Women Walk at Midnight is a practice of women coming together, and walking on the streets of their city at 'forbidden' hours like they aren't ‘normally’ able to. The walks are free of cost and open to all who those who are assigned as female at birth or who identify as women. There is no pre-selection and all women who register are welcome to walk.
Each walk is led by a woman from the neighbourhood in which we walk.We usually walk for 2 hours, covering about 6-7 km. The timings of the walk range between 9 pm to 2 am, depending on the length of the route and the city, the starting time and how long the group chooses to stay out.
Women Walk At Midnight is about each woman’s relationship with the city, with night and with walking. By walking repeatedly, without permissions, we hope to shift how women feel about and experience safety and pleasure in the city at night.
This is a non funded initiative that has built and sustained over the years on the tireless labour of several women.
Women Walk At Midnight is run by a team of women volunteers all of whom approach the practice of walking at midnight from their unique standpoints. We are interested in building this practice and responding to the evolving nature of it.
The practice, while first initiated in the city by Mallika Taneja, has grown only with the contribution, labour, ideas and questions put forth by several walkers, walk leaders and friends and comrades.
Current chapters leads are Mallika Taneja in Delhi, Amrita Pande in Cape Town (supported by Mia Bantlin), and Drishti Chawla in Faridabad. Our previous and paused chapter leaders have been Prithvi Hegde, Priya, Bhawna in Bangalore, Mahima Taneja in Noida and Nabiha in Guwahati
Previous members of our team include - Meghna Bhadauria, Rishika Kaushik, Eeshta Malhotra, Shweta Pasricha, Kamalika Mukhopadhyay, Prapti Singh, Sasmita Patnaik, Salomi Christie
Our current advisor include Mahima Taneja, Gargi Bharadwaj and Nabiha Tasneem
Geetanjali Kalta, Arosma Das and Sadaf Nausheen are currently interning with the practice.
It's not a fitness walk. We insist on having an easy casual pace of walking, though this might be tougher to achieve than one imagines! That's not to say that the walk does not tire one out.
It's not a historical walk either. Though we are not unaware of the history of the city and its streets. The walk leader often is full of stories about the area and their own experience of it. We are alert to the streets, their names and the histories that they carry.
Nor is it a food walk. Though we do stop to indulge some tea or coffee or ice cream or or whatever else the night, the city and women we walk with have to offer!
No. And shall never be.
The walks are open to all persons assigned female at birth or who identify as women.. We have had several gender fluid and queer folx join our walks. If you feel you identify with the classification of ‘woman’, for all its multitudes and layered meanings, then do sign up! We too are learning and evolving with the stretching of these definitions!
We try our best! And yet we recognise how far we still have to travel to invite so many others into our fold, in our cities, in other cities. We recognise that inclusivity depends greatly on cities infrastructure, its mobility, its accessibility and the multitudes of realities and constraints that people live with. We do not believe we speak to all of them. Yet.
We believe in growing and learning through doing and through listening to suggestions made by our friends and comrades.
For suggestions and ideas on how to be more inclusive in Delhi, please write to us at wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com
No, this is an all women's-space.
We have done over 55 walks in Delhi so far.
Cape Town in South Africa has seen 10 walks
Bangalore over the years has seen around 10 walks.
Faridabad has seen 3 walks
Guwahati and Noida have seen 2 walks each.
We have had one off walks in Rishikesh, São Paulo, Brussels, Chicago and so on.
A walk usually lasts for up to two hours and starts around between 8 to 10 PM depending on the city, the weather, the area. We walk past midnight ( and sometimes just before it) and find our way home during the wee hours of the morning and night.
The idea of midnight shifts with cities. We understand that midnight is more about the feeling that the actual hands of the clock. We recognise that we different neighbourhoods and realities require us to shift the time at which we meet and end. And we do!
