Tag: women’s day

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Event

Attend: Art exhibition celebrating Women’s Day

The art exhibition titled ‘Timeless Energy – An Art Connect’ is conceptualised by eight women, alumni of Sophia College, 1979 batch.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

There’s nothing quite like art to make one muse on the deeper complexities of life. Eight artists from the 1979 batch of Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai are celebrating the upcoming International Women’s Day (March 8) with an art exhibition commemorating the spirit of women.

The exhibition, titled ‘Timeless Energy – An Art Connect’, aims to “celebrate the spirit of art and creativity and support women empowerment with an ingenious exhibition of art.” The three-day event starting February 27 is a prelude to the forthcoming International Women’s Day.

The participating artists are Parveen Antia Hemmady, Aneeta Malhotra, Rupande Kaku, Jasmine Jehangir, Shefali Randeria, Krishna Khanna, Qamar Ahmad, and Lili Menon.

‘Timeless Energy’ is an art show of free spirited expression, presented by an art connects between the eight female artists, all alumni of Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, 1979 batch. The creative energy that flows through their art is presented by bold strokes, colour blocks, textures and interesting treatments of varied mediums on surfaces from canvas to fabric, wood, glass and porcelain.

Head to The Easel Gallery, 32, Janki Kutir, Near Moshe’s, Church Road, Juhu, from Friday to Sunday, February 27 to March 1, 2015, between 11 am to 7 pm.

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Diaries

Is gender equality a reality in Mumbai?

A Mumbaikar questions the term ‘gender equality’ in the context of Mumbai and comes away reassured, and also quite hopeful.
by Dr Pooja Birwatkar

Part 5 of the ‘Women’ diaries

A few days ago, tired after a hectic day at work, I had no option but to stand in the BEST bus. All the seats were occupied. I looked around, hoping that chivalry would prevail and some man would offer me his seat. But none of them did. It made me very cross with them. How could they sit comfortably when a lady was standing next to them? How rude!

As I mused over the issue later, I realised what a hypocrite I was. We talk so much of gender equality and female liberation, and so it should be completely okay that I was not offered a seat in a bus. If we talk of equality, then we must practice it as well. After all, like us women, even the men are tired. This brings me to analyse our own mega metro Mumbai. Is it equally easy being a woman here, like the men?

In Mumbai, with so many women heading out to work, it is clear that women are bread earners, too. They too contribute a handsome chunk to the family income. It is not unusual to find them in domains that are still considered male domains elsewhere. Women here are now traffic cops, ticket checkers, cabbyies, security officers, DJs, to name a few. Their office hours are as late as men’s. Of course, most working women also have the mandatory double shift, despite their jobs – one at work and one at home. There is still a long way to go when it comes to battling stereotypical women’s roles like cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children, that the female is naturally expected to execute. Men, wake up. We no longer expect you to offer us seats on public transport – should you expect us to handle all the house work alone?

You can walk on Mumbai’s roads care-free, as chances of you being ogled, stared and stalked are less in comparison to other places. Of course, there are sporadic cases of rape and molestation, and something better be done about it lest they become everyday occurrences. Yet, such incidents make us angry and not scared. Such episodes fill us with a sense of revolt and the courage to fight rather than bear it.

Single women, single mothers or divorcees, there is a place for everyone in Mumbai. No one labels you. They don’t have too much time to think about your life. You can stay alone in an apartment and have a life of your own, as the neighbourhood seldom keeps a tab on what you do with your life. You can eat alone in a restaurant and it can be the same restaurant on a daily basis. But I still feel there is a hesitance regarding this, as most women would, if alone, either occupy themselves with a book or be hooked to their cell phone. Wake up, ladies. You don’t need to pretend. It’s your world too and you have every right to be there.

And though I do not advocate it, you can smoke and drink without too many curious glances. There are friendly places where girl gangs can have their night outs. The city is quite open to homosexual relations and contrary opinions are normally not aired openly. Hearteningly, there are always a lot of people in your corner to support you.

I would not say that Mumbai completely believes in gender equality, but it fares much better comparatively. There is something about this city which makes you brave and hold your head high. You feel liberated and love life without questioning your gender identity. There is hope and place for all here and you are not made to feel different.

I just wish that on this Women’s Day all women resolve that we would not beg for equality but create equality in society. Let us start on the premise that we are and were always EQUAL. Do not thrust equality on us. We no longer need it. If at all any talk on equality has to happen, it should be from the angle of equalising men with women. 

Dr Pooja Birwatkar is currently pursuing post doctoral research and working in the area of science education. She has been associated with the field of education in the past as a teacher educator, and her area of interest is research in education. 

