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By Arshia Sattar India's metropolitan cities allow single women economic and professional freedom. But the five single women from New Delhi featured in this documentary find their personal freedom compromised
(English, 29 mins, 2002)
Directed by Anupama Srinivasan
Produced by PSBT Five single women, differing somewhat in age and rather more in income, choose to live on their own in 21 st-century Delhi . This simple, effective film captures their hopes and dreams, their fears and anxieties as it simultaneously explodes the myth of our cosmopolitan capital city. Hassath, Anuja, Anjali, Myrl and Dalang are candid before the camera as they allow the filmmakers into their private spaces, physical as well as emotional. Their complete candour makes individual testimony into a larger statement about being a woman alone in a city that offers both personal and professional freedoms. Hassath is separated, works full-time and has chosen to keep her little daughter with her, even though she has the option of leaving her with her parents. Dalang has come from Shillong and finds living alone in Delhi difficult in terms of community and support. Anjali’s parents live in the city, but she feels the need to make her own life in her own space. Anuja has a long-term partner, but wants her own space as well. Myrl is now single, and is being harassed by blank phone calls. But none of these women are willing to succumb to the myriad discomforts they face and give up their independent lives. It is revealing to learn how difficult it is to rent a room or an apartment if one is a single woman. Some of the women in the film have told lies, created lives and spouses that don’t exist, simply to live a life of personal, female integrity and independence. There are concerned but prying neighbours who want to know details about the women and how they live. This imposes certain restrictions upon the women in terms of who they bring home and how they comport themselves in public. All this is relatively harmless, if somewhat irritating. But the real intrusion comes from random male attention: in the form of blank calls, stares and whispered asides that create amorphous fears that haunt you when you have to walk up a stairwell alone at night and then lock your doors fiercely behind you. At the same time as these women exult in their chosen solitude, there are moments of excruciating loneliness as well -- Myrl and Dalang miss the presence of another person in their homes when they return from work. Hassath’s world is entirely circumscribed by caring for her daughter and her job in the city. Anjali feels slightly insecure when her friends in the neighbourhood are away. As a society, we are clearly not ready to see women who want to live alone as an unremarkable urban phenomenon. We still expect at least a nuclear family, if not an entire platoon of friends and relatives, to legitimise a woman’s life and aspirations. Anjali struggles with her parents’ desire to see her married before she leaves home. It is an embarrassment for them to have an unmarried daughter live apart from them in the same city. In a similar situation, Anuja believes that she has a positive and loving relationship with her family precisely because she lives away from them. Anjali and Anuja seem to be from Delhi, but the other three women have come to the city to make a living. But in order to fulfil their personal dreams, none of the women feel they can publicly be themselves. In that sense, our freedoms as women remain compromised and the cities that give us economic independence have not yet learned to accept the wholeness of our complex lives. For more information, contact:
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or go to www.psbt.org InfoChange News & Features, August 2005
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