Khullam khulla pyaar karenge…

On a pleasant afternoon last Friday, Central Park in Delhi’s Connaught Place was teeming with people. It was a public holiday, on account of Gandhi Jayanti. Families picnicked, friends hung about, couples canoodled, and men loitered. Amid the family scenes, scores of couples crouched behind clumps of trees and bushes, arms intertwined, eyes locked. Dupattas took up strategic positions. A couple, clad in matching lumberjack shirts and jeans, sat in a passionate embrace. Another couple stole kisses behind a blue bag, surfacing hastily whenever cops walked by. The giant tricolour in the park — the largest in the country — fluttered in the breeze, and a band got ready to take the stage. Cops marched about, wielding lathis and cocking an eye at smooching couples. Nevertheless, there was PDA (public display of affection) all around.

Over a fortnight ago, a clutch of feminist groups — Feminisim in India Delhi, Why Loiter, Take Back The Night Kolkata, Queer Campus Hyderabad, Hyderabad for Feminism — and a few individuals came together to start a campaign called #ParkMeinPDA. Launched in the wake of the latest round of moral policing in Mumbai, the campaign, with its cheeky hashtag, aimed to direct conversations around PDA in public spaces. Central Park was not a designated site for the campaign, but it might as well have been.

In early August, Mumbai cops had barged into hotels at Madh Island and Aksa beach, and detained 13 couples (consenting adults) on charges of indecent behaviour. More such acts followed soon. In Ahmedabad, cops reportedly asked hotel owners to inform them of couples taking rooms for less than two hours. In Mangaluru, a Muslim man was stripped and beaten for speaking to a Hindu woman. Increasingly it appears that young Indians — couples, women, genderqueer and trans-persons — are falling foul of the narrow confines of ‘Indian culture’.

Even the language that has emerged around displays of love and sexual violence is one of prohibition and exclusion. ‘Safety’ and ‘protection’ have become new excuses to exclude women and other genders from public spaces.

Neha Gupta, 32, and Rachitaa Gupta, 27, who spearheaded #ParkMeinPDA, say the campaign sought to reclaim both public space and PDA. Held from September 21 to October 3, the campaign spawned numerous online and offline discussions. In tweetchats, curated by feminist groups like Why Loiter, Genderlog, and GirlsAtDhabas, a host of issues cropped up: Are parks meant only for families and the elderly? Can’t women loiter at street corners, bus stops, and beach fronts? Why is a woman subjected to a male gaze at paan shops and dhabas? What about gay men and trans-women’s rights to public spaces? Does gentrification perpetuate class and caste hierarchies? Why are mixed groups routinely targeted? How many of us visit our neighbourhood parks to read a book or eat an apple?

“I am from Chandigarh, the city of gardens. But you will not find young people anywhere. Even after 8-9 am, they’re thrown out of parks,” says Rachitaa. “When I moved to Delhi, over a year ago, I was introduced to a strange new walk,” she adds. Arms outstretched, bag handy to strike, shoulders slightly hunched… “I have walked like this to college, in the colony, and on streets not realising it’s a funny walk,” Neha says, as I nod in commiseration. For most of us, this is a familiar gait.

On ground, the campaign’s Facebook pages and Twitter feeds have been flooded with pictures of PDA: A heterosexual couple posing at the Taj Mahal at dusk, a gay duo peeking from behind a tree in Hyderabad, and an individual lazing on a park bench, holding up a placard that says ‘#ParkMeinPDA kyunki khaali bench ka kya faayda’. “The responses have been organic. We found that this issue resonated with almost everyone,” says Neha.

After two weeks of the campaign’s chai pe charchas , this is the truth universally acknowledged: To be a (middle-aged, middle- and upper-class Hindu cisgendered heterosexual) man is a wonderful thing.

In her seminal 1980 essay ‘What would a non-sexist city be like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work’, American historian Dolores Hayden writes, “‘A woman’s place is in the home’ has been one of the most important principles of architectural design and urban planning for the last century.” While most urban spaces are designed keeping a neutral person in mind, Shilpa Phadke, co-author of Why Loiter? writes, “As educated, employed, middle-class urban Indian women, when we express a desire to seek pleasure in the city, it seems problematic to some… The desire for pleasure has never been as legitimate as the struggle against violence. (But) the quest for pleasure strengthens our struggle against violence, framing it in the language of rights rather than protection.”

When we ask Rachitaa and Neha what they would do differently in designing a ‘non-sexist’ city, the former quickly says, “More lights and toilets”, while the latter bats for, “increasing visibility of all genders in all spaces.”

Hayden offers a remedy too: To develop a new paradigm of the home, the neighbourhood, and the city; to begin to describe the physical, social, and economic design of a human settlement that would support, rather than restrict, the activities of women.”

Meanwhile, the conversation started by the #ParkMeinPDA campaign will hopefully skip out of the park, spill over to our streets, and into our homes.

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