Sandhya - Potential

"Please close your eyes and remember a situation where you wanted to say no but you couldn’t," said Kranti's theater facilitator, in the middle of the DC Hilton. I closed my eyes and immediately I flashed back to being raped, trying hard to say "NO!!" But my body and mind were frozen, so no words came. For a minute, I was confused if I was 18, standing in the Hilton, or if I was 13, being raped in Mumbai's red-light area. Maybe my body was 13 and my mind 18, or my body 18 and my mind 13?? Changing between these two scenarios, my eyes filled with tears and my hands prepared to fight. And I found myself screaming "NOOOOO!" After this exercise, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t in theater class - I was in therapy.  Now, I’m studying psychology, and I hope to become a therapist who mixes theater, music, dance, and meditation to help youth from marginalized communities discover, and live up to, their true potential.