The Class Part 4

They all assembled on the Monday evening.
"Has there been any progress in your projects", asked Ben
"I have made a few sketches on the text", said Nishita and showed the sketches she had made on the second chapter.
"This depicts the scene of Virginia Woolf going into the library and finding all the books on women written by men and how she makes notes about it and ends up doodling a figure of the man"
"I can see if we can do something with this or I can digitize it and make a poster out of it"
"Yeah, yeah you can do that"
"We can reimburse the money for printing and all that just tell us how much", said Kay.
"My project hasn't really started off. I have spoken to a friend who is divorced but she is not willing to talk. It is difficult to get people talk on this topic", said Ritesh.
"May be you will have to re look at your project then", said Ben
"I will read out something I have written", said Ajay
"The cat!", said Ben
"I was rethinking on the cat"
"Does that mean you have killed the cat? No you can't kill the cat", said Ben and every chuckled.
"No, the cat is very much there but there is also a rat"
"It is called the cat, rat and the woolf", said Ajay and read out excerpts from the story he had written
"I really love what you have written, can you send it to me", said Ben
"Sure, I'll do that"
Now everyone turned to Arpita. "I was thinking we could make that library real and show how little there was about women. Also if we could somehow use the idea of Judith. What if Judith did something unknowingly and it would later inspire Shakespeare to write. Also that Shakespeare wrote whatever he wrote in the constraints that there were no women in theatre, how does that reflect on the current day Shakespearean actor"
" While Virginia Woolf talks about how little there was of women writers, actual at the same time and much before that there were many writers in India. The writer Tarabai Shinde was one of the writers at that time, she was considered to be feminist. She writes a letter to the newspaper editor defending the woman who killed illegitimate son in 1896. As an idea I was thinking, we could find something in our own regional language and read it out to each other, may be I can write a foreword.
The second idea is that if we could do something with, my grandfather had a theater company , may be we could see who were the first women to perform in the theater. Actually men played women. Even now in the folk theater men play women, may be we can explore that. It would be quite complex", said Aditi
"This first idea is easier to work on but the second one is more interesting"
"Also the link to the Nandigram issue.", added Ajay.
"My grand father also had to deal with, he dressed up as a woman in the theater."
"Yeah, research about your great grand father and you becoming an actress. The story is already there. It also links to the clove and Olivia in the Virginia Woolf text", said Ben
"I have got a few pictures of my grandfather dressed up as a woman in his plays", said Aditi
"I have them on my machine. This magazine has photographs and articles of men who used to act as women"
"I find this entire idea of male and female and the coexistence very interesting. I was researching on it and there have been many instances in mythology", said Ajay.
"Even I have a done a little home work, I have made a few edits which we can read out", said Ben
and took out a few papers and passed them around. They were interwoven texts from the room of one's own and the nandigram incident. Each one of them took turns to read out the text paragraph by paragraph. The text flowed back and forth the two narratives, it was super imposition of the two texts. Curiously it made a very interesting piece.
After the text was read out, Ben took out another text. This was a dialogue, each one of them had to read out the text by playing their part. It was a conversation between different right wing leaders and their concept of woman's role.
One said it was her duty to keep the honor of the family, one said she was meant to take care of the kids, one said woman has to compromise in life, another said it is the decadent western values which are causing all the problems.
When the act was done it turned out to be hilarious.
"You actually picked them up from some thing which happened", asked Arpita
"Yes, it was TV show"
"This is very interesting"
"This is the concept of making sense by using the already existing texts"
There was a long pause after this.
"When do we meet next?"
"Lets meet on Wednesday it would be good to meet twice this week", said Ben.
While others nodded in agreement.