind of Brahminical feminism, this entire onus of resistance on minority women or on Dalit women, how does that function? Because you have the education, I might not, and for me maybe it is the priority to go for a job interview than attend XYZ dharna.

Interviewer: Yes, that’s one thing I always keep thinking about, for some people the things that we want to protest about are not a priority for them. Not even a priority, it’s not even on their minds.

Sabika: For a lot of my fellow Muslims, it wasn’t a priority that curfew should be a part of our agenda. Maybe more seats could be a part of our protest agenda but what about curfew?

Interviewer: It’s very weird to navigate through that kind of thought pattern. How are you actually going to motivate yourself to do this when (most probably) half the world does not even associate with these concerns?

Sabika: But do not devalue what you want also, what is close to my heart I am going to protest about it. Maybe wearing a particular kind of clothing might be a protest. So that is close to my heart, so I am not going to devalue it, but at the same time I am not going to devalue someone else’s struggle, because feminism is not a straight line. It is a spectrum of resistance, specially intersectional feminism, because every sect, every community, every woman, every body that claims itself to be woman or feminine in a way asserts it in a different way and has different prongs of oppression acting on it, like multi-pronged oppression acting on them. Everyone has a different method of resisting and that resistance can be poetry, performance or sometimes even just leaving my house without a dupatta to go and do a job is resistance and sometimes even wearing jeans below my burqa is resistance and sometimes, for that matter, in spaces where you are expected to wear revealing clothes, not wearing them is resistance. So not devaluing someone else’s, another body’s, resistance is something that is very, very essential to the poems that I write.

Interviewer: I think you spoke about the difference between performing out in the open on the street and performing in the class, how out there you don’t know what is going to happen. You might be hit with a stone or a chappal. So I was thinking how that also becomes part of the performance as well as the protest?

Sabika: Yes, yes, absolutely

Interviewer: Could you give us an example if something like this ever happened?

Sabika: Fortunately or unfortunately the drama didn’t happen. I saw this happening more in the virtual space. I think it is easy to attack with a veil on your face when you have the privilege of anonymity. When you have the privilege of anonymity it is easier for you to question what I say, but in the public you cannot. Because even you don’t know how everyone else is going to react to you. So if someone from the crowd gets up and hits me what will other people in the crowd do, how will they react? So that fear is there. I have the fear that how everyone else will react, there is a fear of every person in that group – what if I slap, how will others deal with it? So it is a part of performance but it is not part of all the virtual drama that happens like all the rape threats, all the questions, all that happens in the virtual space.

Sabika’s friend Ananya joins in on the conversation. (Ananya is a Bharatnatyam dancer who often performs with Sabika, adding movements to her verses as Sabika performs her pieces out loud.)

Interviewer: You had earlier during the panel discussion, mentioned about the time when you both were practising for a performance in a place where women don’t generally go out after dark. Could you tell us more about how you deal with the threats in such situations?

Sabika: So we were sitting on top of Bhoomi gate and doing our rehearsals, and someone came up to us and started pestering us, asking us who we were, what we were doing there, why we were doing it there, why we were writing our poems there and more. Before I could say anything, Ananya started off explaining we do this, we do it like this- and they got so interested that we decided to show them what we do. So we started performing and they all came together and watched. Had we approached them any other way say- sat them down and spoken to them instead about the issues that we were going to perform, they would have never responded to us the way they did, to a Bharatnatyam performance and a poetry performance coming together as one.

Now to speak about the threat, it is not as difficult for me (Sabika) to handle such situations than it is for Ananya because the art form she practices has set rituals, so for her to bring it out on the streets is far more difficult than for me to do poetry on the streets. Because you know poetry on the streets is heard of, but Bharatnatyam on the streets not so much.

Interviewer: So you spoke about how if you do not know an issue all that well, you would go back and do your research on it and then only would you speak and write about it. So, often you go on to represent an issue in a way, embody it. How do you navigate through that, given not all the issues would probably be one you too have encountered, given that brings in the question of right to represent?

Sabika: So most of the issues I choose to speak or write about are related to me, because like you said, the questions of Voice-whose voice am I, or am I am legitimate voice comes up, and this question is very important me. So I most often do not talk about issues that I have no connection with until and unless I have academically studied them, or I feel like I have an outsider’s viewpoint on them. Otherwise I try not to talk about them because I don’t think I have the right to.

Interviewer: Sabika if you could also talk to us a little about writing poetry. I often write verses myself too and I, when having written a piece today and attempting to complete it the next day, find myself often feeling different- words come out differently the next day. It is as if I myself feel quite differently about the same topic at hand the next day and perhaps even further differently in the days that follow.

Sabika: This means what you have written at the first go is complete in itself. Do not stress. Poetry is not about stressing and finishing something. Furthermore, it is not necessary that our entire poem has the same intensity or feeling. For instance my nazm, my poem might start by excusing people, followed by maybe a celebratory space and then it might go on to resistance. So it is not required that very part of the poem is written in the same intensity, so own the intensity that comes every time, say the first 5 lines written today may be in a certain intensity and the next that comes tomorrow or day after might be in a different intensity but it is still a part of the poem, it is not separate from the poem, not separate from what you felt before.

Interviewer: I have often heard people say you should have experienced some sort of grief to write poetry, some sort of curiosity to write or to find some answer to a problem, especially when writing protest poetry. I have always found myself questioning that, could you share your thoughts on it.
Sabika: Curiosity I feel that is just one of the means of writing poetry, there are several others. Such ideas of good poetry can be written only when under a state of influence, only on having felt heavy grief, or on having some sort of deep curiosity is super problematic, for I feel poetry can stem from anything- from celebration, loneliness, love, any desire in the world. Resistance poetry too can stem from say love for something, not necessarily always from loss and pain.

Interviewer: Could you also talk to us about the poetry you write for yourself, when something is frustrating you or something you write when a thought occurs in your head but not one written for a performance. How is it different than those that you write to perform? Is there a difference?

Sabika: I generally write only when I have to perform, in the sense that an issue usually goes on in my head, I think about it repeatedly, it festers, but I write it down only when I have to perform it somewhere. My performance develops parallel to my writing of poetry, the two are not separate. So there is performance is every nazm of mine. My writing and performance are not separate. To write and keep it away, I do not have any such poems. Performance gets added on to my work in the very first line of my poems itself. I think along those lines always. Everyone has different ways, this is mine.

Interviewer: So do you think the impact differs, when protest poetry is written and when protest poetry is read out loud? Is it more impactful, does it have a different effect?

Sabika: Yes it is different, but you cannot compare the intensity. It is different because when you seeing someone perform, you are listening to it in someone else’s voice, from the point of view of someone else. But when you are reading it own your own, you are sort of reading it in your own voice. You are left alone with the piece at hand. The idea of the intervention of the audience, the intervention of the reader and the intervention of the bystander comes in here. When one reads, we perform it in our own way inside us, we all read it differently, perceive it differently, but when read out loud, it goes through the performer like a tissue paper; a lot alters and gets added along the way. I feel like my work when written down and read by someone else on paper will not be able to tell the reader the whole thing, as compared to if I read it in my voice, along with my performance.

***

EVENT GALLERY