By Rajan Narayan
THE Night Market of Stories at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2024 is an event which is aimed at empowering women. It is part of the movement of “Reclaiming the Night” for women. The movement for reclaiming the night arose from the fact that it is considered unsafe for a women to go out at night in most parts of India.
Indeed, going out at night alone without a male escort is almost impossible for most women. This includes just partying or going out to a restaurant or a night club or even a late night film or music concert and perhaps even taking a walk on the beach solo at night. It’s not easy for women who work late into the night. Nightshifts for women are very rare though even in Goa the pharma industry has successfully introduced night shifts for them.
There are many women and particularly women in media who have to work late into the night. This is also true of female resident doctors in hospitals and other female professionals like physiotherapists who visit patients at home. All women always runs the risk of being waylaid, molested or even raped, if they venture out alone even during the day, let alone at night (depending of course on what kind of areas they visit).
GOA SAFE!
RELATIVELY of course Goa and Panaji city are safe for women able to venture out alone till the late hours without too many fears about being eve-teased or harassed. But even so the lack of decent and safe late night public transport, makes it difficult for women without a vehicle of their own, to venture out except in the case of their own car or a hired car.
The Night Market Stories is one of ongoing sessions at the multi-cultural Serendipity Art Festival going on currently in capital city Panaji. These sessions refer to opportunities to interact with women of the market place and of substance at the Panaji market between 10.30pm and 11.30pm. This event features several Goan women of substance and style like Prashanti Talpankar, a veteran actress in Konkani and Marathi films and who is also deeply involved in street theatre.
Recently, she was involved in a street play to protest against the shoddy renovation of the Kala Academy. Young Prashanti, at the age of 25, went on an indefinite hunger strike way back in 1989 to force the then speaker of the Legislative Assembly Dayanand Nagvekar to resign. Narvekar was accused of molesting a young women staffer in his Speaker’s office.
The other women participating in the event are Padmashri Josalker, a Goa- based theatre designer and educationalist, who has been the director of the Kala Academy’s school of drama for 18 years. There is also Tallulah D’Silva, an architect who specializes in cost effective and sustainable building practices. And there is theatre personality researcher and teacher Antara Bhide, who has directed and acted in plays in many Indian languages.
You will also have an opportunity to meet young Goan poet Mamata Verlekar, assistant professor of Hindi at Goa University. Interact with Prajakta Kavlekar who acted in 34 plays, films and web series. Amongst the women players are also Praveen Kannanur of the Tamil theatre company Magic Lantern. Here’s an opportunity for women of all ages and walks of life to learn how to live their life independently, find support from those who are already empowered.
MANY WOMEN OF SUBSTANCE
I HAVE been fortunate in meeting and interacting with many women of substance in Goa. Ranging from people from my own generation such as Libia Lobo Sardesai who along with companion and later husband Vaman Sardesai ran a radio station from Londa, as part of Goa’s Liberation story. There are women who took an active part in politics and public life in Goa like the late Victoria Fernandes (popularly called Mummy Dearest) and Nirmala Sawant, a memorable power minister, also president of the Goa Chamber of Commerce at one time. Second generation of women are Pratima Coutinho and Babita Angle Prabhudesai who is a pathologist who are still active in the Civic affairs of Margao city. Other notable activists are Patricia Pinto, who has been and still is part of every major civic movement.
There is Sabina Martins, who co-founded the Bailacho Saad collective, fighting for women’s rights. We cannot miss out on teacher Fatima Pinto of the Pinto Rosario family, who was briefly Transport minister for Goa when Dr Wilfred D’Souza was the chief minister. A young Fatima, was caught behind the wheel at a KTC bus stop, when the drivers went on strike. A brave band of women have always led from the front in Goa regardless of it be a political or business or academic or sporting situation of crisis. In sports, consider icons like Talasha Prabhu in swimming, badminton star Tanisha Crasto, not to mention chess prodigy Ivana Maria Furtado.
Reclaiming the night is a movement launched across the world for women to be participate in the social and cultural life of a place without fear and even without male escorts. The concept is to encourage women to assert themselves and choose career options traditionally considered the exclusive preserve of men. An interesting example is that of Shikha, the daughter of a Hindi teacher at the Central School in Verem. Shikha, a domicile in Goa, did her engineering degree from the Goa College of engineering. She then joined the Indian Air Force and is now a senior squadron leader. Shikha Pandey is also a member of Indian cricket team. Indeed, sports has been a major avenue of the empowerment of women.
ON PAR WITH MEN
A RECOGNITION of the empowerment of women is the fact that women cricket players in the Premier League now get pay on par with male cricketers. At the IPL auction for women players Simran Shaikh was bought for Rs1.9 crore by her Mumbai team. The captain of the women’s team got Rs3.40 crore for playing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru. In badminton the superstar has been Sindhu Nehwal, who is soon to get married to an IT software engineer from Hyderabad. Sindhu has won back gold medals in two Olympics.
Perhaps the supermodel for women in sports is Phogat who was disqualified at the Paris Olympics for being slightly overweight after reaching the finals in her weightlifting category. Vinesh Phogat, who fought against sexual harassment of women wrestlers, recently contested and won the election in the Haryana assembly.
In politics at the national level, several Indian women have made it to the top. Notably this includes Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of the Congress party, Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, and even actor Jaya Bachchan who is a Rajya Sabha member who dared to take on the Vice President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar.
The challenge for women has been to follow their dreams without being held back by men. This does not mean that women have to be feminists. They can be independent even within a marriage. The requirement is that the men should be supportive. The problem is that men do feel threatened by independent women. Unfortunately, women who are successful professionals are very often forced to do double shifts in that they have to manage both their home as well as their career. Former chairperson of Pepsi Global, Indra Nooyi, revealed that when she was elevated to the top post in the multinational, her mother-in-law asked her if she had remembered to get the milk for the next morning’s coffee.
Women worldwide have fought and broken the glass ceiling to the advancement of women to the top of the rung in leadership. This did not stop Kamala Harris from contesting the presidency of the United States or prevent Giorgia Meloni from becoming president of Italy. Back home in India, even the BJP was compelled to nominate Droupadi Murmu as president.
There are of course problems with the empowerment of women. A major issue in reclaiming the night is transport. In most of Goa, there is no transport even in the state capital Panaji, let alone from the beach belt of the nearest village or town. It is a matter of shame that Goa has been unable to do anything about the harassment of women tourists on the beaches of Goa.
TAKE THE INITIATIVE!
IT is women who have to take the initiative to fight for basic facilities to enable them to be as independent as men. Events like the Panaji night market of stories being held at the Panaji market from December 19- 21, 2024, is bound to strengthen the determination of women to reclaim their place in a needlessly male-dominated world.