(Picture courtesy www.asianews.it)

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Diaries

A different kind of road rage

Two traffic policewomen talk about their jobs, how citizens pose many challenges and why a little respect would be nice.
by Nidhi Qazi

Part 4 of the ‘Women’ diaries

It’s a normal day. Commuters are going to work. Vehicles are inching ahead of others to reach their destination as fast as possible. There is heavy traffic at junctions.

And there is the traffic cop stopping commuters who have broken the road laws in some way. Further down the road, there is a woman officer stopping vehicles, checking licenses, issuing penalty receipts. But wait. Within a few minutes, a driver breaks the signal and rushes past in a jiffy despite the woman constable’s stopping him.

“Many a times, we women are not taken seriously. People break the rules often when they see a woman traffic cop,” laments Madhavi Naik (name changed), a head constable at a junction in one of the central suburbs of the city. Madhavi’s day starts at 7 am and lasts till 3 pm, and she is on the roads for all that time. She adds that the job has its challenges like all other jobs; but as a woman, it’s the perspective of people around that is the most challenging.

“People still feel that the police force is best suited to men. Though my family is supportive, my husband takes care of children, packs their tiffin, drops them to school…but society still questions my choice of job and feels, ‘Aurat kya handle karegi traffic, kaise kaam karegi’”.

An aside here: when I was chasing this story, my request for an interview was turned down several times by the women, saying, “Hum kya baat karenge, humein permission nahin hai. Aap bade sahab ya kisi male constable se baat karo.” Nevertheless, I was able to hold clandestine conversations, albeit, faced with risks of getting caught!

Coming back to the women traffic police, what is a typical day in their lives like? “On a daily basis, we regulate traffic, ensure smooth movement for preventing accidents, penalise those who violate rules and also, at times, when traffic signals are not functioning properly, we inform the companies to look into the matter,” says Smriti Desai (name changed), a head constable at a Bandra junction. But performing these duties is easier said than done, as the traffic police face problems at both the micro and macro level. As Smriti puts it, “How do you ensure that people don’t violate rules when they don’t know the rules in the first place? Worse, they are not ready to accept that they have violated the rules.”

Madhavi says, “Out of, say 100 commuters, there are only two or three commuters who will accept their mistake and instead of arguing with us, actually pay the fine. We are humiliated almost every time but now we are all used to it. On a usual day, if you catch a commuter, he or she will either argue endlessly and say things like “Aap uniform ka faayda utha rahehain, humari koi galti nahin hai.” But Madhavi and her colleagues have learnt to laugh such allegations off.

The big picture is also a worrying one. “Over the years, the number of vehicles has grown but the width of the road remains the same. Moreover, whatever spaces exist are also taken up by vendors who come to Mumbai in search of livelihood. It is on these roads that the traffic police have to run the show,” says Smriti.

According to traffic police, around 300 to 400 vehicles get registered in a day in Greater Mumbai. The traffic police also laments the under-utilisation of the BEST bus transport.

Further, since there is a manpower crunch in the RTOs (Regional Transport Office), this gap provides an opportunity for agents. “People lack awareness about rules, also because they get their licenses made with the help of these agents and thus, they needn’t pass the driving test. There are no checks undertaken by the license-issuing authority – how does anyone know if the applicant is eligible to drive?” asks Smriti.

Citizen consciousness, or the lack of it…

“From traffic rules to traffic itself, it is the citizen’s attitude which really matters,” feels Madhavi.

She raises further concerns: “Why don’t pedestrians use the skywalks which are meant for their safety? Why can’t people use public transport or carpool if they are going in the same direction? Why do commuters not talk to us properly? We are public servants and thus deserve some basic courtesy and respect. For us, the women, it is worse. Even women defaulters look down upon us and feel that we are intentionally insulting them by penalising them.”

But all this said, these women also feel that they are respected and given total co-operation by their male counterparts. “There are days when I feel, ‘Why am I doing this job?’ Then I feel proud about being a public servant, a part of this system,” says Madhavi.

Though citizens need to take precaution, be better aware of rules, and the pedestrian’s sense of judgement needs to improve, these women also feel that they, as police need to engage with the younger generation on three pillars of road safety – Education, Enforcement and Engineering.

Meanwhile, a little respect, please?

The Women’s diaries celebrate the spirit of women on the occasion of International Women’s Day on March 8 every year. Look out for Part 5 next: ‘Does gender equality exist in Mumbai?’

(Pictures courtesy Nidhi Qazi)

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Diaries

Locked up inside her house…for 10 years

Ishrah Jahan’s younger sister Musarrat Jahan talks of the terrible years after her sister was killed in a police encounter.
by Humra Quraishi

Part 3 of the ‘Women’ Diaries

The case made international headlines when the news first broke – Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old student of a Mumbai-based college, was gunned down with three male friends, by police on a lonely stretch of road between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in 2004.

