“They have nowhere to go”, said Giovanni.

Over the Spring Break I went to Soug Wagef with my younger brother for some gelato from La Dolce Vita. While we were there, we met the shop owner, Giovanni and began talking about what ended with me thinking of the socialization of people in Qatar’s public spaces on the weekends and the Indian culture and movies.

Last class we discussed Masala films, Indian society and culture, and tradition versus modernity. Generally, Masala films last for three hours, which is much longer than the amount of time a typical Western movie would last. The reason for this is because during Indian summers, the weather gets very hot making it difficult to spend most of the day outdoors and many of the people living their come from poor backgrounds. Therefore, what many Indians do is purchase theatre tickets and spend three hours indoors watching a movie in air conditioned environment.

During our conversation with Giovanni we talked about weekends at Soug Wagef and how labor workers who consist of mostly Indians are not permitted inside because of “family day”. The reason for this rule is because many women feel uncomfortable because these labor workers just hang around and “stare”. However single males who are not labor workers are permitted into the soug. This is not just the case in Soug Wagef but also in all the malls.

The reason labor workers just hang around in public spaces and “stare” instead of going to a movie during the hot hours of the day is because they cannot afford to given the low wages they are paid. 30QR is a large sum when you are paid a monthly wage of only 600QR –some of which you want to send back to your family. All these labor workers are looking for are air conditioned cheap or free spaces. 

There exists a problem for both women and labor workers living in Qatar. The labor workers want to avoid the hot sun during their free time and the women want to feel comfortable. Since going to the movies and watching three hour long Bollywood productions is what Indians do back in their home country to avoid the summer heat, I am sure they would not mind doing that here either. Currently, the cheapest movie theatre in Qatar is Gulf Cinema, which also happens to play many Masala films. As a solution, the companies in sponsoring the labor workers could look into this matter and consider opening another lower priced movie theatre for their workers so that they could spend their free time –maybe even in the Barwa project by the Industrial area.