A lot happens and nothing happens. We become communities, somewhat ephemeral. We walk, we stroll, we leave our (invisible) trace on the streets of our cities... sometimes we listen to music, we look at the sky, we talk, sometimes, we encounter the police (who are almost always curious and ask us why are we out), we eat ice-cream, sometimes share a warm drink or some food, we befriend street dogs (and sometimes get chased by them), we sing songs of the night, we read poems, we take pit stops at the bus stops (because some of our cities woefully lack public benches), we occupy the middle of the road, we talk about the weather, and sometimes about politics, we get tired, we get excited, we make friends, we walk in silence, in solidarity, we walk and walk and walk.
On streets, pavements, in the middle of the road, through parks, gated communities, markets, alongside rivers. We walk through brightly lit streets and dark corners... through littered lanes and pristine patches.
Everywhere.
We started as a Delhi-based women’s only collective and currently hold monthly walks in this city. We have had an active Chapters in Bangalore and Guwahati and currently have active and growing chapters in Faridabad, Noida, Guwahati in India and Cape Town in South Africa.
We have also walked in several other cities such as Rishikesh, São Paulo, and Brussels
If you would like to hold a walk in your city, please reach out to us via Instagram or email us at womenwalkatmidnight@gmail.com
Our safety is in our numbers. We usually are anywhere between 4 to 50 women across all age groups walking together. We encourage women to carry anything that would make them comfortable, such as pepper sprays, safety pins, have their emergency contact on speed dial etc.
We also create a WhatsApp or Signal group to share details about the route, meeting point and so on. We do not disclose the starting point of the walk on our social media. The starting point is only shared on the groups with the final participants. The group is also very useful to figure out ways to travel to and from the walk. It helps coordinate car pools we are happy if women stay back at each others’ place if they are unsure about travelling at night. In previous walks, women have offered fellow walkers the option to stay back at their place or share a cab or drop them home if they are driving.
We cancel the walk if the number of participants is less than a minimum amount that the guide of the night deems fit. This could be 4 or 12 or 20... depending on where we are. ( though we have walked with as few as 4 as well!). We also modify the timings of walks based on the neighbourhood and the advice of the guide of the night. The idea of having someone from the area take us around is to be sure about the safety of walking at the time we decide to. We encourage women from the neighbourhood to join so that it's easy to just walk back home. Family members could also come and pick up people after walks if that is convenient or required. However, we also see a very large participation of women cutting across the length and breath of cities to walk with us.
We walk to explore by foot, at night, to smell, listen and taste the flavours of the city in the ‘after-hours’. In the process of walking, we see many things, we endure and gain strength, we learn things about the city, about each other, about ourselves. But most of all, we walk for the joy of it, to have fun. We walk, because we can!
The seed for Women Walk At Midnight was sowed at the time of the 2012 anti-rape mobilization, triggered by the brutal gang rape of Nirbhaya. The practice has been deeply inspired by Maya Rao’s performance of the ‘Walk’. Mallika Taneja, a theatre-maker and the initiator Women Walk at Midnight began thinking about walking – its politics, performance and the collective experience – from Maya Rao’s show that she saw on a protest walk on the evening of 31st December 2012 from JNU to Munirka.
A few years after the Nirbhaya agitation, Mallika wanted to do a 24-hour walk. The starting point of her walk was not safety, but endurance. With this came the question of safety, in a city like Delhi - walking alone at night, the many concerns that come with it, and a call to join was put out on social media which brought some women and men together. They walked from 10 pm to 4 am on 13 February 2016. This is how this practice began – from walking as a performance to walking as a way to endure the city and the risks it came with – and this remains central to our politics till date. Soon enough, as the practice grew and experimented with different iterations, it became clear this had to be an all-women’s space.
The very first walk of this particular practice was on 13th February 2016, in Delhi. This was not an all women’s walk yet.
It was recognised very early on in the practice that no one person or even a few people are enough to truly understand and traverse the length and breath of a city, its multitudes, ever shifting realities and differences within the similarities.
