A woman’s place in the city

Three Women, One Camera, and the Question No One in Ajmer Wanted Answered

Indiadailyupdate.com – Walk through any Indian city at midday or dusk and count the faces on the street. Women constitute approximately half the population, yet a glance at bus stops, tea stalls, market lanes, and park benches reveals a conspicuous absence. The gap between demographic reality and public visibility is not a statistical anomaly; it is the product of accumulated fear, family rules, and infrastructure that was never designed with women’s daily movement in mind. In Ajmer—a city defined by the dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, the waters of Ana Sagar, and a Brahma temple—three young women decided to make that absence visible by pointing a camera at it.

The Film That Asked Where the Girls Had Gone

The result is a roughly six-minute short titled Ajmer ki ladkiyan kahan hai—literally, “Where are the girls of Ajmer?” The question, while seemingly simple, carries political weight. It interrogates what it takes for a city to feel shared rather than segregated by gender. It asks where young women go after dark, whether public space accommodates their presence, or whether they remain indoors assisting with household duties under the assumption that domestic labor is their proper domain.

Santra Chaurathiya, Renu Chaudhary, and Nameera Pathan picked up cameras and walked the streets, alleys, and hidden corners of their own city, seeking out young women willing to speak on camera. The act of filming itself became an act of reclamation.

“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 stared. Strangers asked questions. The three women pressed on.

Commute as Constant Vigilance

The interviews captured in the film reveal a pattern familiar across Indian urban life: young women who feel secure within school or college gates but experience the journey to and from those institutions as a series of micro-threats. Men leering, brushing past, or making unwanted physical contact on packed buses transform a routine commute into an exercise in sustained alertness.

In narrow lanes, clusters of men gather to drink, occupying public space in ways that make solo female passage feel unwelcome. One interviewed girl summarized the daily calculus:

“We go to schools, colleges, tuition, jobs, markets, our friends’ homes. 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 becomes measured in decisions—when to leave, which stop to use, whether to wait for the next vehicle. Distance is secondary to the cognitive load of constant risk assessment.

Family Rules Born of Fear

The restrictions families impose on daughters—do not stay out late, do not take that shortcut, do not socialise with that boy—are not arbitrary. They are protective responses to a city that has not made safe passage a given. Sylvester Ariel, associated with the Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti, framed the cultural dimension plainly:

“We are brought up to believe that girls ought to have restrictions.”

The film’s genesis traces to a fellowship under Cities for Youth, a programme administered by Safetipin, a social-impact organisation focused on building cities that are both safe and equitable. The fellowship gave the three women the conceptual and practical scaffolding to translate lived experience into a short documentary.

One Girl Who Broke the Pattern

Among the women featured is Sangeeta, a delivery gig worker—an uncommon sight in Ajmer. When she took the job, her family reacted with disbelief, questioning whether parcel delivery qualified as legitimate employment. Customers still stop her to ask why a woman is delivering packages at odd hours.

“But I will keep doing this because I love my work,” she said.

Her persistence has ripple effects: two additional women in the city have since taken up delivery-agent roles, following her example. One visible woman doing “unseemly” work can normalise the choice for others nearby.

Transportation Policy and the Journey Problem

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 that mobility is not a luxury but a precondition for employment, education, and civic participation. Without safe, affordable transport, women cannot leave home to seek work. Girls continue to drop out of secondary school when the distance between home and campus exceeds what they can safely traverse on foot or by unreliable public transit.

State-level interventions have begun to shift the calculus. Free bus rides in Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Karnataka have removed a financial barrier that previously kept women from commuting to work. Families, relieved of the fare question, have shown greater willingness to allow daughters to seek employment, access medical care, or enrol in colleges located farther from home.

Yet the policy landscape remains incomplete. Ridership numbers have risen, but overcrowding, last-mile connectivity gaps, and safety concerns at bus stops persist. The walk from home to the stop, and from the stop to the final destination, often remains unlit, unmonitored, and psychologically taxing.

“When policy focuses only on assets and ride metrics rather than journeys, it can make individual parts safer while leaving the overall experience uncertain,” writes Sonal Jaitley, an associate with MicroSave Consulting.

The distinction matters. A bus that is safe inside its cabin does not resolve the danger of reaching it. A well-funded transit network does not compensate for a dark, empty stretch of road between the last stop and a woman’s apartment. Until the entire journey—door to door, hour to hour—is treated as the unit of policy design, the question posed by three women with a camera in Ajmer will remain unanswered: where are the girls, and why are they not where they should be?