Pooja
Blood | Rice | Diya | Bells | Vox | Cello | Code
Eavesdropping UK, Vortex Jazz club, March 2025
Strange Brew, Bristol January 2024
Pooja seeks to unearth the contradictions of menstruation within Western and Hindu cultures. This ancient yet evolving topic oscillates between reverence and shame, purity and impurity. Through a performance-based exploration, I aim to celebrate the rejection of orthodoxy while falling into feminine Hindu traditions, rituals, and the alchemy of transformation inherent in menstruation.
At the heart of this project is an inquiry: How do we reconcile the sacred with the stigmatised? How do we navigate rituals and taboos that have shaped generations while addressing contemporary discourses on gender, identity, culture, and power?
Inspired by Western free-bleeding rituals like those explored in Reversing Eve’s Curse, this work reclaims menstruation as a site of power, not impurity, especially within Hindu traditions. For instance, the samadhi vadu ritual signals a girl’s readiness for marriage and childbearing, underscoring menstruation’s role in subordination. The project has evolved through showcases, including LORE at Strange Brew, featuring a granular film inspired by the quote ‘She's what I smeared on the world’ from the 2108 remake of Suspiria and a 45-minute durational performance; free-bleeding through a ritualistic procedure using the speculative instrument into diyas (clay lamps used for devotional
purposes), purified with rice grains. The performance was accompanied by an augmented tape loop collage utilising field recordings from my time in Sri Lanka. A subsequent iteration at Café Avalon used live coding to manipulate spoken words on the topic into soundscapes.
The Eavesdropping UK performance consisted of a live sonic performance piece reclaiming the samadhi vadu ritual. Through vocalisations, embodied gesture, spoken word, and live coding, this piece creates space for ritual, sound and reflection on menstruation’s power dynamics.
Within the depth of the red,
The demons rest,
The temple grounds must stay pure and clean,
The womb space must stay pure and clean,
Swami banished me from the temple grounds,
He said I am impure,
My purity would return in X days,
Swami said the village must know I bleed,
They rang the bells of blood,
They sang the songs of menstruation,
Swami said I am ready,
The men came and laid saris at my feet,
They laid jewellery and begged at my knees,
Swami banished me from the temple grounds,
He said I am impure
My purity would return in X days,
My flow becomes tethys,
My purity resides within me,
From bones to ash to blood,
To each holy drip of menstruation,
Within and without menstruation,
I am pure,
But Swami sees me as impure.