Take d Milk, Nah?, livre ebook

• •The play’s structure is based on the form of “prayers” pujas and yagnas, as practised in the Trinidadian Smarta tradition.
• •Take d Milk, Nah? has been performed in Toronto and Vancouver, and will be performed in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal in 2020.

Here’s the thing:
a Hindu can’t do an identity play.
’Cause identity is a Hin-don’t.

Identity means that there is an identifiable divide between things—where one thing ends and another begins.

And see, Hinduism teaches that these divisions are . . . an illusion. What we call Maya.
That this whole existence itself is just a dream of the great cosmic consciousness.

Identity is an illusion.

And so this play, this whole play, this whole genre of plays, in a manner of speaking has been about . . . nothing.

Because, for Hindus, true identity is . . . a field.
It’s just a field.
And we strive to look at the field
and see a blade of grass and think:
“I am that blade of grass.”
And what’s in the field?
A cow.
And the cow is the blade of grass.
And you are the cow.

Because we are all the field.
And identity just divides that field.
Property.
That colonial concept: property.
Identity is just property.
Yours and mine.
And identity plays are just there to map it.
Secure the borders.

Did you come here to see an identity play?
Did you come here to watch me recolonize my thinking?
To partition it off to you in a digestible way so you too can feel assured at what the borders are between me and you?

I mean . . . in fairness, that’s how it was marketed . . .
So like . . . our bad too . . .

’Cause I can’t do that . . .
I won’t do that . . .
I won’t draw those borders . . .

Identity is a Hin-don’t because identity is an illusion.
That is a core belief I hold as a Hindu.
But in order to maintain that belief I need to hold onto my identity.

But part of my belief says that identity is an illusion.

So by that definition I also believe that I shouldn’t hold onto my identity.

But if I don’t hold onto my identity then I would just get sucked into the mainstream belief system, which doesn’t recognize that identity is in fact just an illusion!

So I need to identify myself, to identify identity as being an illusion!

But identity is . . . an illusion! And that is a Hin-don’t!
But I wanna be a Hin-do!

’Cause all I know is that we strive to look at a field and just chill!

So for the rest of this show—you can enter my mind!
That’s what we’re gonna do!
You can enter my mind and chill the fuck out!