Resisting (softly) with their stories (in stitches)
Pooja Dhingra, an independent conceptualiser, graphic designer, art director and the founder of Compassion Contagion reflects on her experience running Rafooghar* - a community space where stitching stories serves as a soft yet powerful way to resist daily injustices and reclaim everyday freedoms for women living in marginalised communities.**
Illustration by Reshu Singh
A Room to Rest
In a tiny windowless room in one of the most marginalized neighborhoods of Delhi, a soft, quiet revolution can be witnessed. It’s not marked by loud protests or grand demands, but rather by a gentle, persistent challenge to the patriarchy that permeates both the streets and homes.
Every Sunday, women gather at Rafooghar, a community space where they can leave behind the relentless demands of cooking, cleaning, and caretaking. Here, they rest and reclaim a piece of themselves through the simple act of sitting and stitching together.
Some of them, mostly homemakers, come from the overcrowded, tiny lanes of Shaheen Bagh- a small, nondescript locality in Delhi that gained international attention for the historic protests led by Muslim women against a discriminatory citizenship law. Others who work as domestic workers or day wagers hail from the makeshift shanties in Jasola and Madanpur Khadar, areas populated by families who moved to the city in search of better opportunities but found themselves in precarious living conditions.
Rafooghar- گھر - The house that mends (inspired from the word Rafoogar/ Rafu Gar, darner or a cloth mender) was set up with the intention of using stitching and textiles as mediums for emotional repair, restoration, rejuvenation, and resistance. Initial sessions with the women revealed how even the basic right to rest was often denied to them, or they had to seek permission for it. These women are constantly multi-tasking, some bring their children along, as raising them remains largely their responsibility; others are often called back home by unexpected guests, family duties or employer’s unreasonable demands.
Left image: Gulafsha ji with her kids at Rafooghar.
Right image: Gulafsha’s artwork: ‘Sukoon’
“मुझे बस सुकून चाहिए”
“All I want is some moments of peace”- Gulafsha.
Daily Injustices and Fight for Everyday Freedoms
One look at the maps stitched by the women about their lives and daily routines, reveal the tightly woven gender roles they navigate as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law. The countless restrictions and expectations governing their lives, show just how little space and time they have for themselves.
Left image: "मैं घर से अपने बेटे को स्कूल छोडने जाती हूँ, रस्ते में हमारी मस्ज़िद पड़ती है और एक जूस वाले कि शॉप है जहाँ मेरे बेटे को मैं जूस पिलाती हूँ ... उसे
जूस बोहत पसंद है और वापसी में एक स्टोर में रुक के घर का सामान लेती हूँ...यही है मेरे रोज़ का रूटीन"
“I leave my house to drop my son to his school. There is a mosque on our way and a juice shop where we stop to have juice as my son loves it. On the way back, I stop at a local store to get stuff for the house. That’s my daily routine”
- Shabeena
Right image: “मेरी ज़िन्दगी फ्लाईओवर के नीचे तक ही सीमित है”
“My life is limited to living under the flyover”
- Nandini
Despite all odds, they still come to stitch their stories- of oppression and liberation, of strength and softness, of unfulfilled dreams and harsh realities, of childhood memories and the burdens of adult responsibilities, of fleeting moments of joy amidst abuse and violence, of sorrow, pain, grief, longing, rage and resistance.
The fight these women face every day is one of daily survival, for things most of us take for granted: the freedom to walk outside without a male companion, freedom from daily taunts, to sleep without fear of displacement, freedom from abusive parents and oppressive in-laws, from the surveilling male gaze, from hunger, from exploitative employers, and from the unjust treatment rooted in caste and religion.
The list of struggles is endless, and the fight for these everyday freedoms never seem to end.
Stitching, therefore, provides a new form of freedom since it is often not seen as a threat in our patriarchal setting, given its feminine status. It provides a non-verbal outlet for women to process their trauma caused due to unaddressed gender-based violence and discrimination. These regular gatherings allow them to open up, express themselves freely, and gradually build their agency to demand the rights that are often denied to them. Through this process, stitching not only becomes an act of personal healing but a quiet, collective assertion of their fundamental human rights—rights to safety, dignity, and equality.
