In her stand-up show Fat, Feminist and Free, Pramada Menon pokes fun at the things society would rather not address — obesity and the freedom of women
What would you do if you were on a train, reading a book and minding your own business, when the stranger sitting across from you suddenly pipes up: “I know what your problem is. My cousin had it too. You need an output of a litre a day.” Delhi-based activist Pramada Menon took this extremely distasteful and insultingly-bequeathed advice about her bodily functions and turned it into a stand-up show. Provocatively-titled Fat, Feminist and Free, she talks about a few things that society inevitably wants to sweep under the carpet.
“I have random people telling me how to lose weight,” says Menon who, at 5’10½”, casually (and frequently) refers to herself as a “large person”.
“I get stared at a lot, and sometimes I overhear things like kis chakki ki aata khati hai?”
During performances I see people flinch and stiffen when I talk about being overweight. Fat denotes everything that society doesn’t want you to be, and nobody wants to talk about it.”
That’s enough for Menon to want to put it out there — along with the two other things that typically make people uncomfortable: A feminist and a free woman. “People hate feminists because they think they’re radical, rabid man-haters,” says Menon. “And a free woman connotes someone with loose morals. But I want to reclaim those words for myself because they’re parts of my identity.” And, preferably, get people talking about them too. Humour is certainly a good way to do that: The more self-deprecatory, the better. Menon’s jokes are all on her, and her show draws from her own experiences (and not always funny ones). The idea of turning them into a routine came to Menon when she realised how friends would crack up when she told them her stories. Some of the encounters were so outrageous, people thought she’d made them up. “The laughter is all directed at myself, not at someone else,” says Menon. “They are stories that happened to me, so they also have validity.”
And they are, in fact, non-threatening enough to make people think about the subjects Menon covers too. Issues about weight and freedom are just a part of it. Menon, who lives and works in Delhi and recently began freelancing with social justice projects, is going to talk about her Malayalee roots, her time spent in Kolkata trying to master
Tagore songs and of course, about the city she now calls home. Previous shows in Delhi and New York were runaway successes. Menon hopes Mumbai will love her too. “I’ve always wondered if there was a way to talk about these issues and also make it funny,” she says. Looks like she’s found the perfect combo.
Pramada Menon performs Fat, Feminist and Free at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences on Saturday, August 23
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