With its deep echoes with the Nirbhaya incident 12 years ago, the recent rape and murder of a doctor at R.G. Kar, Kolkata has once again brought back the near impossibility for women to have safe and secure lives into sharp relief. The presence of women in public spaces continues to be subjected to violence, aggression and discomfort. When it comes to women at midnight, the problems increase manyfold.
On December 31, 2012, just a few days after Nirbhaya, a student who was brutally gangraped in a moving bus in Delhi on December 16 the same year, Maya Krishna Rao, a veteran theatre practitioner, performed ‘Walk’ for the first time at a gathering in Munirka — where Nirbhaya had boarded that bus on December 16, 2012.
These were some of the lines of her piece:
Not 5, 6 not 7, not 8 at 12 midnight I want to walk the street
I will hold on my own lamp if you like on 22000 streets that the police commissioner says are not lit in Delhi
I will walk
I will take a bus
I will sit in a park
I will try not to be afraid of the dark
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Maybe we just sit, we lie, we don’t talk
AdvertisementI will walk with you
Don’t lie in bed just roll out and walk in the night
Advertisement12, 2 baje paune teen sadhe chaar walk think
I will walk with you don’t walk with him don’t vote for him don’t give him a job
Maybe we’ll just lie on a bench. Maybe we’ll just gaze up at the stars
I will walk
To my ears, this was a war cry. This theatre piece was what first got me thinking about walking as a practice and the politics of walking in the city.
After the 2012 case, women’s safety became a topic of interest for the Indian state. But also, citizen action fuelled a lot of the changes that we saw over the next few years. Many artists responded with their work, many initiatives took shape, and much was written, debated, and discussed. And the law saw a welcome change.
Four years later, it was perhaps a desire to put the lines of Maya’s piece to test that I thought of walking for 24 hours in Delhi. I was interested in understanding fatigue — as experienced in women’s bodies, as experienced by cities. I wanted to know what happens when a woman walks her city all day, all night, traverses the length and breadth of it. In the span of 24 hours, the night arrived, with its impossibilities for women. So I gave a call out on Facebook and we walked as a mixed group. That’s how Women Walk at Midnight (WWaM) was born in February 2016.
In the last weeks, with the ‘Reclaim the night’ protests having spread to different cities in response to the Kolkata rape and murder, we have been reminded for the need to walk at midnight. But its not enough to walk once. We have to walk again and again even when there seems to be no real reason.
Over the last eight years, women have walked almost every month in this city in different neighbourhoods. WWaM was built as an artistic practice since 2016 that could be adopted and adapted by any woman in any city. The attempt is not only to normalise the presence of women’s bodies in the public after ‘forbidden’ hours, but also to strengthen the resolve within women themselves — to create a space for courage and camaraderie with every walk. The more we walk, the more we change, the more our city changes. And we do it with joy.
WWaM has travelled to several other cities — it has built and paused chapters in Bangalore, Noida and Faridabad in India, Cape Town in South Africa, a chapter in the making in Heidelberg in Germany and one-off walks in Marseille in France, Sao Paolo in Brazil and Brussels in Belgium. The practice has given rise to a loose community of women who take it upon themselves to occupy the night, month after month until one day, women will walk at midnight — alone or accompanied by other women — everywhere in the world.
From the first walk in Cape Town in August 2022. Photo: Arranged by the author
Early on in developing the practice in Delhi, we recognised a very real difficulty of the city of Delhi — its distances and the absolute lack of public transport after a certain hour. To work around these and to also reach beyond only those areas of Delhi that I knew, the neighbourhood model was developed — a woman from a different neighbourhood, each month takes us around her home, her gullies, her chaurahas… perhaps with us she walks into lanes she wouldn’t otherwise… and slowly women from that neighbourhood would gather and continue to walk and occupy their streets.
We begin our walks in Delhi around 10:00-10:30 pm. The city is wide awake at this time. We usually walk on the weekend — either a Friday or a Saturday night — to allow for walkers to recover the next morning. We end up being out and about till at least 1 am.
Over the last few years, many, many women have walked with us. College students join us, many from outside Delhi who want to see the city or couldn’t ever dare to take a walk like this in their hometown. Many of them do not inform their parents that they are out on a walk like this. Several young women working in the city join us, many journalists who want to write about it, scholars who make this part of their research, mothers come with their daughters, ladies from morning walking groups join in. At the end of each walk, when we do a small discussion before booking our cabs and autos, the reasons to join the walks are consistently the same year after year — the desire to get over the fear, to walk in an unwalkable city, to see what they cannot alone, meet other women who think like them, to see and smell the night, to feel, even for a small while, that the city belongs to them.
As we started to walk in different neighbourhoods and areas of Delhi we started to encounter the night and its realities. Between 2016 and 2018, there were very few other women on the streets after a certain time. When we walked as a group, no matter how big or small, we used to be a real spectacle. This was true even of posh areas around South Delhi.
