International Women’s Day, which falls on 8 March, is officially celebrated at the Yerawada Women’s Jail sometime during that month with a two-hour cultural programme. Prisoners show off their talents before senior jail officials, including the Director General of Prisons (who happens to be at the present time a woman). Very good performances can occasionally lead to a couple of months of remission in sentence. There are no speeches or talks, let alone debates and discussions, around women’s rights or laws relating to women. No one is going to be discussing patriarchy here, or the long struggle that women have waged and still wage for equality. Still, the very observance of 8 March does generate enthusiasm and a feeling of freedom.
Preparations begin in February. Senior Jailer Madam puts a few talented (and trusted) prisoners in charge of selecting women to perform five or six short dances, a few skits and a couple of songs, each item lasting a maximum of five minutes. Eventually, some 40 women are chosen, with a bit of favouritism thrown in. Most are convicts since they are long-term residents of the jail, but this time some talented longer-term undertrials have also been included. These women are allowed to rehearse during the 12–3 pm bandi when the rest are locked up, and on Sundays and in the final days of preparation, even for half an hour after 5 pm. So, for a whole month, we hear dance music and dialogues all around us. NGOs are asked to pitch in with costumes, fake jewellery and make-up, which turn out to be of quite a professional standard.
Male prisoners from the Main Jail come in to fix the pandal, and professional sound technicians are called in. Finally, when the great day dawns, I can see, from the back window of my cell, the performers dressing up and being made up in the Factory. An accommodating Bai takes photos with her cell phone (which she is, only for this programme, allowed to bring into the jail) while everyone jostles around her pleading, “Take mine too, with my friend . . .” They will be given prints of these pictures later – perhaps the only happy souvenir of many years of lost youth. Even we, the denizens of the Phansi Yard, are taken to see the programme and seated on the floor right in front of the prisoners’ side of the pandal.
In the other half of the pandal, rows of chairs have been placed for jail officials, families of Constables, and NGO people. The first row consists of sofas for the chief guests. Lest anyone should forget for a moment that this is happening in jail, 20 women Constables are lined up all along our side of the pandal, holding batons of moulded plastic. These are trainee Constables who have no doubt been told that we prisoners are a dangerous lot. After a long wait, during which kids and kittens wander all over the Stage, provoking both amusement and admonition, it becomes clear that DG Madam won’t be coming, and the programme begins with the Yerawada Jail Superintendent presiding. It’s like watching a family function because one knows all the participants.
Two young women dressed up as male comperes do the introductions. The dances are very good and the skits turn out better than their rehearsals. The kiddies’ dance is a hit and the child of a Senior Jailer Madam wanders onto the Stage to join the prisoners’ children. The programme ends with the inevitable “Jhingaat”, a wild dance number from the now-cult Marathi film Sairat. (Isn’t it extraordinary that this song has become so popular, even as the caste atrocity at the heart of it – a brutal honour killing over an inter-caste marriage – is never discussed?) We hear later that even the prisoners and Bais sitting at the back of the pandal got up to dance to “Jhingaat”. We can’t see them because we are obediently facing stagewards, mindful of the batons.
Our Jailer Madam gives a speech about how the performers prepared all this by themselves “without any disturbance to their Factory or work schedules”. The Superintendent gives a speech promising some remissions even though DG Madam couldn’t come because of a last-moment engagement. The participants take a bow and deliver some emotional and distinctly overdone praise for the officials. And it’s over. . .Before the make-up is removed and the participants are locked in, at the UNIMAGINABLY late hour of 7 pm, there is another spontaneous performance of “Jhingaat” in the maidan. The day has come. . .and gone.
And even if not acknowledged properly, and even if celebrated under the shadow of batons, it has brought a whiff of freedom.
(In Byculla, an undertrial jail with a high turnover, 8 March is not such an elaborate affair but, conversely, it is much freer and more spontaneous, organised by whoever among the prisoners is in favour at the time, and attended by only Byculla Jail officials. On our first 8 March there, a mere fortnight after our arrival, Professor Shoma Sen makes a short, thought-provoking and moving speech about the origins of 8 March. The year after, I was asked to speak about legal aid, and a group of youngsters, including Jyoti Jagtap, also jailed in the Bhima Koregaon case, put up a hard-hitting skit on patriarchy, which brought tears even to the eyes of the women Constables!)
Excerpted with permission from From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada, Sudha Bharadwaj, Juggernaut.