They are neither bandits nor queens but city women (students, workers, housewives) who proudly go about their business of living in the Le Corbusier-designed city of Chandigarh with an air of nonchalance about them.
They came to my notice almost immediately when I returned to India and to Chandigarh in September of 2014 after a decade-long absence from my native land. I was struck by the unusual, boldly flamboyant way in which they covered their faces. I found it very mysterious. At first I assumed this was done to protect themselves from the increasing air pollution in urban India; but why the whole face, I wondered and asked my relatives and friends.

Their answers were surprisingly vague: while some suggested it was indeed the pollution that caused women (and some men as well) to use their scarves as filters for breathing, others mentioned the fear of becoming dark-skinned (considered unattractive in females in India) from the sun that forced these young ladies to cover their entire faces when they went outdoors. Still others mentioned, albeit half-jokingly, that the girls hid themselves in this way from being recognized when they went for rendezvous with their boyfriends.

Whatever it is, I felt transfixed by it during my walks in the city that itself seems to have undergone a reincarnation from being a quiet, sparsely-populated new experiment in town-planning a few decades ago into a metropolis on the go. Along with world-class educational institutions and an IT campus with multi-national corporations’ offices, Chandigarh now has traffic jams, western-style shopping malls, night-clubs and fancy restaurants. Its youth-oriented culture offers many a spectacle including this fascinating show with multi-colored characters.