“मैं दुखी रहती हूँ सब मुझे कहते हैं कि मैं बोहत रोती हूँ इसलिए मैंने खुद को रोते दिखाया है मगर देखो मेरे आंसूओं से नदी भर गयी, उसमे मछिलयां आ गयी, पेड़ भी उग गया”
“My life is full of problems. Everyone says I cry a lot. I have shown myself crying in my portrait but look I have filled a river with my tears, it’s now full of fish and a tree has grown too!” - Billo
Photograph by Hansika Sharma
Pinky often portrays herself on a rugby field in her artwork, always in the shortest of shorts. When she first wore them, she was beaten by her brother—a harsh reminder of how the choices she makes for herself are constantly policed and punished.
"मैं सिर्फ रग्बी फील्ड पर आज़ाद महसूस करती हूँ
यहाँ मैं अपनी शॉर्ट्स पहन सकती हूँ
बिना किसी के ताने सुने”
“I only feel free on the rugby field. Here I can wearmy shorts without anyone taunting me” - Pinky
Sometimes, Rafooghar serves as a space for bhadaas nikalna, where women can release their pent-up emotions or frustrations. At other times, it transforms into a place for jee halka karna, providing a lighter environment to escape from the harsh realities of their daily lives. They often refer to Rafooghar as their maika (mother's home), where they laugh, cry, exchange gharelu-nuske (homemade remedies), and rely on each other for salah-mashwara (advice and wisdom). Here women forget about their differences and bond over shared experiences and injustices.
Through informal conversations and light-hearted moments, women often exchange knowledge and wisdom for navigating their difficult circumstances. They teach each other how to coexist within the restrictive structures of patriarchy while also resisting them using everyday tactics and softer means like strategic sulking, silent-treatments and smart negotiation skills.
For example, when a participant from Shaheen Bagh shared how her children were being denied their mid-day meals at school, women from Jasola recounted a similar experience and how they dealt with it-by bringing along a towering, tough-looking man ('tau') to the school, who bluffed his way through, threatening to shut the place down if the children weren’t given their meals. Encouraged by their support, the woman from Shaheen Bagh went to the school and demanded what was rightfully due to her children.
Another participant recently shared how her husband would make her cook lavish dishes for him but wouldn’t allow her to eat any of it. He would also often complain about the dish not being spicy enough for his liking. After quietly enduring his demands for a long time, she realized she had had enough and spiced up his meal so much that her husband got diarrohea the next day Since then he has neither made unreasonable dietary demands nor refuses to share the food with her.
These humorous anecdotes capture how small acts of defiance are sometimes the only way for women to reclaim control in their lives and rebalance power dynamics.
The collective support they find here also encourages them to break their silence, seek help, and take steps towards healing and justice. A fifteen year old girl, after three years of domestic abuse, finally found the courage to file a legal complaint against her husband and her in-laws in the course of her participation in Rafooghar.
Images L-R: Women from Jasola and Shaheen Bagh sitting together and stitching ‘Love Lihaaf’- a community quilt-made by piecing together individual narratives of everyone at Rafooghar.
A participant wanted to show herself dancing in her portrait, but she is not allowed to dance. So, she cleverly embroidered her husband’s silhouette and showed him thinking about the kids playing and his wife dancing.
The works of a young girl who was married off at the age of 12. Sad faces, home and family are recurring motifs in her artworks. During one of the sessions, she finally found the courage to open up about being abused by her husband and her in-laws and sought assistance in filing charges against them. Photograph by Harmeet Basur.
Stitching is Protesting
The narratives stitched at Rafooghar are powerful because they come from women whose voices are often marginalized or ignored. Prior to the Shaheen Bagh protest, women from these areas were rarely seen as important social and political actors, neither in their homes nor outside. The protest was historic because it was led by Muslim women who exercised their agency as citizens peacefully defending their rights by occupying the streets day and night.
At Rafooghar, a different yet equally powerful form of resistance unfolds between the women—a slow, quiet, and everyday defiance against the daily injustices that they face within their homes, neighborhoods, and communities. Here, their stitched stories are given the space to breathe. Each stitch is an act of defiance against invisibility, a declaration that their stories matter.
As Laila Tyabji, an Indian social worker and craft activist, aptly puts it:
“The Rafooghar Project does just this, mending fissures and holes of which we might not even be aware; in the process darning together both wounds and women— invisibly but indivisibly. The Shaheen Bagh peaceful protest of 2019-20 was an inspirational story, Rafooghar is its worthy successor.”
* Compassion Contagion and Rafooghar were funded by the Centre for Applied Human Rights via Arctivism and ART. Rafooghar is conceived by Compassion Contagion and is executed in collaboration with Yellow Streets and Artreach India.
** Participants have given consent to be named in this blog.