Ishrat Jahan encounterHer family back home in Mumbra heard about the case from the media headlines screaming out details of the encounter – it transpired that Ishrat had been on a ‘mission’ to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and was a trained LeT operative. How and why this bright 19-year-old student of B.Sc at Khalsa College got mixed up in the business is still unclear. However, both Narendra Modi and his closest aide Amit Shah have got clean chits in the matter.

After a long fight to get justice for their slain sister, Ishrat’s siblings and their mother are trying to rebuild their lives, though it is an ordeal. Shunned by society and friends, and left to their own devices – after all, who wants to associate with ‘terrorists’? – the family rarely interacts with anybody. However, younger sister Musarrat staunchly maintains that Ishrat was innocent and killed needlessly.

She also says that she has rarely stepped out of her house since Ishrat’s death in 2004. That’s 10 years of locking oneself inside one’s home.

Ishrat, the daughter and loving sister

Ishrat’s mother last heard from her daughter just three days before the former was killed on June 15, 2004. Ishrat had called from Nashik – she had gone from Mumbai by bus to meet her employer Javed there – and informed her mother that she had met him. She had been working as an assistant to Javed Shaikh – her family says that she’d met him just a month before the encounter – who offered her a job in Pune. The job involved frequent travel in India, and Ishrat would be frequently gone for a few days. Though her mother disapproved of the travel, the family was in such dire financial straits that there was no option but to allow her to go.

The family had lost its breadwinner – Ishrat’s father Mohammad Shamim died in 2002 after a long illness – and Ishrat, her older sister Zeenat and younger sister Musarrat started taking tuitions at home to make some money.

I first spoke to the family in the aftermath of the killing, and it was a depressing interview. It was difficult to not be depressed by the pain with which Ishrat’s younger sister, Ishrat's familyMusarrat and her mother Shamima Begum recalled the second oldest child of the house, how she had been financially supporting the family after the death of their father in 2002.

When I spoke to Musarrat again for this interview, I could hear the sorrow in her voice once again. It is apparent that in these last 10 years, the family has not been able to recover from Ishrat’s cold-blooded murder by the officers of the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch.

I ask Musarrat if there is any change in their station or the realities they live with today, especially after it is now officially acknowledged that IB officers were involved in Ishrat’s encounter. Musarrat says, “Even now, we have not got insaaf (justice), because the two political men (at whose behest the murders were carried out) are not touched and they have not been named as culprits.”

I ask her to elaborate. She says, “That encounter in which my sister was killed was staged for political gains, so what justice is there if the two politicians – Narendra Modi and Amit Shah – are given a clean chit? After all, these two politicians had concocted the false charge that my sister had gone to (Gujarat) kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and so they had her killed in that encounter! They are responsible (for her death) and yet they are not named. Why?”

Home alone

Though in severe financial problems, Ishrat’s mother and sister continued to wage a battle for justice. To this day, the family stoutly maintains Ishrat’s innocence, and instantly refute the charge that she was mixed up in terrorist activities.

Still, I ask Musarrat, given the people she is dealing with, is she scared about being so outspoken about the issue? “If my family and I were scared, we wouldn’t have fought this case all these years. It’s been very tough for us. We have been ruined, devastated but we are still fighting for justice…we are determined to remove this terrorist tag thrown at my innocent sister, at us, at my entire family. You can’t imagine how difficult it has been for my mother and us to survive all these years. We have been ruined completely, but we are not giving up the fight.”

She adds, “It [Ishrat’s death] was such a blow, on all fronts – emotionally, socially, financially…ever since Ishrat was murdered, we just kept to ourselves and seldom moved out. We have become wary of stepping out and meeting even the neighbours. Our studies got disrupted completely and we were ruined…it was difficult to even survive, forget about books and studies. For five years I sat blank, in a trance-like condition. I gave up my studies, stopped going out, and didn’t meet even any relatives.

“All those years of our life are simply wasted. It’s only now that I have started doing a course, but only through correspondence. Even financially, our situation worsened. Most of my father’s relatives are no more. My maternal grandmother lives on her pension in her native place in Bihar and my mother’s brother also lives there. He is a salaried employee, so he just about manages to support his own family.”

The now 26-year-old Musarrat says that her family, originally hailing from Bihar, has been living in Mumbai for decades. Her father was a small-time builder who suffered heavy losses and died of a brain tumour in 2002. With the  death of her 50-year-old father, the entire responsibility of the family fell on the eldest siblings – Zeenat and Ishrat. Ishrat had even begun taking up part time jobs together with her college studies to keep the money coming in.

Musarrat says that to this day, the family has received no help from the Women’s Commissions which are supposedly there to help and support hapless women and their families. “No Ministry or even any political party has come forward to help us,” she says

And so the struggle continues…

Tomorrow’s diary: ‘I’m a traffic cop, but you make me feel inadequate’.

