One of the most path-breaking plays in recent times, 'The Vagina Monologues' finishes 100 episodes this month.

Jayati Bhatia, one of the five protagonists in the play, cheers the way it has changed women's lives... hers too the theme of 'The Vagina Monologues' (TVM) is to spread the word about 'vaginas'. Why do you think it is necessary for people to talk about it?

People, and more so women, are so quiet about these issues.

I don't see why. It's a part of you, isn't it? When people laugh about something, they become more open about it. Like when you laugh at yourself, it endears you to people. They warm up to you.

It tells them that you know what you are all about and they accept you for who you are. In the same way, when people talk and laugh about the issues that are discussed in 'TVM' - women, pubic hair, orgasms, rape - they are coming out in the open with these issues, they're sharing their psyches, their understanding of these situations. A simple example: There's a piece on a man who loves looking at his lover's pubic hair. Women have gone home and spoken about this guy to their husbands... how they've never met anyone like him and that he has such a refreshing point of view. This way, men and women discuss their innermost feelings, topics they've never discussed before... and once couples do that, they're at peace.

Do you think women directors bring anything extra to the table by the simple virtue of being women?

Definitely. Their understanding of human emotions and conflicts is amazing and because of that, they are capable of extracting 120 per cent from you in a performance. I don't know what it is, maybe it's because they're wives, mothers, daughters. Women are complex individuals and hence their understanding

of complex emotions is much higher. Of course, men directors who are innovative, who understand and respect women, are open-minded, also bring out the best in a performer, but they have to be as sensitive and as open as women are.

How did you research these issues... these women that you've talked about in the play?

The original writer, Eve Ensler, had already done the groundwork. The research, the conversations with the women from Bosnia and Kosovo were already done. She wrote out 12 monologues. We added two - 'My Short Skirt' and 'Burkha', later. We explored each issue thoroughly with each other at rehearsals. Our first assignment was to go home and look at our vaginas. And come back and talk about it. Discussions would follow for hours together about things we had read and heard, about every issue that we touch upon in the play... some fun, others disturbing. In that sense, every rehearsal was a workshop.

How has this play changed you... as a woman?

Oh, in so many ways. The first breaktrhough was when we looked at and talked about our vaginas. Then, at rehearsals one day, we discussed our first sexual experiences... some awful, some fantastic.