Song of Whisper, a solo performance made by Srabasti Ghosh, speckled the space with silent corners of a woman’s ‘home’ replete with rhythms of the body, sounds of chopping, cutting, washing, cooking, cleaning and so on. It is a thoughtful attempt at sharing vignettes from the mundane where magnanimous battles are fought, lost and won. Srabasti’s piece articulates the negotiations and vacillations that an urban woman navigates in her relationship with her own sense of home and the world. It defies the clear demarcation between intimate and public spaces, unlocking the tunnels through which one flows into the other.

The performance mounted an interesting spatial design by positioning the snippet-acts in different zones, thereby attributing to the space a fluid quality. An intimate amphitheatre gallery, chosen for this show, heightened the power of live installation. The essence of intimacy was built on a thick weave of objects, colours, textures and acts of ‘doing’. The gripping scenography, designed by Sumeru Mukhopadhyay, created a palpable tapestry of intimate thoughts. Each act, characterized by a monotony of continuous doing, unfolded at its own pace without committing to a definitive end. The sound of objects and that of a labouring body appeared to amplify in a quiet and seemingly insulated space. The audience members were included into the world of intimacy through written words, glances or direct interactions. The performance involved an interplay of well-adapted excerpts from Vagina Monologues by Sumita Bithi which, however, hung loose as peripheral elements to the piece. In fact, the few uttered words dimmed in the over-arching spatial design. Instead, if some of these were mounted as written words in space, it could have intensified the tangibility of a woman’s body and desire in relation to everydayness. To conclude, Song of Whisper, poignantly evoked in me a sense of fatigue and fulfilment that has grown out of labour at home or within one’s own body across all these months of confinement.