ABSTRACT
To anyone walking through the streets of a modern Indian city, the concept of heterotopian simultaneity is a visible reality. Pedestrians vie with bicycles and taxis on crowded through-ways; street vendors and four-star restaurants cater to veg or nonveg diets; passengers on the metro might as well be wearing a dhoti as a business suit. In all its bustling, chaotic energy, the Indian city carries, in the words of social psychologist Albert Mehrabian, “high load” (12). The notion of heterotopia is an important tool for thinking through the ways in which urban landscapes offer plentiful plurality at the same time that they delimit and dene the roles of men and women who navigate that space. For instance, in a recent scheme to combat air pollution, the municipal government of Delhi enacted an odd-even scheme to keep half of all private cars off the road on alternate days. This rule, however, only applied to male drivers, prompting the Times of India (TOI) to ask “Why exempt women drivers?” (TOI). The exemption, it turned out, was based on the belief that women would be endangered if they walked or rode public transportation in the city. Clearly, the gendered experience of moving through an urban space like Delhi penetrates even the bureaucrat’s awareness. Proceeding from this observed notion of heterotopia, then, our reading will examine the specic ways in which gendered subjectivity shapes, and is shaped by, its relationship to urban space.
