New Delhi: The women of the Lithuanian Embassy have different job profiles, skill-sets, friend groups, and hobbies. But what binds them is an almost-ritual. All six of them dress up in saris and head to a monument characteristically Delhi. Last year it was Agrasen Ki Baoli, and this year it was Rajaon Ki Baoli.
Ambassador Diana Mickevičienė’s choice of armour is a presitched sari. Two of the other embassy staffers, who have lived in India for close to two decades, are adept at tying their own.
The Lithuanian Embassy in Delhi comprises only women. It happened by accident. Their office is a single building tucked away in Vasant Vihar, where leafy trees serve as a personal pavilion. The conversation at their morning meetings moves easily. They venture out of work and into life, discussing celebrities, fashion, beauty. “Normal, common issues,” said one staffer.
The inhabitants of the embassy don’t make much of their women-only status. It’s set to change with a male colleague soon to join them.
“Next month we are getting another officer. We will no longer be a hundred per cent,” said Ambassador Mickevičienė. “This is the closing chapter of our all-woman team.”
On the surface, nothing sets them apart from mixed teams. There’s been no upsurge in events foregrounding gender equality, no deliberate show of female solidarity. But as the ambassadorial staff repeatedly point out, they work exceptionally well together. They’re also all at home in Delhi. This is Mickevičienė’s third stint in the city. She was Deputy Chief of Mission between 2011 and 2014, and in a previous student avatar, studied at the National Museum in Delhi.
The ambassador said the all-woman embassy is simply a matter of probability. In Lithuania, most diplomats selected for foreign postings happen to be women.
Diplomat life generally means a safe distance from gritty realities. Living in Delhi has, of course, entailed the creature comforts of expat life. The city renders itself gently; the madness is curtailed, blunted by a genteel impermanence. Yet, as staffer Rasa Oziunaite pointed out, there are parts of Delhi they know “even better than the local people.”
While many born and raised in the city choose to skip the chaos of Old Delhi, going only on occasion, it’s one of her regular haunts.
“Life gets a bit dull. So, you go there to get a bit of excitement,” Oziunaite said, dressed casually in a loose black kurta and pants. For relative peace and quiet, there are always her other favourite places, Lodhi Gardens and Sunder Nursery.
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Streets are ‘aggressive, not unsafe’
Delhi’s reputation precedes it. And one image that has ossified in the minds of many foreigners is that its streets, parks, and other public spaces are dangerous for women. In 2012, when the Nirbhaya gangrape shook the city, Mickevičienė was posted here.
But she doesn’t buy into the notion that Delhi is fundamentally unsafe.
“There was a lot of conversation around that time,” she said. “But the statistics are there for the world to see. Ninety-five per cent of women know their rapists. I want to contest that the streets are unsafe. The street can be aggressive.”
The women of the Lithuanian embassy have a bigger problem with the fact that the city isn’t safe for walkers, no matter the gender. They follow the usual set of rules while negotiating Delhi’s streets: look after your bag, be aware of your surroundings.
“I’m a walker. I love to explore Delhi. People often say don’t go here and there. But I haven’t felt any unsafety,” said Christina Brazevic, another staffer.
The other hurdle standing in their way also has nothing to do with gender — the pollution that sweeps through much of North India.
As diplomats, they straddle two worlds. They’re simultaneously occupants and tourists. The lives they’re building are temporary — and they want to extract as much as they can from the city in which they’re living.
They were recently invited to a Ram Leela at the Red Fort. Being in Old Delhi, it was familiar territory for most of them.
“You still want to feel like a bit of a tourist and want to enjoy certain things,” said Oziunaite.
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Diplomacy, dogs, and shared bonds
The Lithuanian Embassy is relatively young, set up only 17 years ago. Other than the customary flags, a sculpture is perched on a table — Mahatma Gandhi with his Lithuanian friend and confidant, Hermann Kallenbach.
While Kallenbach’s passport was German, and he’s often claimed by the Germans, his hometown was in Lithuania’s Rusnė, where there’s a life-size sculpture of the two.
When distilling Lithuanian culture and building bonds of diplomacy, Mickevičienė prefers to draw on shared histories and similarities.
A couple of years ago, on the day that marked 700 years since Lithuanian capital Vilnius was founded, the embassy invited historian Sohail Hashmi to lead a group of expats and “Indian friends” on a walk around Tughlaqabad — which is approximately the same age. They recorded happy birthday wishes in five or six languages.
Bigger embassies have PR teams to narrativise their diplomacy. Mickevičienė instead trusts connections — the small, intangible bonds that last.
“We are in Delhi. We’re learning in Delhi. We don’t want to present just a plain story, but one which connects,” she said.
She’s very much in the thick of city life, right down to one of its most contentious debates — stray dogs. She’s on the Vasant Vihar dog lovers’ group, where the adversary anti-stray group’s ‘hate’ messages are discussed frequently.
The ambassador also feeds cats in the neighbourhood.
“It comes from missing my own cat,” she said. In this case, it’s not an all-women mission: “The biggest cat lover here is a man.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)