The General and the Gent

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I was reading this post by IHM and I was thinking of an incident that happened a few years ago. I was traveling from Madurai to Chennai on an overnight bus. There was a big traffic jam on the way and we were delayed by over seven hours.

The bus did not have a toilet and the driver only stopped the bus a couple of times on the road so the men could take a leak. There were at least ten women passengers on the bus. Each human, each with a bladder. At first, I thought the driver would stop when he saw a toilet on the highway, but he seemed to rush past every rare one I spotted. All the women except me were traveling with a male companion. The distress on their faces was quite obvious. And yet, not a single person spoke up. Apparently, a woman wanting to pee was a shameful idea.

I decided that enough was enough and went to the driver and told him to stop at a toilet in a polite tone. He said okay. But the bus continued to fly by. I went once again and asked him what the problem was. He said that he hadn't seen a single toilet and that he had to make up for lost time. I asked the cleaner to get up from his seat and go and sit in mine. Then, I told the driver in a voice loud enough that the entire bus could hear that I wanted to pee and that I was going to sit there, right next to him, and make him stop the next time I saw a toilet. I probably looked deranged without my mandatory morning tea and I scared him enough to make him stop the bus the second a toilet dawned on the horizon.

All the women were visibly relieved after this break and the rest of the journey was quite uneventful. But it got me thinking on how many sociocultural rules govern our lives. Much more than the laws of the land do. Who decided that it was okay for men to pee in public but not women? Why are women's needs seen as 'special' needs while the needs of men are what make the General? Why did I have to make a fuss for the driver to comprehend that this was an important issue? Why didn't the husbands/fathers/sons accompanying the other women speak up if they themselves felt shy of asking the driver to stop?

We see this attitude everywhere. Men on Chennai buses get very irritated if a woman sits in the General seat because we already have Ladies' seats. When half the bus is reserved for women, why do we want to have a claim on the other half too? I once got into a General compartment of a local train and this guy started grumbling about how women were getting into the Ladies' compartment as well as the General one and there was no space for men. Since I seldom shut up when given an opportunity to be angry, I told him to point out where it was written that the compartment was only for men. According to him, all the women had to be stuffed into the two Ladies' compartments while the rest of the ten or twelve were solely for guy-bonding.

The fact that we have 'Ladies' privileges' only because sexual molestation is such a common and accepted thing in our society is barely considered. Ladies' queues, ladies' compartments, and ladies' seats are not examples of a chivalrous society. They are examples of a society in which its men cannot keep their hands to themselves. These are an open acknowledgment of the fact that despite the law, these are the norms. Given a choice, I'd gladly give up this 'privilege' to a day when we can all stop carrying umbrellas and handbags as body shields.

Equality and sameness are very different words, just as General and Gents are. The General is everybody's. I'm going to stay put on this seat.