I travel extensively for work. When I do, I rarely loiter, laze or absorb things around me. As I am told, when I travel, I either am reading intently or frowning at anyone who is preventing me from reading.
But there are times when the Universe has Other Plans for us: during a recent tour late last month, the Universe caught me firmly by the arm. Thus propelled by the Universe, I looked up from my book at a traffic signal and saw a large advertisement for the ‘Himmat’ app.
For the reader without knowledge of Urdu, ‘himmat’ translates into ‘courage.’ I knew this was targeted at women users and initiated by the Delhi Police. Intrigued, I closed my book. And Googled the app.
To start with, most women I knew, met or came across were already courageous. Daily life for women in our country requires courage. It may not be of the 18 days in the war front kind of courage, but it is courage nevertheless. And courage more so because women are not trained like soldiers are, they receive no salaries to put their lives in the line of fire, their lives are not subsidised by the taxpayers monies, they do not get national awards for being women. But they do get up every morning, go about being who they are, working at home, at offices, factories, farms, giving birth along the way, often suffering crippling discrimination and violence on a daily basis. So yes, courage it surely is.
These women clearly had not waited for this Himmat app to gather the kind of courage and resilience I knew them to possess.
What was also intriguing was that the app worked to set off an alarm at the nearest Police Station or mobile van from the user. Would anyone with an intention to harass, stalk, attack, maul or rape a woman do so within shouting distance of a police station?
It would then be common sense that such acts were being diagnosed by the app user at a certain distance from the police. And it would require the police a certain amount of time to get to the spot. By when anything could happen.
To me, as a woman travelling often alone, often at odd hours, often in unknown areas, this would hardly give me any further courage. And it seemed to me that this app was clearly designed by a man. Or to be fair, by a person who had not experienced life as a woman.
The reader may take a look at the reviews on Google Play Store – almost all the women users were specifying practical reasons why it didn’t work while all the men said
“This app is amazing” or
“It is too best app for safety of womans is app se sabhko madad mili I hope it will be a protective app for all womans”
Or my favourite:
“Very good aap maine galti se sos ho Gaya sorry or quick response nice.”
I will return to this issue later in this post. But the ideology and praxis of the Himmat app started a long list of questions in my head about why we need an app of this kind.
Musing on this, I entered the airport and went through the rituals getting to the flight.
The Universe was very determined that evening and as I stood in line at the security check, I heard an animated discussion nearby on the newly available car rentals for the woman traveller.
Acknowledging the intention of the Universe, I put away my book and googled this service. Interestingly called ‘Sakha’ this was a taxi service that could be used by women only or men travelling with their families. All their taxi drivers were women.
The app went on to provide a list of competencies that the women drivers had. This included self-defence training. Yet, it was called ‘Sakha’ which translates into ‘male friend/companion.’ What did that mean - that in being drivers, the women would be equivalent to men? Become men? Isn’t that what we wanted? Or is that what we wanted?
Through the flight I was unable to return to my book or sleep. Women had obviously progressed. Here I was, a single, female traveller, willing and able to travel for work across the country and abroad.
This one identity itself had to be backed by an immense body of work by hundreds and millions of people across the world in breaking stereotypes and establishing new norms. But what were these new norms? Were they, merely in disguise, the old norms?
These thoughts stayed with me – all in a confused state, till I arrived at my destination and my accommodation for the next 2 days. While still ruminating on them and checking in at the hotel, I was proudly informed by the (male) receptionist that I had been upgraded to facilities that were designed especially for people like me. Before I could ask who people like me were, he said triumphantly – the Single Female Traveller!
I knew I should be have been grateful for the promised upgrade but this Himmat and Sakha thing was already raising uncomfortable questions at the back of my head.
I went up the elevator more curious than grateful. Imagine how many more questions sprang up, argued, hauled in Patriarchy and Capitalism and created a lot of noise inside my head, when I counted these ‘facilities’ as
· A CCTV camera set up privy to the room
· 2 sanitary napkins in the bathroom (not a full packet, not the more luxurious ones, not the covered ones that have a peel off cover, not even the large sized ones, just 2 separate sanitary napkins looking forlorn in the spangly kind of pouch one uses to keep earrings)
That was it. A succinct summary then, of every threshold I had crossed, every stereotype I had broken, every achievement I had made. My entire existence as a Single Female Traveller summed up in these two parameters – a CCTV arrangement and 2 sanitary napkins.
