Nine Questions for Nine Women

Sisters,

There are nine days before the opening of this year's Yoni Ki Baat. We present nine women from throughout our communities, speaking out against violence, speaking up for the voiceless, speaking up for themselves.

In this, our 5th year performance, we will tackle topics of sex and sexuality, gender and race. Infanticide and other violent acts against women's gender, sex and sexual beings.

While heartfelt and emotional, many bring voices of humor both ironic and blatant.

Follow us here on our blog, on Facebook or on Twitter (NWYoniSpeaks) as we post nine questions over the next nine days to our performers and to you out in the community. We encourage all women, South Asian or not, to respond to the questions. Think of these as writing prompts, of dialogues before the monologues.

Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets.

See you at the show,

Anjulie Ganti, Director

Marriage

Is your family or community desperate to marry you off?

My family and community are both STRONGLY encouraging me to get married! Their worries are two fold. First, if I wait too long I will have become too old and then finding a match will become even harder. Secondly, the longer I wait the more likely I will find someone who is not in my community. In turn they fear I will stop attending functions and stop being an active member of the community. The worst part of it all is that sometimes I feel like a carry a burden of saving my family’s honor. You see, my sister married outside of the community and since that day I feel like I am my parents last hope of restoring their reputation. It sounds like a Bollywood drama, but it is not. It is a reality that many of us still face.

I cannot just place the blame on everyone else. Since I was a little girl I always looked forward to the day when I would have my own husband and kids. This is a dream that I actually look forward to and anxiously await. I guess it’s a combination of the cultural influence and what I want for myself that makes me think this way…but really, doesn’t everybody wonder who there life partner will be sometime or another? Now that I am at that age I am starting to get nervous. Why has that not happened for me? When will it happen for me? I see all my friends beginning to settle down and I sometimes feel like I am still at square one, alone.

So as much as I wish I could say that it was only my family and community who desperately want to see me married off I cannot because it would be a lie. Their desperation only reinforces my own.

--Anonymous