(Featured image courtesy Musarrat Jahan, other pictures courtesy archive.indianexpress.com, www.kashmirmonitor.in)

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Enough said

Not part of the sham

Humra Quraishi refuses to say the words ‘Happy Women’s Day’ until the country’s realities undergo a change for the better.

Should I start this column with a formal greeting – Happy Women’s Day! – or should I bluntly say that I wouldn’t greet anyone this way, because I detest formalities that reek of hypocrisy? I have never believed in saying fashionable sentences for anyone’s sake.

And besides, of what use is this statement when the condition of women and children and even young men in this country is pathetic? It would be best if those manning big commissions and Government ministries went beyond speeches or elaborate tea sessions, merely to issue a statement. Instead, they should take the rounds of prison cells where women are lodged and detained, pushed to the wall. If policewallahs in Punjab can publicly thrash women on the road, I can well imagine what must go on behind closed doors!

No, I don’t want to parrot oft-repeated statements from the comfort and privacy of my home and office, being part of the multitude that participates in the Women’s Day sham. What are we doing about our country’s serious realities? And for how long are we going to pretend that those oppressed and troubled will not strike back?

Humans are made of emotions, flesh, blood and they take affirmative action. If oppressed for long, they are bound to react, as history has shown us time and time again. And in the current scenario, people are bound to react to State terror. In fact, in his enthusiasm to give speeches, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde often forgets to mention that with those other ‘terrors’ he speaks about, there’s also something called State terror. And this State terror is the most lethal of all, for it has no limits. It kills innocents, it targets women and children. And it works all the time – even on Women’s Day and Children’s Day and Human Rights Day!

(Picture courtesy AP)

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Soft Coroner

Women’s Day in a man’s world

Prashant Shankarnarayan wonders if Women’s Day is to be celebrated or observed, and either way, seriously, what’s the fuss about?
prashant@themetrognome.in

The situation – An email regarding Women’s Day sent by my office’s HR department.

The observation: Two days ago, I heard a woman in my office shriek in excitement. Then a few more women followed in unison. Our HR team had sent a ‘Women’s day special’ email, mentioning that all the female employees can shop till they drop on Women’s Day and can buy stuff equivalent to their respective net salaries.

Some women reacted as if they had been crowned Miss Universe. The men started complaining even as some of their female colleagues rejoiced; and then there were many like us who knew this just can’t be true. It took a while for them to realise that it was a prank. Few women, who were literally dancing in bliss moments ago, were seething in rage even as the HR head (a woman) tried to explain that it was ‘just a joke’. Well, I feel that’s what Women’s Day has been reduced to – just a joke!

To start with, are we supposed to celebrate Women’s Day or observe it? If we are supposed to celebrate it, then we in India have been celebrating womanhood for thousands of years. So what’s the big fuss about? If it is supposed to be observed as a day where we contemplate and resolve to better the status of women, then why haven’t we succeeded in simply making life better for women despite celebrating womanhood for thousands of years?

Yes, it is easy to say that present-day women have it better than the ones who existed in the past. But is it enough? Is it enough that they go to work and parties? That they can choose their careers and partners? That they can enter traditionally male domains like defense and airlines? That they have access to contraception and can choose the number of children they want to bear? Is that why we earmark a particular day on the calendar as Women’s Day?

Then why is it that even today any random guy can rape an innocent girl without an iota of fear in his heart? Simple, because in the deepest patriarchal recesses of our hearts, many of us still don’t treat them as equals.

How else does one justify the rape of a foreign national at her own home in Bandra by a small-time crook? How could one rape a girl in a moving bus? How does one explain the rape of a woman in India every 20 minutes? And where does a Woman’s Day stand in response to this barbarism?

We are hypocrites. Our age-old adage starts with ‘Mata’, then proceeds to ‘Pita, Guru and Deivam’; incidentally our favourite expletive too starts with ‘madar@#$!’ The same race that has worshipped man and woman as equal in the form of Ardhanarishwara have pushed many a woman in her late husband’s funeral pyre. Many of us ogle shamelessly at other woman but believe in covering up our wife in a burqa or a ghoonghat. The Indian woman is the Goddess who needs to be appeased and at the same time the sacrificial lamb that gets  butchered. Similarly many men pay lip service to Women’s Day only because they know that the remaining 364 days belong to them.

I wait for the day when we won’t need a particular day to celebrate womanhood because that is the true measure of equality. Till then we have nothing to be proud of because it is just a Women’s Day in a Man’s World.

Prashant Shankarnarayan is a mediaperson who is constantly on the lookout for content and auto rickshaws in Mumbai. The Soft Coroner attempts to dissect situations that look innocuous at the surface but reveal uncomfortable complexities after a thorough post mortem.

(Picture courtesy charteredbanker.com)

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