A power outage on campus leads physics student Zoya Vallari to take a stand against her university's female-only curfew.

Zoya Vallari is a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech where she studies fundamental particles called neutrinos. She received a PhD in particle physics from Stony Brook University in December 2018. She's the winner of Three Minute Thesis competition at her graduate school and was awarded the International fellowship by American Association of University Women. Physics and dance are the two most important ways in which she relates to the world, though books come a close third. She loves mangoes, wine and sunshine. She is proud of her ability to lucid dream.

This story originally aired on March 15, 2019 in an episode titled “Teamwork: Stories about working together”.

Story Transcript

On a hot sweltery night in New Delhi, I sat on my desk trying to make sense of all of quantum physics one week before the final exams.  I was a sophomore living in a girls’ hostel on the college campus. I stared at my notes and the notes stared back at me. Suddenly, the bulb went out around 11:00 p.m.  No, that was not a hurricane. It is a fairly common affair during summer nights in Delhi.

I sat in the pitch darkness trying to remember where I had put the candles and the matches, but immediately a bead of sweat started forming along my forehead and I abandoned the idea of lighting a candle and generating some more heat.  I, instead, opened the window. There was a pleasant breeze outside so I decided to step out on the shared balcony of the hostel.

That was the only open space available to us and all the other residents came out and hung out there.  We could not have stepped outside the building even if we wished because, every single night, exactly at 10:00 p.m. we were locked inside the building.  The reason given behind this curfew time, as it was called, was of course to ensure the safety of ladies, us. Thank you very much.

And if you're thinking 10:00 p.m. is bad, in my freshman year, I lived in a private hostel off-campus which had a curfew time of 7:00 p.m.  I had just moved from my small town Allahabad to New Delhi and I enrolled myself in a dance class even before my classes at the college began.  I was as excited to be a part of this famous bollywood choreographers’ dance studio as I was to learn physics.

There was a small problem with this dance class, though.  It ran from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays. So my mother called the owner of this private hostel and requested that I be allowed ten extra minutes one day in a week.  He agreed.

But every Wednesday after my class when I reached a few minutes late, a security guard would stop me in front of a locked door and ask me to wait while he called the owner.  The owner would take his own sweet time and come out and then question me about my whereabouts. He did let me in but, within a month, the owner called me to his office and said, “Zoya, you're setting a bad example for all the other girls in the hostel.  I cannot allow you any extra time.”

So I did the only other thing possible.  I asked my dance class to let me leave early.  I would be in the middle of a dance routine and then trying to sneak out and then run as fast as I could to try to make it in time.  Invariably, I got late. At this point, the owner refused to talk to me. He would straightaway call my mother and tell her that she did a terrible job raising me because I can’t even follow simple rules.  

My mom would listen to him and then request him to let me in again and again and again.  This was the first time I was living away from home and my mom and I didn’t know how to deal with this matter.  We were bound by a lease and lack of housing options to find another place.

While all this was happening, there was another protest brewing on my college campus.  Women formed 60% of the student population but were only allotted two out of six on-campus residences.  So there were protests, meetings, marches and, after a lot of resistance, the administration agreed to convert one of the boys’ hostel into a girls’ hostel.  

I was thrilled to find out my name on the list which said who will be moving in this new girls’ hostel.  Apart from the very affordable price, now, I could wake up just ten minutes before the class giving me half an hour extra sleep but, much more importantly, now the curfew time had moved from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.  I felt like Cinderella being told, “You have three extra hours every single night.” To be fair, she already had until midnight.

So now we are back on the night of power outage on our balcony.  We are all grumbling about boys being allowed to go outside whenever they want and arguing that since they are the ones who usually cause all the trouble, they should be the one locked in.  My friend and I reasoned we should at least be allowed to go to the rooftop of our own hostel.

After waiting a while but with no signs of power coming back, most girls went back to their room to either study or sleep.  My friend and I, avoiding quantum physics, had other plans. We made our way to the door which led to the staircase but had a lock on it.  I inspected the lock casually. It was made of the same brand as the door on my own room, so I tried my room key. Voila, it opened! It was like I said ‘Alohomora’.  

My friend and I rushed up the rooftop.  A pleasant wind greeted us on it. We looked around.  Our college campus looked beautiful at night with its little chapel, gardens and trees.  We explored the whole rooftop from one end to the other and, after about 15 to 20 minutes, we came back down.  But the key that I had used to open the door could not lock it back.

By this time, the power had come back.  And in our noisy efforts to lock the door, we were spotted near it by some of the residents.  The next morning, the news broke. It went from residents to warden to the dean and to the principal and we were summoned.  

They alleged that we had broken the door to call boys inside.  You know what? They were right. We did call a boy. When we were on the top, my friend and I, we wanted someone to bear witness to this historic moment of our life.  Since only boys were allowed to step outside whenever they wanted, we called a friend and pleaded with him to come out of his room. So he came out, grudgingly, in front of our hostels, waved at us for two minutes, wished us luck and left.  This was mundane to him. It was every day.

So the administration interrogated us and told us we will be expelled.  We were really scared. We did not feel any remorse for our actions whatsoever but we were afraid of losing our on-campus housing and going back to these private houses with 7:00 p.m. curfew time, so we cried and apologized with all our might.  

They called our parents.  They asked them to provide letters vouching for our intentions and characters.  After a few weeks of back and forth, during our final exam time, the principal called us and said, “Since both your parents are from respectable professions and since you both are academically good students, we have shortened the punishment to just one month of expulsion.”  

Naturally, questions arose.  What if we were bad students?  Or what if our parents were not academics and, hence, respectable professionals?  Would we deserve the expulsion? Aren’t those the reasons to give us on-campus housing since it has a more academic atmosphere?  But at that moment, I controlled my ever-bubbling urge to ask questions and just accepted the watered-down punishment with a lot of relief.  

For a month, I stayed in a private hostel, and many a night those days, I would lie in my bed and think that one day I would become a powerful person with a lot of authority and then I'll come back to all of these hostels and finally let my frustration out.  I would tell them that by hindering our movement they spoiled our educational experience, our access to libraries, social events, parties, midnight food and even air. I would practice this speech over and over in my head until I fell asleep.

Well, I’m happy to tell you that the current generation of women students in New Delhi have taken the matter in their own hands.  They are not waiting for anyone. They organized and built a really powerful movement toward the last couple of years. They call it Pinjra Tod which translates from Hindi to “Break the Cage’.  They are actually breaking down the locks, climbing over chained gates and protesting all night long in front of these hostels.  Their courage is contagious.

As my past gets liberated by the wonderful actions of my younger sisters, my present is inspired.  

As for me, I still harbor a secret love for night skies after midnight.  I went from Delhi to Mumbai and finally came to New York to pursue a PhD in particle physics.  I guess that proves two things. One, at some point I learned quantum physics. It took significantly longer than one week.  Secondly, my mom did a real fine job teaching me to question everything.

For my PhD research, I often visit this tiny little town called Tokai in Northeast Japan to work on a particle accelerator.  After working late at night, I would take a stroll around 2:00 a.m. to a park nearby. The fresh wind in my face would remind me of my time on that rooftop in Delhi.  And as I would lie on the park bench, I would stay awake thinking I do not have to be a powerful person alone. I will always find power in solidarity. Thank you.