The violence of the city would hit us on every walk. On a walk starting from Hauz Khas on the road outside Hauz Khas Village, cars followed us, stopped and offered to take us with them. These men in their cars were especially ‘excited’ at the sight of the white women in our walking group.
On a Women’s Day walk towards Lodhi Road in Central Delhi, we were followed by a young man to the extent that we abandoned the walk mid-way and went home. We were afraid and as the person who ‘organised’ the walk, I felt responsible for the safety of the younger women with us. No matter what we tried, the young man would not stop following us. Finally, we hailed an autorickshaw. The driver stopped and when told about this man following us, took out a lathi from his auto and beat the young man as the young man masturbated looking at us. We grappled with the irrationality of our fear for days after. We were eight women. He was one.
On many of the walks, we have encountered some other women on the streets — some asleep, some awake. These include homeless women and young girls sleeping wrapped deep under their bedding. They are barely visible, unlike the homeless men next to them. Then, there are scores of women outside AIIMS sleeping next to families. These are people who have come from out of town to get treatment for themselves or their kin and have nowhere else to go as they wait days on end for their appointments. Some of this has been addressed by the night shelters erected by the Delhi government.
The waking women of the night have usually been those getting ice cream with their families or taking a walk in their neighbourhood, but hardly ever alone and never just women. The unaccompanied waking women we encounter are sex workers — both cis women and trans women. But they don’t want to have anything to do with us. They step away from us and we too have not known how and if to approach them. While walking in Dwarka, we encountered a stretch that belonged to them. We changed the side of the road we were walking on, for the sake of keeping the distance that they signaled. Both looked at each other. But we did not walk together.
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In all our years of walking, we have never encountered a woman on a wheelchair soaking the city up at night. The city is so difficult for people with disabilities even during the day with its crumbled infrastructure and potentially unfriendly citizens. We also have not been able to include her on a ‘walk’ with us.
On one of our first all-women’s walks around central Delhi, we witnessed a brawl between a group of speech and hearing-impaired persons. There was a full-blown fight underway in sign language. One cis woman and one trans woman were part of this very large group of men. We stopped out of concern but were unable to understand anything. Eventually, a PCR came up and broke up the fight. The two women hid in our group of walkers to get away from all the men and the police. They walked with us for a while, then thanked us and disappeared. I have never been able to understand entirely what to make of this incident. The only thing that can be said is that we witnessed this because we were out at night. And our presence gave shelter to two women who needed it
We have had several small and quieter walks that very few have joined… and almost no one from the neighbourhood. For one walk, we travelled to Shahadra. Our guide of the night was Aatika Singh. The metro from Kashmere Gate towards Shahadra was a bit empty. We sat in the ladies’ compartment. It was a Saturday night and young women dressed in their Saturday best had been out and about. They were returning home… It was around 10 pm. I thought of what 10 pm means to so many of us living with parents and trying to take our first steps toward freedom in our own lives… it’s late. Beyond a respectable hour. And often referred to as Midnight (aadhi raat). I noticed how the metro, its feeling of being safer than buses or autos and its reach to so many previously unconnected parts of Delhi has given women a sense of mobility that they had not had before.
We got off at the Shahadra metro station and started our walk. Everything changed. The more we moved away from the metro station, the only very well-lit and public spot in that area, we encountered only men on bikes, dogs, and as we moved closer to the area where our guide lived, we encountered a city divided by caste, class and choices of standard of living made for these divided areas. Here, Aatika told us, the night-time is safer than the day. In the daytime, women couldn’t walk down their gully without comments being passed on them. We have not been on another walk to Shahadra. It’s tough to revisit areas that are not ‘appetizing’ for the nightwalkers. It takes a different kind of work to mobilise local women in areas that we don’t belong to. This work is to be done over a longer period, slowly and stubbornly.
We often think about questions of inclusivity of the walks and try to keep opening up and reach women we cannot so easily within our networks and circuits. This has been a huge challenge for us. In the city of Delhi, so many of us become outsiders when we travel to a different part of it.
We have realised that perhaps not everyone wants to walk at night. For some women – working women, labouring women, women taking care of families — rest is the pleasure they need. And not a midnight walk.
But this realisation is upturned entirely when we walk into a place like Delhi University. Our guide of the night was Nabila Ansari. While we waited for our group to gather at the Vishwa Vidyalaya metro station, we were met by a sizable deployment of security personnel. They had come to know about this walk and had prepared.
For our safety they said. But it was obvious it was for surveillance and to make sure that we ‘behave ourselves’. As we began our walk, a group of seven-eight police persons started to walk behind us. I objected and told them this was not possible. We do not want to be followed by male constables. A deal was struck. Three women constables were to walk with us – “Aap apna kaam kijiye, enjoy kijiye… hume humara duty karne dijiye (You do your work, enjoy yourselves, let us do our duty).”
