Girls turn to art to illustrate challenges in women’s safety

The absence of street lights in their bastis is the issue most highlighted in ‘Breaking the Silence: Kishoriyon ki nazar se,’ an exhibition of creative expressions by Vacha’s members being held at the Gyan Ashram campus, Andheri East

MUMBAI: The city’s well-lit roads are one of the reasons that qualifies it as the safest city in the country for women. However, that feature does not extend to every part of the city, reveals an exhibition being held over the weekend by the NGO Vacha, the women’s group that has been working among adolescent girls in the city’s slums since 1995.

Girls turn to art to illustrate challenges in women’s safety

The absence of street lights in their bastis is the issue most highlighted in ‘Breaking the Silence: Kishoriyon ki nazar se,’ an exhibition of creative expressions by Vacha’s members being held at the Gyan Ashram campus, Andheri East. In the version of the board game ‘Snakes and Ladders’ a square showing a well-lit space came at  the top  of a Ladder, signifying positivity.

Similarly, a series of telling pictures taken by the girls, for whom Vacha regularly holds photography workshops, shows single silhouettes walking in dark passages; and, a sequence of posters titled ‘Before and After,’ showing dimly lit gardens with girls being harassed and dark lanes leading to community toilets, constitute a majority of the ‘Before’ posters, while well-lit streets with smiling girls and boys sulking under the bright lights, deprived of the cover of darkness constitute the ‘After’ posters.

Vacha trains its members not only to acquire the confidence to voice their grievances, but also act on them. Its members Priya Gupta and Kavita Nishad explained that they had first raised the issue of missing streetlights in Jogeshwari East’s Sanjay Nagar, among residents in the past before taking up the demand for streetlights with the authorities at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). When the matter was resolved by the civic body, everyone thanked them, except the men who would harass them in the dark, they said, in jest.

Sexual harassment on the streets is the second most visible subject in the exhibition: a street corner where a group of boys hung around counted as a ‘Snake’ (in the ‘Snakes and Ladders’ game), while a couple of photographs show groups of boys and grown men hanging around outside women’s community toilets.

Then, there are photographs taken by the girls that make you flinch: insides of community toilets; piles of garbage stacked on the thoroughfares of their bastis, and the pitiable state of parks near the bastis.

One corner of the exhibition is devoted to umbrellas on which the girls had painted slogans. “We have our own newsletter; we have painted T-shirts with slogans; this time we thought why not use umbrellas to convey our message?” said Pooja. Not only had they carried these umbrellas in their Republic Day rallies this year, but they have also used them as regular umbrellas, drawing appreciative queries from passers-by. ‘Sir utha aur seena taan, bhai behen ek sammaan’ said one umbrella while another dismissed the existence of ‘bhoot pret’.

Vacha’s members join the group for various reasons: to learn English or craft; but most of them stay on as their many unresolved issues become focus of discussions. Shy girls, not encouraged to talk at home, acquire a confidence that forces their families into seeing them as independent individuals worthy of attention. As had happened when one of the girls had broken a taboo, still practised, by touching a pickle jar while she was menstruating, to convince her mother that her touch would not spoil the pickle; and the elder brother of another had offered to cook dinner so that she could attend a Vacha meeting.