A double take, the sudden widening of eyes, a subtle once-over or, in very rare cases, polite puzzlement.
These are some of the reactions you can expect if you, as a solo woman in the city, ask for a single movie ticket at a theatre box-office. Welcome to one of the most subtly stigmatised practices of modern urban life.
The Indian cinema hall, traditionally in thrall to the family unit, which trooped in vast numbers to savor the Barjatya brand of film-making in the 90s, now caters to a more heterogeneous audience.
A staggering increase in the number of multiplexes per city and a wholehearted opening up of the domestic box office to Hollywood studios has combined with the lifestyle changes of the young and upwardly-mobile to drastically alter our theatre-going experience. Where the joint family reigned supreme, replaced soon by the nuclear unit, now we find gangs of young men and women and couples on date night.
What hasn’t changed is the fact that a single female theatre-goer continues to be a social pariah.
I, Me, Myself
Stripped of its social context, there is absolutely no reason for theatre-going to be a strict group activity. Once the lights are dimmed, each person is an island, absorbed in the larger-than-life story being told on the screen.
When you are alone, adrift among a sea of strangers with no claims on you, you are free to throw off the shackles of self. With just a story for company, your response to it will be uncensored, and exhilarating in its primal spontaneity. Try it. I promise you will surprise yourself.
Art, and The Ones Who Came Before
In my more high-flown moments, when I exercise my economic independence to indulge in solitary engagement with art, I think of all of those who came before.
My foremothers around the world, shackled to the family hearth and never-ending domestic responsibilities, with no place or time to call their own. The wives, sisters, mothers and muses of artists, tiptoeing around the masculine creator’s sacred space, barred from much of art’s creation and consumption, their relationship with all art carefully controlled by men – publishers, critics, relatives.
I think of the suffragists ceaselessly agitating for female economic independence, among other things, their personal relationships and public perception forever compromised because they dared to think, and desire, beyond the narrow pool of contemporary opinion.
And thus, every time I whip out my wallet to pay for one ticket, I march in with my head held high.
Public Spaces, Risk and Fun
As Shilpa Phadke’s book Why Loiter so astutely notes, nearly all of the discourse around women’s presence in public spaces is marked by fear and caution. From motherly advice to public service leaflets, women are cautioned away from public spaces for their own ‘protection’, as if the right to exploring one’s city, the right to eavesdropping on strange conversations, the right to adventure and risk were all exclusive to men.
I see it manifest itself in theatres, even as I am protected by class privilege when groups of young men gaze curiously at the sight of a young woman out by herself to catch Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. The gaze, even when benevolent and impersonal, still asks the question 200-odd years of feminism haven’t been able to dispel entirely: what are you doing here?
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