I like the way it is discomforting for some: Zoya

DNA grills Zoya Akhtar on the eve of her stage debut with The Vagina Monologues.

Mahabanoo: Hey Zoya, it’s so good to have somebody like you join the V-day movement…

Zoya: What do you mean, a person like me?

Mahabanoo: Well, you are very busy with your own projects. Yet you have still taken time out to join the V-Day movement and lend your weight behind these causes. Farhan too…

Zoya: Let me tell you, I find The Vagina Monologues an incredibly interesting concept. It takes the word vagina and then puts forward its many connotations and then puts it into the medium of theatre and then talks about the state of women through the medium. I heard about it long before it came to India and when I heard that it was to be staged here, I was very excited about it and came to see the 2004 launch when the cast included Jane Fonda, Marisa Tomei, Jaideep Bhatia, you and Dolly Thakore…I like the way it comforts some people and also how it is discomforting for some. You cannot not react to it. It talks about so many things in a very feminine and yet a very entertaining way….

Mahabanoo: Do you think that the concept of abuse is that rampant as it is made out to be?

Zoya: See, it’s a tricky one. It will be very wrong to say that everybody gets abused. If you are talking about physical abuse as a minor…it happens…when you don’t know what’s happening. It’s that vulnerable age…at the same time when we talk about verbal abuse, I know enough women who have abused the hell out of their husbands…You know what I mean? It’s depends on situation to situation, I would not like to generalise it.

Mahabanoo: Say, you are walking on the road and someone deliberately brushes past you…

Zoya: I don’t think abuse happens that way. I also agree with you that nobody has the right to touch us, without out permission. But at the same time I can’t turn around and say that all women are abused. I haven’t been abused. I don’t agree.

Mahabanoo: You are making a debut on the stage….

Zoya: I have been on stage when I was in school. And now, I will be returning to the stage. As you know, Farhan and I will be reciting a poem together. It will be on the status of women…a girl being born and a boy being born and them going through their lives….

Mahabanoo: You are such an amazing script writer, would you mind penning a play for us?

Zoya: Why not? Definitely! I would like to do that, let’s see when…
—Coordinated by Soumyadipta Banerjee