Taking a post dinner walk at night is part of many people's routine. For women, this routine hardly ever can play out in the absence of an accompanying male. Our neighbourhoods are extensions of our homes, streets and places that we know closely and engage with on the daily. When these suddenly become inaccessible for several hours a day, become a source of fear and anxiety, it shifts how we look at our existence in our surroundings. Women often feel alienated to their own surroundings as the surroundings in the dark seem alien to them.
As the practice developed in the ever bursting megapolis of New Delhi, with its severely restricted access to public transport for women in the night time and the enormous distances one has to travel to get from one part to the other, it was understood that the neighbourhoods, on foot, would create better access, participation and allow for a deeper engagement with our surroundings.
A local to take us around her surroundings, point us to its history and geography, perhaps walk with us to corners where she wouldn't by herself, advise us on the safety of the area, and very importantly - point us to a public or a private toilet when we need it!
We also recognise that sometimes asserting our right closest to where we live ( and even at home) is tougher. Finding the joy of the night in another neighbourhood has been also an integral part of how the practice has formed over the years.
We are in great company -- Why Loiter (the book and the movement), Blank Noise, Women at Leisure, City women podcasts, City Girls Who Walk, Girls at Dhabas, Reclaim the Night, Pinjar Tod , Take Back the Night, Slutwalks, and Pink Chaddi campaign - some paused and some ongoing - all of which have addressed women's safety, access and claim to the city!
Know of more? Let us know!
Write to us at wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com
No. We do not carry banners or raise slogans. We simply walk.
But this does not mean that we are not in protest.
No!
Why should we need to seek permission to take a walk in our own city? We occupy it like every other citizen.
You can reach out to us via email (wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com) or DM us on Instagram. To be a ​​guide of the night, one should ideally have already been a part of a walk so they can imagine the walk in their locality. However, if you are building a new chapter of walking in your city, this is not a mandatory prerequisite. We can walk you through our process of the practice and discuss organisation, communication etc.
The guide is free to curate the walk according to her idea of a midnight walk. The route hence chosen could have a personal narrative, around different localities, tthrough different types of experiences, or around areas that you wouldn’t walk alone.
Keep in touch with us and register for the upcoming walk. You can follow us on instagram or sign up for our mailing list! We put up a registration link on our website and communicate it further via our instagram account. Once registered, you are added to a group on WhatsApp and are given details about the route, the meeting point, other reminders etc. If interested in attending another walk, you have to register for that particular walk. This also helps us get a sense of the number of women who would be joining the walk and in coordination.
If you are a participant and want to write a reflective piece about your experience, please feel free to do so! We would be happy to share this on our blog. If you are writing for a journal/newspaper, then do get in touch with us beforehand (email us at wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com) so that we can provide you with any information, photos that you may need and let you know about some things to keep in mind while writing for publications.
You may reach us at -
wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com
womenwalkSA@gmail.com
We are a small team of volunteers who put these walks and Raaton Ki Baatein together. Usually we do one of each every month. We are always in need of people who can help out with the tasks of organising.If you would like to volunteer for Women Walk at Midnight, write to us at wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com. To volunteer for the Cape Town chapter please write to womenwalkSA@gmail.com
Please note that it is very important in the spirit of keeping things afloat and also to maintain solidarity in the work that we commit to what is truly possible for us. And once we commit, we follow through!
Yes!
For local chapters, please contact the local leaders to understand how this can happen.
For Delhi, please write to wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com
For Cape Town, please write to womenwalkSA@gmail.com
To get in touch with people who have walked in other cities, please also write to wewalkatmidnight@gmail.com
Please note - While we welcome journalists who want to write about us with open arms, we do ask that teams joining us consist of women. This extends to women camera persons, photographers, sound recordists etc.
We discourage the use of big cameras that require lots of artificial light so as to avoid drawing unwarranted attention on the walk. We also encourage those who want to write with us to walk with us!