A woman’s place in the city
Where Are the Girls? A Six-Minute Film from Ajmer Puts Women’s Urban Belonging on Trial
Bharatmorningnews.com – In a city where the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti draws millions of pilgrims each year, where Ana Sagar’s waters reflect the skyline and a Brahma temple anchors the spiritual geography, a simple question lingers over every street corner and chai stall: where are the women? They constitute roughly half the population, yet a brief walk through any Indian city’s markets, bus stops, parks, or evening gathering spots reveals a conspicuous absence. Living in a city and being visibly present in it are, as it turns out, two entirely separate experiences.
That question—Ajmer ki ladkiyan kahan hai, “Where are the girls in Ajmer?”—is not a casual observation. It carries political weight. It asks what conditions would make a city feel genuinely shared rather than quietly partitioned by gender. It asks where young women go after dark, whether their city offers them a place to simply exist outside the home, or whether the only sanctioned role remains helping their mothers with household chores.
Three Women, One Camera, and the Decision to Look
Santra Chaurathiya, Renu Chaudhary, and Nameera Pathan are three young women from Ajmer who turned that question into a roughly six-minute short film. Rather than waiting for someone else to document their experience, they picked up a camera and walked the streets, alleys, and hidden corners of their own city searching for other young women willing to speak on record.
“Just picking up a camera and exploring the streets and the nooks and crannies of their city looking for young women to interview became a way to reclaim the city,” said Nameera.
Shopkeepers stopped them. Strangers stared. The girls pressed on. What emerged was not a polished production but a raw, urgent portrait of daily navigation through a space that was never designed with their comfort in mind.
The Commute as Constant Vigilance
The women interviewed in the film describe a pattern that repeats across Indian cities: school corridors feel safe, but the bus ride home does not. Men leer, brush shoulders, or make unwanted contact. The journey from college to home becomes an exercise in perpetual alertness—choosing routes, timing departures, calculating whether one will be the sole female passenger on a particular bus.
“We go to schools, colleges, tuition, jobs, markets, our friends’ homes,” one interviewed girl explains. “But everywhere there is a sense of foreboding: Which route to take, what time to go, how to ensure that you’re not the only girl on the bus you board.”
A trip that should be measured in kilometres instead becomes measured in micro-decisions: adjust the plan, reroute, wait, or turn back. Families, acting out of fear rather than malice, codify these anxieties into household rules—stay home, do not take that road, do not linger after dark, do not be seen with that particular boy.
“We are brought up to believe that girls ought to have restrictions,” observed Sylvester Ariel of the Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti.
One Girl Who Broke the Script
Among the film’s subjects is Sangeeta, a delivery gig worker in Ajmer—a sight still unusual enough to draw questions from customers who want to know why a young woman is carrying their parcel at nine in the evening. Her family was initially aghast, uncertain whether the work even qualified as a “proper job.” Sangeeta kept going.
“But I will keep doing this because I love my work,” she said.
Her persistence has a measurable ripple: two additional girls in the city have since taken up delivery-agent roles, following her example. One person’s refusal to stay indoors can quietly redraw the map of what is considered acceptable.
From Fellowship to Screen: How the Film Was Born
The project originated during a fellowship under Cities for Youth, a programme administered by Safetipin, a social-impact organisation focused on building safer, more equitable urban environments. The fellowship gave the three women both the conceptual framework and the practical support to translate their street-level observations into a finished short film.
The film was screened at Shaping our Cities, a two-day summit organised by Safetipin in New Delhi on August 26 and 27. Its central argument is straightforward: mobility is not a luxury or an afterthought in daily life. It is the precondition for employment, education, healthcare access, and social participation.
Free Fares, New Problems
Several Indian states—Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Karnataka—have introduced free bus rides for women. For families who previously balked at the fare, or who simply would not let a daughter pay for a ride alone, the policy removed a practical barrier. Daughters now commute to jobs, clinics, and colleges further from home with greater family approval.
Yet ridership growth has exposed gaps that fare subsidies alone cannot close. Overcrowding on peak-hour buses, poor last-mile connectivity from stop to destination, and inadequate lighting on approach walks remain. Sonal Jaitley, an associate with MicroSave Consulting, has noted that when transit policy optimises only for vehicle assets and ride-level metrics rather than the full journey experience, individual segments can appear safer while the overall trip remains uncertain for women.
The film’s six minutes do not offer policy prescriptions. They offer something harder to manufacture: the lived texture of a question that every Indian city, from Ajmer to its largest metros, must answer. Where are the girls? And more urgently—what would it take to make them visible, unafraid, and free to occupy the street?
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