Travel diaries: The WOW members on one of their trips abroad

New York, as a setting, is passe. Sex and the City has now shifted base to Delhi. This isn’t a take on the popular television series based on the Candace Bushnell book. Rather, it is its reflection in contemporary Indian society where women —single and otherwise — are voicing what they want and going about getting it.

And girls just want to have some fun — a la the Cyndi Lauper chartbuster — when the working day is done. For once, it’s not men that they want, but some serious bonding with other women.

It isn’t as though female bonding is a new kid on the block. But the modes and medium of bonding in India are witnessing a sea change. Indian chick-lit has been flourishing for a while, hotels and restaurants in the metros have regular only-women nights and even Hindi cinema has been toying with the theme of girl-meet-girl, and not necessarily sexually.

But there’s a lot more happening on the front. Consider, for instance, this call for membership passed around by way of viral marketing: “We are a group of like-minded single women between 25 and 35, single, divorced, unmarried or separated, planning to set up India’s first single women’s club.”

Or, tune in to Meow FM, India ’s first ‘Just for Women’ radio station, launched on May 24 this year in New Delhi. Thodi meethi, thodi catty — that’s the tagline of the channel in keeping with the myriad moods of women.

Or else, sample this exclusive domain for women, bitten by the travel bug. Women on Wanderlust (WOW) allows X-chromosome carriers from all over India to holiday in a group to places ranging from Ladakh and the Himalayas to Egypt and Greece.

Much like Sex and the City which revolves around Carrie Bradshaw and her three best girlfriends, the urban Indian woman, like her US counterpart, is now overtly willing and wanting to have her share of unadulterated girlie fun, without any lesbian strings attached. Earlier she craved for a space of her own. But now she is carving a space of her own in which she can bond with the best of women and spend quality girl time.

Sanjana Singhal, secretary of the single women’s club which is all set to start in Delhi this September, has gone to the extent of punning on her surname to generate her email id, sanjana.single@gmail.com. “The club is essentially my friend Asha Reddy’s brain child,” says Singhal, an old student of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Apparently, Reddy, an Internet marketing executive, dreamt one night that she was at a party where she saw a giant blue board screaming ‘single women’s club’ and girls laughing and enjoying themselves. Singhal, who relocated from California, where she worked for a strategic planning and marketing company, decided to turn that dream into a reality.

“Girls have an instinctive way of bonding and making friends. It doesn’t take them long to break the ice. They have a similar kind of energy, interests and dislikes,” says Sumitra Senapaty, a travel writer and founder of WOW, who is now headed for Greece with a 20-member women’s group. Senapaty doesn’t ever formally introduce those who holiday with her as they all meet up at the airport. But she stresses, “These women meet as strangers but part as friends.”

Her reasons for starting WOW are much the same as Singhal’s. “As a writer I travel to various parts of India and the world on assignments. During such trips, I’d notice that there are women travelling on their own and clearly enjoying it. But this kind of a thing does not happen in India. So I thought of starting WOW for solo women travel, but in a group situation, wherein safety and security are top priorities.”

Her first women-only trip was a family trip to Kerala. “We had fun talking into the wee hours of the morning and speaking of things we wouldn’t have with the men around,” she recalls.

It is perhaps to cash in on this female camaraderie that the radio station Meow FM, targeted at women, was launched in Delhi in end-May. Like all other Western imports, it seems to have paid off — according to the radio station, it has already overshot the advertising revenue targets by five to six per cent.

Anil Srivatsa, COO of the station, however, insists that the channel is not perpetuating a stereotype though it hinges on talk — considered a woman’s monopoly. “It is not a comparison of cats to women or doesn’t aim to portray women as talkers,” he says. “Women are getting more assertive, more vocal and the environment has to change and is changing to accommodate the need. Women are the new consumers.”

There is some truth in that. As Senapaty underlines, there has been a significant change in the mindset of a woman. “When I’d started out, two years ago, the women who travelled with me suffered from guilt pangs. They didn’t quite feel it right to leave behind their family and go on a holiday all on their own. But today, women who join me feel they have earned the holiday. They have the buying power, and they usually do it on their own steam. So they perceive the holiday as a refreshing break and it helps them recharge their batteries.”

The fact that more women are opting for such avenues which are shorn of romantic or emotional entanglements is also evident in the fact that e-mail applications have been pouring in since word got around about the single women’s club. “We received about 1,000 e-mails from Delhi alone,” says Singhal. “Thousands of women in the 35 to 45 age group have also applied, so we may increase the limit to 40 or 45.” Most applicants are professionals who will be screened by skype video chats. The club plans to branch out in Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

One reason for the surplus demand is perhaps because the aim of this club is to provide an informal meeting ground, free of cost, for single women in India, who are looking for company and enjoy partying, dancing and nightlife. “But it’s the members who have to arrange for the food and venue for the parties voluntarily on a rotation basis,” stresses Singhal. “The club plans to arrange one event every weekend, including dances, male strippers, male body-builders contest and other avenues of companionship for females,” says the membership invitation. “Males can join as associate members who can be invited to the parties or as strippers.”

It’s time then for The Full Monty. Just that it’s for real, and the slogan is a simple ‘Girls R Us’.