Dear You, 

As I woke up in the morning, I felt I was done talking to you.
I wanted to wash off our last night together.

Oh God, it was a relief; I walked about doing my daily chores. I cooked, I cleaned, answered my mails and watered my plants. You didn’t infatuate me. You didn’t infatuate me, anymore.

Yes, you were one of the many women wronged, one of the many women used, one of the many women who weren’t credited for what they did. But then, history has a long list of atrocities and injustices.

But shouldn’t I step out of this fiction - this imaginative cocoon I have weaved? Can I keep fantasising about you?

I hold dance now.
Me! Belonging to the class of the privileged and the articulate.
Not the other woman.
Yes, like you, a female performer on stage.
But, not like you, like you.

I fictionalized you to dignify myself.
I fictionalized you in this, this hope to glorify myself. 

But then in the evening, as I scrolled down my facebook feed, I saw this new phenomenon. Women from across the world sharing incidents and stories - saying metoo, metoo, metoo….

And, as I scrolled further, I saw the cases of sexual allegation against Peter Martins, Jan Fabre, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Louise CK, Subodh Gupta, Riyas Komu, Chase Finlay…

And then, then I realised we are not done….
I am not done talking to you.
I am not done writing to you. 

Because, shouldn’t your artistic work also be considered alongside these custodians of culture? Shouldn’t we celebrate how, you, and the many like you, the ‘warriors of beauty’ - pushed boundaries and unpacked sexuality and agency? Shouldn’t we study the contribution and history of courtesans in even say an elective in a performance studies class?

“Preposterous!”, they say, “these women didn’t create any knowledge.” Isn’t it?

Yours faithfully, Me