Asha Pande, with her toothless giggle, finally speaks up after being coaxed by the other women around her. She is middle-aged, but bears a fan-girl face as she says, “Shahrukh [Khan] keeps telling us in that advertisement on television how having your own house is better than living on rent. He keeps saying that buying a house is easier now because of home loans. But does he really know how hard it is to get loans from the bank?”There is no anger in her voice. But what Pande says is echoed by the other chikan kari artisans at the ground floor entrance hall of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in Lucknow's Brahm Nagar area. And they are less demure than Pande. And, no, none of them is wearing chikan kariwear.Nasreen Khan, sitting right in front of this group of 30-odd women, is more vocal, as she says proudly showing her paan-embroidered teeth, “Applying for loans is a nightmare. The government provides subsidies and loans to various groups. It needs to recognise us [chikan karigars] and our problems too.”The other complaint that comes rising out of this fiesty, go-girl-vote 'sample group' of Lucknow's women is spiralling costs. Shabana Lohari, in a red and white salwar kameez and glasses pushed back Reena Roy-style above her head, is standing next to the rest of us sitting on the floor. “Regardless of gender and community, everyone has to eat properly,” she says ominously sounding like my mother. “Entering a kitchen is getting harder by the day. Gas is now Rs 700 a cylinder.” The room is suddenly filled with cries of 'Saatso rupiya! Saatso rupiya!' as if they were wah-wahs in a mushaira on Ghalib's death anniversary.I had come to SEWA to meet women. Working class artists who earned their living not through middle-men -- or middle-women, which is what Runa Banerjee, CEO, SEWA, was initially mistaken for in 1984 when she founded the association – but by being directly plugged in both ends of the production-to-sale pipeline. You can't get more entrepreneurial as well as aam aurat than this.Bihar had its women forcing chief minister Nitish Kumar to put prohibition on the electoral promises table. Do UP's – or, at least, Lucknow's – women have a similar poll demand? Going by this gaggle, they do. Two words (four syllables, if you're an Awadhi shair): wo-men's safe-ty.Shumali Roy, sitting at the back is the first one to speak, and speak with her brows furrowed for everyone. “The government has done nothing for safety.” She narrates an incident about a woman being picked up, raped and 'returned'. The incident happened five years ago just after the Akhilesh Yadav government came to power. “Nothing has happened since.”Umrao Jahan tells me how a couple of days ago in Husainabad, not far from the Bara Imambara I visited yesterday, a young woman working at a household was harassed. “The police came. They weren't interested, and said that they were busy during 'election time'. They said they would look into it later.” There's also a general agreement that this feeling of being unsafe that has lingered in the air since 2012 like spilt ittar affects their professional life. “There are many of us who don't stay long enough at work because we fear being on the road after sundown.”What about the much touted '1090' helpline line for women that Akhilesh has gone hammer and tongs and cycle to publicise weeks before polls? “'Daas-nabbai' is useless,” says Kshama Parveen, her head wrapped in a red-blue dupatta. She proceeds to tell me why she isn't some conspiracy theorist prone to pre-poll whining.“There's a case where an 'application' (read: complaint) reached Akhilesh about a 1090 official harassing a complainant. This man was suspended. But the same chap again harassed the same woman. Daas-nabbai is a poll gimmick,” says Parveen with all the sincerity she can muster. The problem lies at the source for Lucknow's women: the state of law and order under the Samajwadi Party government.With a considerable presence of Muslim women before me, I bring up the 'double-t' word: triple talaq . I find a voice pipe up at my right elbow. It is that of Saira Bano, whom I remind later of her namesake to which her compatriots respond simply by laughing out the name Dilip Kumar . But at my question, Bano is blunter than a Sadhna cut.“Does the prime minister understand our din (religion), our madhhab (doctrine)? Has he ever engaged with the ulema to find out how for an overwhelming number of people talaq really works? No woman wants a divorce unless things become really bad for her. The triple talaq is not an issue. It certainly isn't an electoral issue. Why should such matters be an issue in elections?” she says like a train with no stops. Everyone else furiously agrees.Khursheed Khatun in her green dupatta and quiet face had not spoken a word throughout. Right at the end, after I had thanked the ladies for taking out precious time from their even more precious chikan kari work, she says laconically as if with a paan tucked away at the back of her mouth, “We [women] understand now. It's not like earlier when we just went out and cast our votes blindly. We now understand. We now know.” And she lets out a thread of a smile and gets up.The problem with men, especially men from Delhi who happen to be journalists, is that they see a statue of a woman with a sword raised on a horse and they immediately think it’s Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. So when I told my rickcharioteer to take me to the statue of the Rani of Jhansi at Hazratganj, he looked flummoxed. He looked equally flummoxed when I mentioned that the statue was opposite the BJP party office in Lucknow.Part of the mystery was cleared when I realised that the helmeted lady on the steed glistening in Goldfinger gold paint was not Lakshmibai but Maharani Avantibai of Ramgarh. I could be forgiven for mixing up the two ranis as both were from Madhya Pradesh. Both fought the British and died in 1858 during the Mutiny.Across the island-crossing at Lalbagh, from where Avantibai is ever-charging, is the BJP party office. Its walls are wrapped by shamiana-like saffron and white cloth. Inside, only one woman is projected as a leader lending her weight with the boys in the War for Lucknow. On a billboard inside, alongside the smiling faces of Rajnath Singh , Kalraj Mishra and state party president Keshav Prasad Maurya is Uma Bharti.Also from Madhya Pradesh. But with Uma probably hoping for a better result than what befell Lakshmi and Avanti.