Aurat [Woman]

This is a picture of the first performance of Aurat in 1979. The occasion was the first conference of working women under the aegis of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the trade union wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). This was amongst the first such conferences in north India. The venue is an unfinished building in Rup Nagar, a traditional middle class neighbourhood in north Delhi. Handmade posters with slogans adorn the bare brick wall. Moloyashree Roy (later Hashmi), then 25, plays the Woman. The pictures are shot, in all probability, by Safdar Hashmi, who was killed during a Janam performance in January 1989. In this picture, the workers are attacked by goons (l to r, Rathin Das, Rakesh Saxena and N.K. Sharma) as the worker Woman looks on.