At 14, my identity was defined by my family.
I was my parent’s daughter.
My brother’s sister.

At 17, it was defined by anything but family.
My ideas.
My first love.

At 20,
I was defined by my ‘Indian-ness’.
Not American.
Not an immigrant.
I started becoming a theatre person.

At 23, I wanted more.
To change the world.
To think outside the box.
To do something different.
As a theatre person.

At 27, my identity is still in the making.
It’s in being Indian.
In being a woman.
It’s in being part of my family.
My ideas.
It’s somewhere in East Africa.
It’s in love.
In work.
In the theatre.

It is a topic of much debate with people around me, “Should who you are be defined by what you do?” There seems to be this line. This imaginary line that separates our ideas from our emotions. Our passions in work from our loves outside the work space. A line that, for someone like me, is shaky. Non-existent even.

Some tell me that this makes me an ideal candidate for a ‘burn out’. Perhaps they are right.

But I wonder-

When your ideals toward work are the same that you maintain outside of work.
When the discipline, passion and determination in one space only get fueled by the other.
Is there a way to be what you do?

”My life is my message”, said Gandhi, “The means are but ends in the making.” When you believe in concepts that involve ‘idealism’ – a sense of urgency; a desire to contribute what you have toward making the world a slightly better place for your children; a spirit that does not see failure as failure but just as one more experiment that teaches you what not to do; when you believe in ideas; truly believe in them. Believe in them so much so that they are part of who you are. Viscerally.

When you believe so much in something,
When who you are is so tied up in what you do,
What you do begins to redefine who you are.

I’m still learning to find the ‘me’ that does not see everything in terms of theatre and activism. I do it, not just to prevent the burn out. I do it because I’ve started thinking- if what I do can make me who I am, maybe who I am can make what I do. It’s not just a question of semantics. It’s the difference between putting on a kettle of water to boil, and putting already boiling water into a kettle. They both make tea; but the processes involved and what they teach you are distinct. I think that analogy conveys what I mean…. Maybe?!

Being what you do gains another dimension when you are a woman. An Indian woman. You see, we (Indian women) are supposed to ‘finish’ our ambition by the time we settle down with our husbands and get to work on our progeny. An Indian woman is not supposed to be defined by what she does. Her identity is made up by the people she is responsible for. The people she belongs to. Her parents. Her siblings. Her spouse. Her children. They are who she is. The ‘she’ that even in ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ India is the epitome of Indian femininity. Nostalgia fills the air when men and women alike talk about the ‘way things were’. When divorces didn’t happen because women would do anything to save their families- not like girls these days. Us Indian women who don’t subscribe to that notion of Indian womanhood not because we can’t, but because we choose not to.

Us Indian women who love what we do, and have no intention of putting that on the backburner.
We become pariahs.

‘Safe’ in upper middle class/elite India where political correctness prevents the direct critique faced in most other spaces.
We live in a liminal space in which people find it easier to call us ‘American’, blaming our overseas education for our ‘modern’ thoughts. A space in between who we were told we should be, and who we’ve chosen to become. A liminal space that is not solely defined by defiance and anger. But also cynicism, love, hurt and incredible joy.

In darker moments it is a challenge to not get lost in the self-victimization of it all.
(A victim, by popular understanding, is someone who has something happen to them, without their consent.)

In darker moments I realize that women like me can be considered victims.
After all, we did not ‘choose’ to be where we are.
We did not choose to be born into societies that would try to make us into a certain kind of female prototype.
But that’s what happened.

V. I. C. T. I. M.

‘Victim’ is a word that is politically charged and I think it important to clarify that there is no value judgment being imposed here. I do not see being a victim as powerlessness. It is the result of unpredictable events, inherited sets of social conditions, that don’t allow you to choose what happens to you.

I am a victim to the patriarchal culture in which I live.
I didn’t choose to become one.
I just am.

But I believe that I have a choice in how much that victimization haunts my every day existence.
I have always believed that people/ideas only have as much power as you choose to give them. If you truly believe that no one is more powerful than you are – not because you are more powerful, but simply because the concept of power ceases to have the same meaning – then your understanding of being a ‘victim’ shifts. There is a possibility then, just the slightest possibility, of a grim reality actually being an opportunity for a rather fantastic adventure.

There is a sense of naïve idealism in this. Something that self-help books perhaps say a lot more eloquently than I can.
The idea that who you are is entirely malleable.
That it can change at any instant.
That it can be played with.
Savored.
Enjoyed.
Consumed.

Who you are can be what you do, if you decide that that is what makes most sense for you.
Who you are can entirely be defined by your own victimization, if that is what helps you get through the day.
Who you are has no absolutes then.
Just a purely personal quest for something inexplicable.

In this turbulent quest for my own sense of personal and social identity, I have had many moments of darkness. But this turbulence also has contained shards of clarity. Moments where it all seems to come together, where who I am, my identity- in all its insignificance- is so clear to me. With all its shades of gray, there is clarity.

So between the darkness and the light,
I sit.

Drink a good cup of coffee.
Make some theatre.
And wait for the clarity to come again.

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* This article was first published in Awaaz magazine.

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