By Pallavi Kamat, Mumbai, India, SSH Correspondent
All of us at some point in time have faced street harassment in one form or the other. But most of us choose to remain silent and bear it. At times, we may discuss it amongst our group of friends and curse the eve-teasing that we are subject to.
But not Jasmeen Patheja. She initiated a community/public art project called Blank Noise in August 2003 in Bangalore which seeks to confront street harassment.
Blank Noise asks women to be active ‘Action Heroes’ and reclaim the streets which they seek to make safe. At the same time, it also asks men to get involved in their events and activities. Jasmeen believes that making cities safer for women is not a woman’s responsibility alone.
The project is run almost entirely by volunteers who are keen to make a difference. It works on the premise that while individually we may face harassment, collectively, as a group, we can stand up to it; we can share our experiences and resolve it.
Some of Blank Noise’s campaigns include ‘I Never Ask For It’ [the typical response when a woman is assaulted on the street is that she probably asked for it – by staying out late, by dressing in a particular way, by taking an unsafe street, etc.], ‘Safe City Pledge’ and ‘Talk To Me’.
One of their experiments involved women standing on the zebra crossing at a traffic signal in a bid to assert themselves and reclaim the streets from lecherous glances and other unpleasant experiences. Each of the volunteers had a letter pasted on the front of their clothes – collecting the letters read ‘Y R U LOOKING AT ME?’ Some passers-by even questioned the volunteers about the same.
Another experiment (‘Talk To Me’) involved putting up a couple of tables in Bangalore’s infamous Rapist Lane where volunteers invited complete strangers to stop and talk with them. At the end of the conversation, the volunteer offered a rose to the stranger.
The ‘Safe City Pledge’ initiative, which was launched following the gruesome rape in Delhi in December-2012 focuses on building safe cities and identifying an individual’s role in making his or her city safe.
Blank Noise can be contacted at http://blog.blanknoise.org/ or on Twitter at @BLANK_NOISE.
Pallavi is a qualified Chartered Accountant and a Commerce Graduate from the University of Mumbai, India, with around 12 years of experience working in the corporate sector. Follow her on Twitter, @pallavisms.
