Rebel with a cause
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Rebel with a cause

Saumya Pandey, a resident of Vijaya Apartments in Indirapuram, is an artist, an activist and a playwright who has always strived to make the society a better place to live in.

Rebel with a cause ​Saumya Pandey with son Ishan and her brother

Saumya Pandey is a fighter. And a rebel. And she does not give two hoots about what people think about that.

She has always been this way. She has never shied away from confronting what she thought was wrong, no matter what it takes.

This resident of Vijaya Apartments in Indirapuram is an artist, an activist and a playwright. And there is one thing that is common to all that she does: Self-expression through work. The spirit of Abhiwyakti infuses all that she does. 

Take her eclectic paintings, for example.

“Nobody likes the art I make,” Pandey says. Most of them are nudes of obscure tantric goddesses such as Chhinnamastaka or Dhumavati.

Chhinnamastaka is one of the Mahavidyas, a group of ten tantric goddesses, and a ferocious aspect of Devi, the Hindu divine mother. She is both a giver and a taker of lives, and usually depicted holding her own severed head and towering over a copulating couple. Dhumavati is considered inauspicious and to be worshipped by bachelors and widows only. Pandey points out that Dhumavati got a bad rap owing to the fact that she swallowed her husband, Shiva, for declining her food. When she finally disgorged Shiva, he rejected her and cursed her to remain a widow all her life.

 

A depiction of Chhinnamastaka by Pandey

 

These paintings celebrate a woman's strength. It is the profound attitude and the strong sense of individuality these goddesses have that Pandey perhaps Saumya relates to. And the fact that both of them are non-conformists.

She draws heavily on diverse and sometimes obscure sources even in her plays.

 

Getting clicked with another strong woman

 

In her play Ek Thi Budhiya Yaga Baba, Kaise Ban Gayi Dayan Dekho, the central character or the anchor, "yaga baba", is sourced from "baba yaga", a fearsome woman with the appearance of a witch, well known in old Slavic folklore.

All her plays involve two things: a social cause and child actors. Plays are a means of bringing about a change in society. It's all about "doing her bit".

Dhol Gawar Shudra Pashu Naari, Taadan Ke Adhikari, To Kya Kare Janta Bechaari deals with themes such as crimes against women, domestic violence and racial discrimination in India.

Kaise Manaye Diwali is about child labour in firecracker factories and how money is wasted by burning firecrackers.

Pandey has also proposed to conduct Ram-Leela from the point of view of the Ramayana's female characters, such as Kaikeyi and Surpanakha. She even has plans to script a play centred on the 10 lesser-known forms of Shakti on the occasion of Dussehra.

 

Speaking her mind, always

 

Pandey feels the root of the problem is the fact that girls brought up in Indian households are almost always brought up to be a picture of docile conformation. She has herself never conformed to that line of thought. She has even trained in taekwondo. “How can a woman ever feel confident about herself if she is brought up to only conform?” Pandey asks. “Things have changed these days, but there are many backward notions about women that persist.”

So how did she turn out to be the rebel she is?

Maybe by growing up with a grandfather who was an atheist and a grandmother who was an orthodox Hindu. No points for guessing who influenced her more. Her father was a painter, theatre artist and musician, and another great influence in her life.

 

Pandey (middle) with her friends

 

Pandey has had her share of problems for being who she is, though.

There was a time when she was prescribed anti-depressants thrice a day. However, always a fighter, the strength in her shone through and she came out of the phase a stronger person. Art proved the perfect therapy she needed.

At present, she takes theatre and personality-development classes for kids.

“Kids are the future,” she says. “If we want a better society, we’ve got to start instilling a strong, liberal belief system in them. And that’s my mission in life — to make society a better place to live in.”

 

 

You can check out her troupe’s performance (themed on British Imperialism in India) at Shipra mall on Independence Day.