On her club night this Saturday, Sakshi Rastogi will drink and dance with renewed purpose. “I’m going to make a point, to assert my individuality,” said Rastogi, a 27-year-old Cuffe Parade resident.
Rastogi has asked 13 of her women friends along to Zenzi Mills, Lower Parel’s hip, new, grunge party destination, for a preview of One Night Stand, an evening for ‘pubgoing, loose and forward women’.
“Sri Rama Sene’s moral policing at Mangalore pubs in January shook us... The event is an act of protest, our way of asserting that we are two genders but one species. So only one set of rules must apply,” said Luke Sequeira, founder of Village Idiot Ventures, a Goa-based events and travel services company.
Sequeira has teamed up with party managers across 12 cities, including Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Pune, Goa, Chandigarh, Cochin, Kolkata and Baroda, to organise this evening of collective defiance in mid-June. And even Dubai will part of it.
“We chose an attention-grabbing name for it to generate large amounts of noise. We wanted to highlight that the darker connotation of One Night Stand is a personal choice that both men and women are entitled to make,” 23-year-old Sequeira said.
On April 25, Pre’Laid, the preview of One Night Stand, will be held at clubs and lounges in Goa, Mumbai and Baroda. “We’re hoping this preview will highlight the event in other cities. Bangalore has banned dancing while Baroda has a ban on alcohol,” said Kenneth Lobo, director, Bombay Elekktrik Projekt, organisers of the Mumbai event.
{{/usCountry}}On April 25, Pre’Laid, the preview of One Night Stand, will be held at clubs and lounges in Goa, Mumbai and Baroda. “We’re hoping this preview will highlight the event in other cities. Bangalore has banned dancing while Baroda has a ban on alcohol,” said Kenneth Lobo, director, Bombay Elekktrik Projekt, organisers of the Mumbai event.
{{/usCountry}}“The moral judgements made by the Sri Rama Sene were absurd. Those pub attacks were a personal insult to women. One Night Stand is a cool expression of defiance,” said Vasundhara Srinivasan (24), who will party with her seven female friends.
While the event will likely go underground in Bangalore, organisers regret not being able to host it in Mangalore. “That would be most symbolic but we cannot risk the security of women,” said Sequeira.