Once again, I felt that these ‘facilities’ were designed by a man/person who does not have lived experiences as a woman. Very telling it was. Very stark. Like marking two ends of a spectrum of what women’s lives were perceived to be – menstruation – that relentless marker of my womanhood. And the fear of everything terrible that could happen to me because I menstruate – to be kept at bay by the kind and generous hotel management, by that ominous looking TV screen in the room.
By now, all my queries and confusions had begun to coalesce into one area of enquiry – why was nothing targeted at men? If they were the perpetrators (to be fair, women may definitely be harassed and attacked by women and even animals, but as far as statistics go, men were leading), why couldn’t we take a stand against men? Or question such behaviour?
In all the three things I experienced that evening, it would have made the most sense if the remedies were targeted at the perpetrators.
Why did we not have an app for men to use when they felt the urge to harass a woman? Why did we not have a taxi service that segregated men of a certain age and predisposition? I am not in favour of segregation at all, but if we HAVE to segregate, why remove me? I haven’t done anything awful. I’m not even thinking about it, that’s not the way I work. Why not remove the person who is exploring the awful thoughts? Why teach women self-defence? Why not teach men non-violence? Why is non-violence such a great idea for men to espouse in politics but not for their relationship with women?
And in that hotel, why put me behind bars? And advertise it to boot! If this was standard practice, everyone would know that the rooms fitted with cameras had single women guests.
Why not put a gentle but firm reminder at the reception that the hotel had a zero tolerance policy on harassment of guests? I wouldn’t mind going a little further and have the hotel collect a discreet list of such problematic guests and politely decline to give them accommodation the next time they walk in. This is a well-established and respected national chain of hotels – share this list across their hotels, I would add. And I say keep it discreet and polite only because I am a nice person and do not believe in violence.
With the Himmat app, if you have to have it, why not have a set of services that focusses on the miscreants? For example, why not have the phone turned into an ambulance like alarm, a really loud one that everyone learns to recognise and respond to? Or turn into a blinding light that throws the perpetrator off balance? If we go a step further – why not the app turns the light on, takes an immediate set of photos of the miscreant(s) and sends it immediately to a whole network of police stations, women’s groups, Resident Welfare Associations – anything that’s nearby. And of course to the police station. This would also take into account that the Police Stations themselves are sometimes the location of such discriminatory and violent behaviour.
It seems odd to me that app development on such lines is limited – apps seem to be able to do almost anything these days. Why is all this about women and not men? Should it not be about men?
But wait – there was one more phenomenon that was waiting for me on this curve. The next day, I read in the papers that a very well-known music director was leading the task of setting up an all-women’s orchestra in a specific part of the world. The article went on to say that this would allow the very best of the talent to come together – amongst other things. Neither the music director, nor the geography is important – the thinking behind it is.
If we have an all-female orchestra, are they going to play to an all-female audience? If women are going to use an all-female taxi service to go be part of an all-female audience listening to an orchestra that is all female, or live in hotels that female only areas earmarked – how would this be any different from segregation? It wouldn’t. Only it would be mobile. Like our phones. Earlier, when we needed to use the phone, we had to be in one place and stay there. But now we can move with the phone.
Similarly it seems to me with women – earlier if we were women, we would have to be in one place and stay there, surrounded only by other women. Now we can move about, but with the entire moving about similarly segregated. Segregation 2.0.
And worse, no one’s still talking to the men.
As feminists we did not, do not want a world without men. We want full ecological diversity. We want a world which is peaceful. One that by default then includes all the indicators of peace – justice, equality, well-being, harmony with Nature, laughter, love, emancipation, intellect, aesthetics – then we can be true human beings.
We want a world where our needs are not limited to sanitary napkins (a calm, quiet room with an excellent selection of films to watch, books to read, a pool to swim away the days exhaustion, throw in a spa session, a selection of international and national newspapers – a personal favourite – acknowledgement that in addition to our uterus we also had brains - and a good meal – I’d be very happy indeed. We are easy to please, us women).
Feminism is not a women-only ideology. Simply because women do not exist only for other women. They have a particular place in the fascinating and magical world we live in – they have a roles and responsibilities like every other living being on earth. Women and hence everything that is networked to them can attain their full potential only if they are in this particular place.
Feminism is about rearranging the existing structure – which is one that keeps women away from this place, at a detriment to everything connected to them – yes, including men. Feminism is about creating new structures which bring women where they are meant to be. It is not about a pink themed, freebie filled day that offers me one day specials (I’m still trying to get my head around the women’s day offer from the pest control company) or blurbs and messages about how incredible I am. It is, as we feminists have said for ever so long – making the personal political.
In strength, support and solidarity for a better world. And a body politic that is not separate from my personal lived experience as a woman.
