No LoC for loitering women

“Ek garam chai ki piyali ho... aur uss ko peenay waali ho.” (A steaming cup of tea… all hers to savour)

Sitting at a dhaba and having a cuppa does not exactly scream feminism. But when public spaces become overtly patriarchal and paternalistic, that simple act becomes loaded with a political message. Girls at Dhabas, a women’s movement in Pakistan, is projecting tea drinking at these roadside shacks as an act of rebellion.

It all began on April 24, 2015, with a selfie of one of the founders taken at a dhaba and posted on Instagram under the hashtag #GirlsAtDhabas. It was liked and reposted over and over. The reaction spurred Sadia Khatri to start a Tumblr blog asking for submissions with the same hashtag.

In less than a year, Girls at Dhabas grew from a hashtag into a clarion call that saw thousands of women reclaiming public spaces across Pakistan, many posting selfies that showed them hanging out at dhabas.

A Karachi-based journalist, Khatri says dhabas, in addition to being a public space, “represent a break of sorts from the daily grind… The act of taking the selfie or photograph is important, too, because it implies ownership of position and place. Women are frequently told to stay out of, or remain invisible in public spaces — there is a moment of reclamation in there.”

#GirlsAtDhabas also sparked off a huge discussion (online and offline) on patriarchy and public spaces in Pakistan. A perusal of their blog and Facebook page throws up an eclectic mix of posts and photos. A girl sits reading a book, a cup of milky tea, a lighter and a half-eaten paratha on a table beside her. The caption says: “Badar commercial, Karachi. The street gets mad with cars and people at night, but offers the quietest reading spots in the morning.”

Apart from dhabas, the photos are sited in a wide range of spaces. “The dhaba is just one site where women are outsiders, there are many others and, depending on one’s specific identities, the dynamics change with every change of space,” says Khatri. “So we essentially encourage people to send in photos, stories and narratives of experiences that defy gender norms in different real-world spaces.” Their FB page has posts on interesting events like #GirlsOnBikes — a bicycle-riding meet held in March: “CALLING ALL GIRLS! Meet us this Sunday @ 10am for a bike ride through our cities. After the ride, we will be gathering for a dialogue over nashta, in the company of all the amaze (sic) women who show up, and allies. Invite all your girlfrands (sic) and aunties!” There are many posts applauding the mixed-gender gully cricket match organised to express solidarity with the girls and boys who, in October 2015, were attacked by Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba activists at the University of Karachi for playing the game.

Grass, no greener

Khatri says they have found inspiration, support and strength from campaigns like Why Loiter? in India. “It’s reassuring to know that this work isn’t being done in isolation, that there is a history and context to gender dynamics in public spaces in South Asia.”

They were particularly influenced by the ideas in the book Why Loiter? Women and Risk On Mumbai Streets, which encouraged women to hang out aimlessly. They found many similarities between women’s experiences in Mumbai and urban Pakistan.

Published in 2011 by Mumbai-based sociologist Shilpa Phadke, journalist Sameera Khan and architect Shilpa Ranade, the book has spawned an online and offline movement across Indian cities. Why Loiter? reached out to the Girls at Dhabas team after the latter’s hashtag campaign captured the popular imagination. The two groups are now working on collaborations.

In December last year, the annual Why Loiter? social media campaign on Twitter and FB included conversations, videos and Tweetchats on the art of loitering from Pakistan. The Girls at Dhabas hosted #WhyLoiter events, online as well as offline, in Pakistan on the same days as in India.

The use of the hashtag has, in a sense, democratised their activism. The Twitter feeds of both movements have an ongoing conversation, which has helped remove the barriers of distance and geography. Several posts share stories of liberation and the struggle to reclaim public spaces.

“Is there a difference between Lahore and Islamabad in the opportunity to loiter?” asks #WhyLoiter in one.

About Islamabad, Pakistan-based @bytesforallPK replies “Beautiful city with a lot of places to loiter but it didn’t even have any buses until just a few months ago.”

@whyloiter: “No buses at all?”

@girlsatdhabas: “Funnily enough most women I know have never been on a bus. Considered unsafe/for the lower class. Same for lhr metro.

@whyloiter: “How are poor women expected to commute?

@girlsatdhabas: “Poor women expected to use buses or metro, which themselves are a nightmare. No space, men sitting in women’s section.

@bytesforallPK: “Some of the buses in LHR are actually not that bad, but then I’ve been told to wear a dupatta by several women. :(

@whyloiter: “This “advice” repeats itself across cities. Women being policed “for our own good”.”

Khatri says Why Loiter? has made them think about the process of creating a movement: “Even in terms of situating ourselves as a group, Why Loiter? turned out to be an essential resource. We talk about this often, how reading the book felt like the writers had taken all our thoughts and frustrations and articulated them with logic, reason and relevance. I think we understood a lot of our own work better too. And it also brought up new questions. The intersection of class and gender is something that often comes up in our interactions (both online and offline), and the book is a fantastic study of class and gender dynamics in Mumbai; so there are entire chapters we can draw from.”

Wall of shame

Yet another cross-border project uses wall art and murals to spread the word. Fearless Pakistan took shape after activist Nida Mushtaq reached out to Bengaluru-based illustrator-designer Shilo Shiv Suleman, who founded the Fearless Collective — a grouping of artists, activists, photographers and filmmakers who use their work to speak out against gender violence.

Suleman’s collective began as a reaction to the 2012 Delhi gang-rape incident, to combat the fear-mongering emanating from the media. A viral campaign evolved into a storytelling platform that made use of wall art. After picking a location for each of her art displays, Suleman conducts workshops for the women in that area. “This throws up ideas that are relevant to that context, which is then painted on the wall. From the workshops, we create public art as intervention. It becomes interactive on many levels.”

Suleman visited Pakistan in November 2015 (after an 11-month struggle for a visa) on Mushtaq’s invitation. Fearless Pakistan was a mural project in three cities — Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi — based on the theme of fearlessness and rooted in stories shared at workshops by the locals. “Log kia kaheinge, hum hi tou log hain, hum kia kahenge” (What will people say, we are the people, what will we say) — these words cry out from the mural painted on the walls of the National Bank of Pakistan in Lahore, challenging the fear women have of being judged by society.

“We are the creation of god” is the text accompanying a 30-foot mural, in Rawalpindi, of a transgender activist riding a motorcycle. The theme was decided on after learning that the National College of Arts in Pindi had hired a khwaja sira (transgender). Says Suleman: “We worked with different groups for each of the walls. In the unsafe neighbourhood of Lyari in Karachi, it was the children from the neighbourhood; in Lahore we worked with young girl students; in Pindi we painted with the transgender community. We have had girls and women in hijab and salwar kameez painting in spaces that are considered unsafe. The act of painting itself became an act of fearlessness.”

Khatri, meanwhile, intends to collaborate further with #whyloiter and has begun a series of Twitter discussions to take the initiative to remote interiors as well. “The response from feminist collectives across the border has been reassuring and relieving. The connections we’ve made with activists and women have easily been the best part of the response,” she says.

(Anuradha Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance journalist and founder-editor of Jalebi Ink, a media collective for children and youth.)

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