On September 3, a full house at Kala Mandir screamed the word “vagina” several times. More times, perhaps, than they had said the word in public in their lifetime. The taboo exists across countries and communities. In fact, Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, admits in a foreword to the book that she hails from “the ‘down there’ generation”. So do most of us. Still.

The Vagina Monologues, as the name suggests, is a series of monologues by different female voices dealing with themes of abuse, mutilation, menstruation, masturbation and sometimes simply self-awareness. It was originally written as a play and debuted in 1996 in New York. It has since been performed in 140 countries and been translated into 48 languages.

Poor-Box Productions, which brought The Vagina Monologues to India in 2003, was back in Calcutta, this time hosted by Round Table India, an organisation working towards educating underprivileged children.

“The play has a parallel life as well. We’ve staged 11 performances for women in the slums of Mumbai. They are, in essence, most vulnerable to violence since religion, poverty and caste affect them the most. We guide them on how to handle the violence they may have experienced,” said production co-director Kaizaad Mody-Kotwal on the phone to t2.

In Calcutta, his mother and co-director Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal and cast members Dilnaz Irani, Dolly Thakore and Swati Das talked about vaginas in various contexts. Public orgasms, the necessity of hair, sexual gratification… the handling of themes that generally make people cringe won them a standing ovation. For women, it was catharsis. For men, perhaps, an education.

MY VAGINA MONOLOGUE: I read The Vagina Monologues when I was in school, surreptitiously under the covers at night; it was just the kind of book my mother would confiscate. I was borrowing it from a friend who’d had the audacity to actually buy the book from a store. We’d both been fascinated by the V-word (that’s what we called it for the longest time) flashing on the cover. The book left an indelible mark on me... no wonder I found myself haring to the show at Kala Mandir. I’ve never seen words come to life as vibrantly as The Vagina Monologues did. If I’d been told a decade ago that Calcuttans would chant the word “vagina” in an unabashed chorus, I would have scoffed at the idea. But they did, and they watched, fascinated as four women of varying ages told them in no uncertain terms what it means to have a vagina and how it should be treated. No one walked out, no one stormed about outraged sensibilities. Possibly because every monologue struck an uncomfortable chord of truth, even though the audience was nearly always in splits. Yes, the women were outrageous and hilarious and absolutely totally OTT... but there’s nothing like hyperbole to drive home some points.... No one has ever made a statement by being understated, right? Some of the monologues were adapted from quintessentially American voices to Indian voices, which made one sit up, because, of course, Indian women publicly talking about their vaginas is a milestone by itself. And they were entirely different voices too, covering the entire spectrum of sexual inhibitions or the lack thereof, across age groups. It would have been difficult to find an individual unaltered by the dramatic presentation of this particular literary work.

— a 27-year-old t2 girl