On Saturday I got to do one of those things that, had I anticipated the possibility, would have been on my bucket list: drive a rickshaw down Mall Road. I’ve been taking lessons for the past three weeks, volunteering with The Environment Protection Foundation (TEPF) for their Pink Rickshaw Scheme. TEPF had a rally of the five pink rickshaws in their fleet, driven by volunteers like me. There were photojournalists and filmmakers, actors and lawyers, teachers and writers; all of us motivated by the spirit of adventure and that most intoxicating of all feelings: freedom. Nothing, nothing is as wildly liberating as being able to go out into the world without being reliant on anyone but yourself; no waiting for a bus, no cajoling a brother to drive you, no being trapped at home because the driver is on leave. For many years I drove a car older than me, with no air conditioning or FM radio, and that car is the love of my life because it represents freedom. I drove it to the jobs that paid for its petrol, windows rolled down in the July loo, using a pankhi at red lights to cool down a little, and I was the happiest (and, surprisingly, not so sweaty) girl in the entire city because I had Radio Pakistan and nobody to tell me I couldn’t go here or there, because I had a car and it was mine.
That’s what the Pink Rickshaw Scheme (PRS) is about: putting women in the driver’s seat, both literally and metaphorically. The scheme aims to empower women in a two-pronged way—the rickshaws will be owned and driven by women who will give lifts only to women. The PRS will also pay for driving lessons, driving licenses, vehicle permits and rickshaw training for each woman who elects to purchase a rickshaw, so anyone is eligible to apply. If you don’t have the skills, the PRS will develop them. So not only is the PRS helping women earn a living by developing new abilities, they are also helping to create safe spaces for women in the public. Scores of women are out and about each day—whether going to work or to study, to the bazaar, to pick up their children from school, take someone to the hospital; the reasons are myriad. Some women leave the house by choice, some because they haven’t got any but to work. Whatever the reason, all women deserve to be able to do what they have to in a safe way, without the fear of being harassed, groped, stared at or worse. We all know that it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or what time of day it is, no woman is ever entirely safe from the leering, the comments, the unwanted brushings-past and sometimes outright hostility that is part and parcel of the female public experience. I don’t think any woman reading this has ever even gone down to the corner store to get eggs without considering her attire (which, in a nutshell, is whether you need a dupatta, and how much area will it need to cover). This is not a society in which you can stroll down the street to the ATM machine or run after the Hico-wallah for an ice lolly without attracting some serious attention. Heck, this is a society where just existing in a public space is fraught with all kinds of anxieties, many of which we have internalized so well we have ceased to register them.
So for the average girl, out and about, the Pink Rickshaw Scheme will be fantastic. People mumble about it being exclusionary, that equality means everyone gets a ride. But let’s not forget that being in a public space is problematic primarily for women. Men don’t worry about whether their arm is touching a stranger’s arm at the doctor’s clinic. Men don’t have to ride precariously side-saddle on their motorcycles because it would be indecent to straddle the vehicle, or get their idiotic dupattas tangled in the spokes and choke. Men are not stared at relentlessly wherever they go by women, nobody sticks their tongue out at them and nobody starts singing when they pass. This is not exaggeration, this is fact. And that is why we need pink rickshaws and pink buses, because socially we have not evolved to the point where the public domain is a neutral space—pink rickshaw drivers are encouraged to carry pepper spray and be very careful about whom they give lifts to, particularly to couples—but with initiatives that encourage women to consider the world outside their chaar-deewari, progress is sure to happen. And they deserve it. All the girls topping the Matric, F.A and B.A, all the girls going to medical school, all the girls doing I.T and physics and mass communications and art; all the girls working hard to educate themselves, all of them deserve a real chance at making something of their lives other than becoming brides and then mothers. It is a criminal waste of time and effort and money to sit class-toppers and gold medallists at home to make aaloo-gosht and supervise the safai-walli. The Pink Rickshaw is an ideal solution: a safe steel box of a rickshaw with lockable doors, fans for ventilation, a loud jaunty horn and even a nifty little sunroof. Who can tell you not to go out if a woman is giving you a lift in one of those? If you see one tootling around town, wave. It’s the phutt-phutt of the future.

The writer is a feminist based in Lahore.

m.malikhussain@gmail.com