My Frustrated Lady: Plays of Women in Love, Work And Relationships

By Shweta Singh

Jane and Jack start out to teach the "fresh of the boat" Nila about unhappiness, but Hari interrupts their plan. Nila teaches all, while herself being a willing pupil - the joys of love and life. The romantic farce is refreshing story of adult relationships and misgivings we carry about others ideas and how we try to change it. You will meet Nila, who has come from a small town of Kanpur and Vijay her dominating husband, and her boyfriend Hari. Also, you will meet the unaware urbane Jack and Jane as they meet each other on the path of life and love. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Think Women Company
• Release date: Jun 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953428219

Shweta Singh

Shweta Singh works as an Associate Professor in the school of Social Work and Women and Gender Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago. She is the founder of Think Women Company located in Chicago. She is also a coach and hosts a podcast – working like women. She brings the ethos of the Indian Subcontinent, post-structural feminism, Hindu spirituality, and poverty consciousness, and innate dignity and cheer of women and practice of womanhood to all her fictional characters. 'Identities of women' is her award-winning theory that informs all her writing, research, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and media work.

Book preview

Dedication 

TO ALL THE BRAVE AND beautiful women arriving on the US shores from Indian Subcontinent on a H4 Visa

Epigraph

I know the world is tough. I lived in Kanpur. When I was little three girls hanged themselves by the ceiling fan, because they could not stand, the pressure of not being married. But here, no one needs to be married. They can have jobs. They are so safe...though the little girls have all had someone offer them drugs in school. Can you believe it? And have been terribly bullied in their own playground. And they ...they actually already feel the need to have a boyfriend. They learn so much anxiety and anger, I think. And right now, they have no one to fight ...and joy is also important. Na? Otherwise, why bother fighting to live? Am I old fashioned? But in Kanpur, that is what we think. And it works...life is tough. But it has good things. See, I have such a wonderful husband. And he seriously did not take any dowry.  - Nila in My Frustrated Lady!

Scene One

IT IS A WELL-LIT BEDROOM. A woman is sitting by her dressing table. She is trying to wrap a red shawl around her shoulders while looking into a mirror. A man is walking around in his shirt and underwear. He is mumbling and keeps looking at the woman.

Man – Your enduring beauty is like wine. But I’ve seen this grey-green dress at least a million times. I have never understood why you don’t invest money in dressing well.

Woman – [Looking annoyed]. And I have never understood your need to come out of your dressing room in your underwear?  And why prance around in my bedroom.

Man – [Smiling]. It is to annoy you and also to get attention, because the only way I seem to get attention from you is if I annoy you. And also, because my dressing room scarcely fits in my fifty trousers and forty shirts. Meanwhile, this room could accommodate two beds and two bodies. It could make life be so much less miserable.

Woman – [laughing]. After twenty-five years, I’ve earned the right to not live-in stinking rooms of men-farts. And because I spent a couple of decades with your equality thinking in this marriage. Its reasonable and ethical to demand privileges...at the very least