Let us look at the things in a day that a woman assesses for risk and safety, right from getting up, to going back to bed, safely.
Beep beep goes the alarm, and so we wake up, pay the bathroom a visit, have breakfast and just get on with our lives. This is the general gist of mornings for most of us, right? Well, yes, but this is an awfully simplified description befit to a people in a parallel universe with somewhat uniform experiences.
Here, in urban Indian society, experiences differ from one person to another. And when it comes to us women, the picture would not look so clean.
Our days cannot be described in one-liners, our lives cannot be portrayed in four brush strokes, but there would be intricacy and footnotes in all paintings and all descriptions. That is how our minds work, or how the world around us has moulded our minds to work.
A single woman living in a metropolitan city in India (in fact, anywhere in the world) must think about her day ahead, the work she needs to finish, the errands she needs to run, all while keeping in her mind how to keep her body safe from abusers in alleys, gropers on public vehicles and stares at her workplace. Women have to assess everything for risk and safety, and each measure taken for prevention of risk can be traced over the timeline of a typical day.
Let us take a look at a typical day out of Rashmi’s life. She lives in the big city because her small-town home brings warmth but not many career prospects. She lives on her own, seeks love on her own terms but still keeps an emergency number on speed dial in her phone, you know, just in case. She secured her dream job, but still worries about her security on an empty stretch of road.
On the other hand, there is Ajay who lives in a similar city and works in a similar job sector. His daily routine consists of all the same things, minus the risk assessment. He wouldn’t travel alone with a bag full of cash, but we all know what sort of risk is being discussed here.
Here is a look at one day in the lives of these seemingly similar persons, only to discover how different their lives are.
We would love to have you, our readers, share your experiences. Do comment!
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