Dancing "Tabaah"

Photographer: Rob Fadtke (ZoArt Photography)

Dancing "Tabaah" is hard. It is difficult to put your self in that place. That mental space. To fathom that sense of violation. To try and imagine and relive a fragment of what she must have felt, what any girl who has been through such an experience must feel.

"Tabaah" started with Nirbhaya, and the terrible incident that haunted Delhi in December 2012. The girl who was gang raped with a terrible violence, assaulted and then left to die. She finally succumbed to her injuries thirteen days later. But a lot of us could not forget her, could not get over the extreme horror of the incident.

"Tabaah" is but a weak reflection provoked by that incident. Amit (one of my best friends and dance partner) & I conceptualized "Tabaah" for the Mona Khan Company showcase. It started with a dance-based theatrical creation of a gang rape. I don't believe you can act this, you have to live it. We recreated this in the comfort of a studio. The boys who played the role of the predators are my friends who I am extremely comfortable with. Yet even in this protected environment, in this distant re-imagining, I felt that pain, that helplessness, that rage, that shame. I still feel afraid when they surround me, I feel violated when they touch me. I feel like I am nothing, less than nothing. And then Amit comes in, as my partner who tries to help me deal with it and I hate myself, I hate him, I don't want him to see my like this, I don't want him to touch me but somehow he soothes me. Not just in the story of the piece, he actually does...

Photographer: Rob Fadtke (ZoArt Photography)

We have performed "Tabaah" three times and we are to perform it another three times this March. It is a piece I connect with viscerally because I feel so strongly, so deeply, the horror of rape, the gross violation of a woman's space, her body, her being. And as I feel my heart beat faster on stage and the tears at the edge of my eyes, and rage storming in the center of my being, I can't help but feel that this is nothing, nothing at all... I think of Nirbhaya, I think of the nameless girls who just become a piece of news, and others who don't break the silence, whose stories are not even acknowledged.

As artists, it is our attempt to comment on and engage with society. Our attempt to give voice to those whose voices remain unheard. I know I want to say something, I want to scream it for all to hear, but what I say will never be enough, not nearly enough...