ABSTRACT
As educated, employed, middle-class, urban Indian women in our thirties, when we express a desire to seek pleasure in the city by loitering it might seem problematic to some. It might seem as though (a) as beneficiaries of the women’s movement who have access to education, healthcare and employment, we are asking for too much, (b) given that most women in India don’t have access to even basic facilities, we are being frivolous and (c) our desire to loiter is peculiar, for in any case loitering itself is an offensive activity. For loitering, the lack of demonstration of a visible purpose, is usually perceived as a marginal, sometimes downright anti-social, even extra-legal, act of being in public city space.
