DIFFERENT REGISTERS
Questioning the walls within and without
By C.S. Lakshmi
WOMEN in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), an organisation set up by the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has in the past taken up many projects and brought out Perspective Papers. A special project it took up sometime back proposed to explore the ways in which the lives and voices of women in Tihar Jail in Delhi can be framed in order to become accessible to a wider public. "Beyond Silences: Docu-Theatre in Jail and Outside" by Smita Bharti is an interesting outcome of this special project. The small monograph explains how Smita used a range of media, like theatre workshops, role-plays, games and exercises, visual art, oral narratives and diary writing, to do this exploration. The foreword explains the purpose of WISCOMP in taking up such projects. Since human agency is inextricably linked to issues of human security, safety, conflict and peace, there is a need for many different creative dimensions and non-violent interventions for a fuller and better understanding of human rights and freedoms. WISCOMP believes that when ordinary citizens question both the walls they have internalised and the concrete walls that limit their freedoms and assert their rights to choose, there is hope that as a society we will choose peace rather than violence, and transformation rather than the unceasing intensification of conflicts.
An intense experience
Smita's monograph explains in three parts how this process of questioning the walls within and without became an intense personal experience for her and for others whom she involved in the various projects that emerged during the course of it. The first part talks about the various workshops she had with students and several groups of women including women in Tihar jail. The second part details the attempts at docu-theatre that she made along with other women based on concepts and personal experiences. The third part is an account of the play that got scripted and performed based on the interaction between a group of students and the women inmates of Tihar jail. The three parts are also a chronological description of how Smita and others involved made this journey to docu-theatre and returned, not exactly unscathed or unhurt, but also enriched and transformed. The journey scars them all for life but it also brings down some walls of their own creation.
The workshops that Smita conducted with inmates in Tihar jail and college students, based on stories of well-known authors, are interesting and innovative. Smita seems to have designed these workshops with very many doubts and with a sense of groping. It is this acceptance of doubts on her part that makes us overlook some of the flaws in the process of these workshops. These are not flawless workshops conducted by someone who is totally self-assured, confident and absolutely sure of what she is doing. The Smita who conducts the workshops, is also the Smita who wants to be reassured and cajoled into further explorations. Smita is frank and upfront about the doubts that invaded her throughout the process.
The workshops she conducts within the Tihar jail with women inmates are role-playing workshops evolving from a story that she shares with them. Within the confines of a classroom the stories become matter for pedagogic discussion, comments and responses. There is also a workshop with women from various backgrounds who had suffered terrible domestic violence. This workshop is built around their own stories of violence.
The story as a device
Smita says that she used story telling as a device to enable the participants to talk about the things they cannot or do not talk about otherwise. And the workshops within Tihar jail and outside elicit totally different responses. The Tihar inmates tended to rebel against the structures of oppression in their various role-playing and they expressed anger and read their own meanings into the stories and transformed the stories. The workshops with students moved more towards self-analysis and self-reflection.
It is the workshop with the women who had suffered domestic violence that disturbed me somewhat, for, I don't think someone untrained in psychology, even in the name of a workshop to help women deal with what has transpired in their lives, can conduct such workshops, which unleash emotions which one cannot deal with once the workshop is over. Even one's own personal suffering does not qualify one to deal with others' suffering in such a workshop format. In the workshop Smita literally becomes the punching bag they spar with and pummel. It is wonderful that she lets them take it out on her. But while one gets to know their stories and they have the relief of getting them out of their systems, the relief they feel would be temporary and since the person who conducts the workshop will not be there to counsel them at every point of their breakdown, such workshops may have totally opposite effects and consequences from what their original humane intentions are.
A trauma
The various plays Smita scripts on the themes of security and violence leave her feeling dissatisfied about the concept of docu-theatre itself. The final play that the students and the inmates of Tihar jail script and perform works out like an outpouring. For the students themselves, many walls of doubt, self-deception and illusions about people other than them collapse. And the inmates also experience a sense of participation in an activity not part of their confines. But after the performance, a successful, flawless one, the students and the teachers go out to have a celebratory lunch and the inmates return to their prisons. Not that Smita is insensitive to this happening. It is a trauma that she, as an artist, also experiences and gives voice to. It takes the form of a play called "Jail Birds" based on the experiences of a mother who murders her abusive husband and a daughter who reaches her mother through her mother's poetry. The play is a combination of docu-theatre and the proscenium.
One gets the feeling at the end of the book that going through all these phases of experiment, exploration, questioning, scripting and acting have led Smita to that point of realisation that she, like many others, is a survivor. A survivor who is constantly being transformed by others and herself.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women).
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