How These Chandigarh Students Are Fighting Catcalling 'Gedi' Culture

Chandigarh runs on three things: Sector 17, Chelsea boots, and Gedi culture. Mostly the last one. Especially outside women’s colleges. Cars slow down for no reason. Bikes take sudden U-turns. What looks like casual loitering is actually a carefully timed routine. Men trail girls while honking, blasting Punjabi songs, making sure everyone notices. Sometimes they follow you all the way from college to home. They ask for phone numbers, and when told no, they act as if a girl’s refusal comes with a secret “maybe”.

This happens in broad daylight, right outside MCM DAV, one of the most popular colleges for humanities in Punjab. It’s a place young women pass through every day, mastering the art of looking straight ahead and pretending not to notice. Because sometimes pretending is easier than engaging.

“I don’t wear sleeveless clothes to college anymore. Now it’s just kurtis and sweatshirts, my armour for surviving the streets. It’s not about style, it’s about making it through the day without any drama,” says Mansha Sharma, a Public Administration Honours student.

Things get worse during election season. More men outside college gates. More cars with political stickers. Louder behaviour. Elections do not just bring more confidence but also more catcalling. 

Hall of Shame: Speaking Up

This is where Instagram quietly stepped in. An account called Hall of Shame began as a page but quickly became a record.

Women sent stories of what they faced outside their colleges. Screenshots, locations, timings, names. Scroll through, and the same behaviour repeats across campuses. MCM, SD, Khalsa, different colleges, same story.

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The page did something important. It made women realise they were not imagining things. They were not overreacting. When one story went up, a hundred more followed. 

A Petition That Spoke Volumes

Tia Malhotra, a third-year English Honours student at MCM, decided to take the conversation beyond personal stories. She started an online petition highlighting the harassment students face outside college gates.

More than 6,000 people signed it. The number mattered. It showed that thousands recognised the problem. It was no longer one voice speaking out but many standing together. 

Looking Back at 2017

Chandigarh has had to face some uncomfortable truths before. In 2017, the Varnika Kundu Stalking Case put the city under a national spotlight and showed exactly how entitlement and influence can play out when women’s safety is at stake.

Eight years later, the case is still crawling through the courts. In July 2025, one of the accused was even nominated to be Assistant Advocate General in Haryana.

45 retired IAS officers wrote an open letter protesting it, and thankfully, the nomination didn’t go through. The message it sent was impossible to ignore

Today, between petitions like Tia’s and platforms like Hall of Shame, something has shifted. Women are keeping records of what the city would rather forget. They are documenting it, sharing it, making sure no one can scroll past it casually.

Views expressed by the author are their own.