Sarojini Nagar, New Delhi
Sarojini Nagar is a quiet neighbourhood in South Delhi. At its heart is a large, open-air export-reject market that draws women from all over the city. It is large, chaotic and gloriously illegal, and one of the most democratic parts of the city. It is also one of the few places in New Delhi that has more women than men walking the streets.
The market is a square bordered by sleepy government housing blocks. Each side is a different personality: a line of shoe stores, a government health clinic, a public park, and rows of vegetables laid out in the sun. Broad streets cross the square, bordered on each side by stalls built out of wooden poles and hung with sheets of white cotton and blue tarp. The ‘walls’ of each stall are covered in clothes – layers and layers of lace and sequins and bright colours like a fabulous vertical flowerbed or coral reef. Every piece of clothing in the world marked ‘Made in India’ has a half-price twin here. Crisp cotton shirts you can’t help but reach out and take between your fingers, frothy sundresses, delicate crepe blouses, and deep blue denim.
Women walk down these streets and talk loudly, their eyes constantly scanning the lines of clothes in front of them. What makes Sarojini Nagar market special to me is that it is a pedestrian space, a safe space and a female-dominated space, all unusual things in a city like Delhi, often referred to as the ‘rape capital’ of India.
The men selling clothes here don’t catch your eyes suggestively. They don’t stare at your body. They don’t size you up. They look at your face and they speak to you. They argue and the women argue back. There is a kind of temporary equality here that years of fighting against ancient patriarchal traditions cannot fix the way a pair of baby harem pants can, it seems.
Women talk to each other here; strangers speak to each other. There are favourite stalls and friendly vendors, there’s a topography of the market. The ‘dress wall’ and the ‘tshirt alley’ and the cotton shirt cave. In a city that has taught women to be suspicious, everyone wants to know: where did you get that skirt?
There are mothers buying sari sets, young women and their bored boyfriends, both in impossibly tight pants. There are Delhi University girls cutting class to bargain and chat incessantly. My mother comes here to buy Diwali gifts for our housekeeper; our housekeeper comes here to buy shoes for her children. Foreigners in flowing cottons bargain with surprising skill for more flowing cottons – love and shopping know no language, apparently.
Why does this part of the city work? The structure of the space helps. There are wide streets, unrestricted views, and while it is incredibly dirty, the market is well lit. It’s completely pedestrian, which is also unusual. This acts as an equalizer in the market, there’s no way to assert dominance over the public space. The temporary nature of the market speaks to the financial plight of many of these vendors, but also gives the market a festive feeling, like a fair. There’s a sense of escapism for girls who can wear shorter shorts, walk unrestricted and feel like the market exists just for them. There are so few spaces in Delhi that exist for women, besides the ‘Ladies Compartment’ on the Metro which is conspicuously marked by a flowery sign on the platform, like a tampon commercial. It may not seem significant, but it’s hard to feel like part of a city when every space is a male-dominated space.