In her famous video poem, How to be alone, Canadian writer and musician Tanya Davis suggests several sites where solo existence could be healed and even celebrated — public transport, gym, streets, the woods. The video shows happy scenes of a single woman exploring outside fixtures such as railway tracks, city statues and park benches. I had stumbled upon this poem two years ago when my marriage was about to end. The poem was soothing, it gave hope, and yet it made me wistful. Where in our country, I thought, could women roam all by themselves without shrinking, without being conscious of taking up space, and in general trying to be invisible. Women in India do this thinking they are protecting themselves, and for good reason.
Harassment, heckling and lewd remarks, benignly called “eve-teasing”, are a daily occurrence for Indian women. A survey conducted by the Asso-ciated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) found that 92 per cent of working women felt insecure, especially at night, across many cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. This survey was released in December 2012 in the wake of the brutal rape and murder of the paramedic in Delhi. This is what happened to me last year and it feeds my hyper-vigilance on the streets: It was 8.30 pm when I came out of a neighbourhood grocery store, around which young people hang out for tea, cigarettes and snacks. The road ahead looked dim for lack of adequate street lights. From the darkness came a bike with two men. One of them smacked me hard from behind. Shoc-ked, I let out a shriek. Initially it seemed the vehicle had hit me. Then the men yelled a victory whoop! So, they were just trying to have “fun”. Pulling out my umbrella from my bag, I ran after them — hoping to give them a big whack and possibly note down the bike number. But they scurried away.
Two policemen came. One of them asked: “So you were walking?” The tone seemed to say: Obviously, if you walk alone on a deserted road such things can happen. I had to repeat that I was walking home after buying groceries. This blame-the-woman approach is not surprising. In their book, Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets, authors Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade contend that there’s an implicit assumption that a loitering woman cannot be trusted. Despite risks, I haven’t stopped going out. Mostly it’s to a park or a multiplex. Sure I go out with friends too, but mostly I am on my own for if you wait for friends to be free, most good things in life will pass you by. There are some quirky rules I follow to keep myself unnoticeable and, therefore, safe, though these are by no means foolproof: Dowdy, stern appearance with tied-back hair and only the aisle seat of a movie hall. The aisle seat ensures at least one armrest is free of turf war. Admittedly, I avoid single screen theatres and the middle rows in multiplexes as the audience there tends to be noisier. It’s never clear if the whistling inside a theatre is directed at the film or the women patrons.
Sadly, I seldom go for plays or music concerts as they finish late in the nights when it’s difficult to find autorickshaws. Yes, women’s access to an enriched life outside their homes is intimately tied to good public transport. Just the other day, after a stroll in the KBR National Park, Hyderabad, I felt like heading for coffee and a book shop. But it had turned dark and the autos were demanding three times the actual fare. So cancelling my original plans, I took a bus home. I don’t drive and low-fare taxi services are not reliable. A cab service recently refused five times out of seven when I tried booking through phone and website. Indeed, a 2014 Planning Commission report acknowledges that “very few Indian cities currently have organised and regulated public transport systems.”
Returning home safe shouldn’t have to be sheer good luck. Sometimes even well-meaning voices privilege functional tasks like commuting to work over pleasure activities. But women are not second-class citizens and they shouldn’t have to feel stranded indoors. Enjoy-ing the outdoors is a deep and necessary source of solace; it’s a kind of survival. Public safety is not just a middle-class concern, even though the mainstream media inequitably focuses on violence against urban, educated women. Women of all socio-economic strata go out for work and need to go out for recreational activities. A study conducted in 2010 by Jagori, a women’s group in Delhi, reveals that women often have to “manufacture legitimate reasons to ‘hang around’ in spaces like parks and bus stops.”
Some movements are campaigning for women to reclaim public spaces. Members of the Pinjra Tod, for instance, rode buses all night on Wednesday, December 16, across seven cities to assert their freedom to access public transport. In a much-publicised event in February last year, 30 women of Hyderabad For Feminism group gathered at inexpensive bars and Irani chai cafes to herald women’s entry into traditional male bastions. I am waiting for the time when a lone woman would be able to do that without fearing for her safety. Until then, incremental changes are welcome.
The writer is an independent journalist based in Hyderabad. She also teaches at the University of Hyderabad.
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