Left with little choice, we began to walk. As we walked, cars passed us by and catcalled us, men on rickshaws gawked. More and more women joined us. The majority of the population out on the roads were men. We, a group of women, were being escorted by police personnel and PCR vans. For ‘safety’. This distressed all of us. When we paused in front of the Arts Faculty, someone said – “we thought this is a walk for freedom and we will feel empowered but we are not allowed to walk by ourselves!”
It was also around the same time, that the three women constables walking with us thought it was time for them to climb back into the PCR and follow us in the car. At the end of the walk when I asked some of the lady constables how they would go back home, one of them told me – my husband will come to pick me up. I said — “ To apki problem bhi humari problem jaisi hai (So your problem is also like our problem).”
“Nahi, nahi….uniform mein to hum phir bhi theek hai…civils mein to hum sab aurateen ek hi jaisi hai (No, no… we are still ok in uniform… but in civils, we are like any other women).”
And so, we continue to walk.
Scribblings from a 12-hour walk in New Delhi in August 2019. Photo: Arranged by the author
We walked around Jamia for the first time during the CAA protest. There was a different jazba (passion) on the streets of many parts of Delhi during that protest. It was, after all-women led. Our group of walkers, a large group had gathered which would often merge with the general public out and about on the roads anyway. So many women were out at night in those days of the protest.
The second walk in Jamia took place after the lockdown guided by Anam Ibraheem. Four of us showed up. Many registered but didn’t show. This is not particular to Jamia. This happens quite regularly. People register. And don’t show up. We are yet to figure out why this is. Someone once said that this is a malaise that plagues all Delhi events. Perhaps. I do feel though that public gatherings around causes, however big or small, have not recovered in numbers after the lockdown. But nightlife otherwise has flourished.
At the end of the second walk in Jamia, we decided to do another walk and see what happens there. We discussed how people not showing up is a sign of the need to walk and not the other way around. The third walk in Jamia happened a few months later. More than 30 women showed up. It was a joyful, vibrant group. We were a spectacle. Quizzicle and somewhat intrusive eyes gazed at us. An air of shock laced with disapproval followed us through our walk but the 30-odd-strong group refused to be perturbed by what was on the outside. For us, we were enough. More than enough. The walk ended at the community centre in New Friends Colony (NFC) and there as we gathered for some final thoughts, women started noticing their brothers and cousins out and about, coming up to them and asking them — tum yahan kya kar rahi ho (what are you doing here)?
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Our final photo was taken by one of these brothers. We often involve the men to do this so that none of us get left out.
Now we are preparing for a fifth walk in Jamia.
Eight years since WWaM started, the city is different. It has fewer dark corners and so many more women are out and about though hardly ever unaccompanied by family or friends and hardly ever just women. There is a stark difference in the city pre-lockdown and post-lockdown. Once the lockdowns were lifted, people occupied the city with a vengeance… not the women though. The women still operated the same way – always accompanied, never alone.
Night life in the city has seen a massive upscale and with this, the life of the city at night has been extended. It sleeps far later. The government’s policy to add street lights has changed the feel of this city. G20 added colours that seem alien to Delhi. When we walk in many parts of the city, it’s difficult to notice the night.
We are not done yet. We have barely scraped the surface of this city. We adjust, shift and move with the movement of the city, the country, us. We have done midnight picnics, 12 hour walks, snuck into parks, soaked in street art and now are prepping to add bus routes to our midnight jaunt.
We continue to walk every month.
While Delhi has become far safer in the past few years, it remains, still, a city unfriendly to women. Younger women narrate again and again in our walks of how their fathers don’t allow them to be out or their brothers insist they behave a certain way or when the woman who comes to cook at my home speaks about how the gents in the bus stood a bit too close to her. And we hear of walkers from other parts of the country describe how comparatively Delhi is a haven… that they could never imagine doing this where they come from — Lucknow, Saharanpur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Rampur, Chandigarh — but after a few walks they wonder… is it possible? Perhaps it is.
In the last weeks itself, we have woken up to multiple incidents of assault including a nurse raped and murdered in Uttarakhand and four year old girls in a school in Maharashtra. Earlier this year, we read about a tourist being gang-raped in Jharkhand.
When we walk together, we realise that unfortunately, we are not alone. We knew that always, but to walk together gives us something else – solidarity. A community. A way to strengthen the resistance inside us is by confronting our fears and occupying space.
And so, we walk. In protest. In solidarity. In rage.
For joy. For pleasure. And to insist that we are here.
We walk, when we want to, where we want to.
We walk because we can!
Women Walk at Midnight is the practice of women walking, together, at night, on the streets of our cities.
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Mallika Taneja is a theater artist living and working in New Delhi. She started Women Walk at Midnight in 2016.
