Can I get you anything?
If you or yours are near Willliamsburg, VA or Houston, TX, my friend, colleague and mentor Vijay Padaki is coming to the US again in October! He’ll be performing on 2 October (International Day of Non-Violence) at 3:30pm at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, and 11 October at 3:00pm at the Eternal Gandhi Museum Houston, excerpts from his play The Prophet and the Poet, based on the letters between Gandhi and Tagore. Both of these public presentations are free and open to the public.
For my friends in Delhi, my old friend and colleague, the amazing, highly accomplished, internationally renowned playwright Vijay Padaki will be speaking on 11 July on Writing in English for the Indian Stage. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed by his lifetime of words and wisdom.
On August 9th, 2024, a post-graduate trainee doctor (India’s term for a medical resident or fellow) was found dead, semi-nude, in a seminar room of Kolkata’s state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The medical examination revealed the victim was sexually assaulted and murdered. No FIR (First Information Report, a police complaint) was filed for 14 hours.
Since that time, protests have raged in cities across India to change the country’s culture, doctors have gone on strike (except for medical emergencies) to demand better hospital security, a civilian volunteer has been arrested and charged with the crime, and the head of the hospital and a police officer have been arrested over accusations of negligence and tampering with evidence. Here is a timeline of these events.
I am so heartened to see so many people across India and in Indian communities around the world, including in the US and Canada, making their voices heard in a global demand for change. I felt condescending to “weigh in” in the immediate aftermath as though anyone cares what I think as an American man, but I have been watching the events unfold with deep interest, and I’m buoyed that so many across the globe aren’t reading this gruesome story in the paper, then shrugging it off and clicking past it to check their daily horoscope.
Here is an excellent piece written by my Kolkata colleague, filmmaker and journalist Debarati Gupta, about a group of Kolkata theatre artists’ recent response to the tragedy.
This horrific, infuriating societal curse and the unspeakable crimes it yields aren’t unique to India. Something similar is going on in France where protests have raged in 30 cities after a husband paid men to sexually assault his wife repeatedly over the course of a decade.
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In Kenya, Ugandan Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei was burned to death by her boyfriend, the latest in a string of similar cases there.
What can you do? After standing speechless, aghast and powerless at first, one thing you can do is take a lead from these inspiring ordinary citizens around the world and, at the very least, talk about it to those around you. Make your feelings known to your family, friends and colleagues.
Awesome. Philly area Bengali theatre ensemble Kushilob, known for often writing collaboratively and exploring diverse theatre forms, is hosting Drexel’s first Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Abhijit Chowdhury who will be teaching a workshop on playwriting for actors this weekend. For more info, contact Kushilob directly via their facebook page.
Read my recap, “The Universal Language of Cinema“, in Drexel Westphal’s latest newsletter.
LOVE this article from WHYY Philadelphia about the New Freedom Theatre’s play Forgotten Founding Fathers, a rap and hip-hop performance about the US’ unsung Black heroes, and the recent meeting between the great-grandsons of Frederick Douglass and John Brown organized by the theatre. I was amazed to learn that when Brown was famously hanged for treason he was wearing a pocket watch Douglass had given him. Brown’s great-grandson recently returned the heirloom to Douglass’ great-grandson.
Douglass refused to finance or participate in John Brown’s raid, which was intended to spark an armed slave revolution, but later celebrated Brown as a martyr and said Brown’s attack had been a “thunder clap” to awaken Americans to the fact that the time for compromises was gone, and that it was time to take up arms (meaning join the Union army) to end slavery. Henry David Thoreau was also an ardent defender of John Brown.
One thing not mentioned in the article, and I daresay I’m the first to make the direct connection through my own archival research in India, is that Brown and Douglass and people whom they inspired would, decades later, serve as direct inspirations to armed Indian revolutionaries fighting the British Raj in Calcutta starting in 1908.
If you want a glimpse of that history and the John Brown connection, it’s in my critical commentary in the latest issue of peer-reviewed academic journal Democratic Communiqué. Download the PDF of my article at https://doi.org/10.7275/9w1h-k362 .
It’s only one slice of a much larger story I’ve written. I’m not condoning or condemning revolutionary violence. We all have our positions on that, usually on a case-by-case basis, and that’s okay. I’m eager to shine a light on this history. More to come.
PS – there are a couple of minor errors in the WHYY article; it’s Crispus Attucks, not Crispin, and Brown was executed in 1859, not 1857.