Words offer the means to meaning, and to those who will listen, the enunciation of truth...

The title quote comes from V for Vendetta, or at least the movie version. The reasoning for the title remains something else entirely, and is related exclusively towards the assignment I received during my first day of work at Shtrii Shaktii. After an hour of silent meditation and some reading from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu epic telling the tale of battling brothers, which in fact serves as metaphor for the inner conflict within the human spirit. Hindus believe there exists within each person a constant battle between the positive and negative, the creative and destructive. Immediately upon the cessation of the reading, Jaimie and I were given our assignments for the day-she to design, and I to... speech writing. Indira is to give a speech this coming Sunday regarding female sexuality and women's empowerment, and she asked me to prepare a draft for her. So, I took pen to paper after reading some notes and began to write. At first, the words came slowly, but within minutes, there were sentences, then paragraphs, then pages. Words flowed from me onto the page, and page and then page became filled. Writing about female sexuality as a man, albeit a feminist man, is a unique experience, especially when one is to write from the perspective a woman. The word is still out; I'm waiting to hear comments from my boss. If she approves, or even if she doesn't, I'll post the final draft later this week.

On another aside, my iPod woke up dead today. Despite my best efforts, it will not turn on, even though it did when I awoke at three a.m. Perhaps this is for the best. I feel already, after only three days here, that this trip is expanding my vision, my perspectives. Perhaps now I'll finally learn how to listen to.

More to come later this week.

Namaste.