was told once by a man that anger was not productive.
That was a few years ago. I was a bit unsure of myself and the man was very sure of himself, so I accepted that bit of wisdom. After a few years I found that he had been wrong.

Maybe it was because he was a man. But what I’m about to share with you now illustrates that well channeled anger is not just productive; it is revolutionary and quite efficient, especially if you’re a pedestrian in Lahore.

To fully explain why he was wrong about anger and I shouldn’t have bought into his worldview, I have to take you down a tunnel, at the end of which there is no sunlight, for that was where it all began.

I was thumbing through my copy of The Bell Jar when I realised that I was short on stationary I need to annotate it.

This prompted me to walk to the nearest stationary shop. I zipped up my jacket and stepped out into the smoggy twilight. The first man I tried to approach for directions seemed to be afraid of me. I spoke in an even tone, asking him where the nearest bookshop was. He mumbled something, kicked his bike and sped off in a jiffy, leaving me to wonder as to what had instilled such fear of me in him.

This was new, a man being afraid of me, rather than the other way around. If it was my hair, I made a mental note to keep it like that — layered, kinky and untamed.

That motorist definitely had something of his own going on, for when I approached other pedestrians for directions, they responded quite normally and were helpful. Everyone told me to go to Garhi Shahu, so I went on, dodging the poles and cement barriers that jutted out from the footpath, stopping for a moment to stare at the salmon pink façade of Queen Mary College and past the jumbled wires that made me think of electricians and how difficult their job is without proper protective gear and health coverage.

When you are a in a woman’s body and navigating Lahore, whether you want it or not, a blanket of urgency and hurriedness descends on you.

This suggests that for the women afoot, public avenues, footpaths and roads are not safe spaces. They do not loiter in these spaces, they do not luxuriate in the sunset like men are often seen doing, miswaks casually hanging off the sides of their mouths. Women walk with purpose, swishing by quickly, on a side of the footpath and often in pairs, eerily similar to how they walked in Gilead, the dystopian state Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is set in.

Women are not experiencing these spaces idly, straying off to the middle of the road just to wave to the shopkeeper across. They keep to the margins. Or they are kept on the margins.

I am not immune to this. For the longest time, this inability to stop by the roadside while on foot sabotaged my attempts at being a good flâneuse. By the end of such walks, taken alone and in fear, I would not even remember what the sky looked like and there would be nothing but a blur to relish.

It was only after some male friends went out with me and stopped on the side, this time to buy roasted peanuts, another time to pause and enjoy samosas with me while the traffic whirred past us in a blur that I realised that this was something I could do too. I could do it on my own. Alone. Take a breather. Pause during my walk. Look at the sky. Munch on street food. Study people’s faces.

The second thing about walking is: you’re always hyper-vigilant and alert, as if on cue for something dreadful to happen. On my way to the bookshop, I noticed cats, people and Suthra Punjab dumpsters. I was on guard for motorists veering towards the footpath too speedily, and cars that were backing out of garages. Males walking towards me or anybody walking right behind me would raise the hair on the nape of my neck.

So I paused, crossed the road and congratulated myself on making it to the stationary shop while regretting that there has been a noticeable decline in the number of bookshops one comes by these days.

The shop was welcoming, though austere. It stocked only textbooks and emoji stickers that all looked the same. The man on the counter seemed friendly. I bought a measly wad of sticky tabs, a pencil and an eraser. Then I was out in the cold again to make my way back to my workplace.

It was dark now. When I was on the footpath next to Queen Mary, I sensed that there weren’t a lot of people in the area. Nobody else was walking, but because the footpath was next to the main road, traffic noisily chugged past. It was then that a motorist stopped by.

“Do you want a ride,” he asked.

I was so shocked, for it felt like he had materialised into my peripheral vision out of nowhere. “No thanks,” I replied and quickened my pace. He trailed me for a bit before speeding on. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I was a bit worried at this point. I had only taken a few steps when another biker stopped next to me. Immersed in Charli XCX’s vocals, wanting no drama and wishing very deeply to be productive instead of angry, I picked up pace, not acknowledging his presence.

I thought I had left him in the past and that too without a word. But then he had the audacity to speed up and stop right next to me and honk insolently. I stared at him and made a hand gesture, “Kya hai?”

He too asked if I needed a ride. I looked the man up and down, he was twice my age. In my head, I was wondering if all these men on the roads were automata repeating the same script. Also, who gave them the script?

I was incensed, but I decided to be civil: “Do you also offer rides to your mother, your sister and other women in your family?”

“Yes, you are my sister,” came the reply.

The man leered disgustingly, like he had said something really witty. It made me quite angry. The temerity of this man; harassing pedestrian women under the innocuous guise of “helping them.”

I stepped closer to him. My eyes bore into his, and I made sure there was a glint of insanity. In an even-toned voice I said, “I will pick up that brick,” and pointed to a brick on the footpath, “…and I will bash your head in.”

The effect was immediate. The bike took off, speeding past a red traffic light.

Now I’m not advocating for threatening men. I am also aware that many would say I should have responded with restraint. Intimidating a man that way, they’d say, is unbecoming of a lady. But really where’s the fun in that? Men unhinged enough to harass women in the middle of a femicide do not deserve politeness. I deserve catharsis.

I stand by my actions. I would love it if I were to meet the man who told me, “Anger is not productive” and set the record straight. I would tell him that anger isn’t just productive; it is transformative. It is release when you need it badly; it is a healthy way of responding to violence; and it heals you when politeness would have quietly simmered in you, chipping away at your self-esteem.

In some ways, anger is also revolutionary. It is my hope that that man will think twice before offering unsolicited rides to women who are walking.

Aamna Shahid is a staff member