It’s the women’s compartment!!

The Delhi Metro has started reserving the first coach of the metro trains for women. We have seats reserved in buses since a long, long time. Well, the reservation culture of our country is understandable; we have all sorts of castes, groups and communities crying out loud for it. The demands of some are of course justifiable. But the women never demanded reservations in mediums of conveyance. They never cried out for it, what they talked about and always wanted was a decent kind of travel environment which I guess is everyone’s right, men women alike. In a country like India, where there is a tense relationship between material resource and human resource, one of the places where it is most evident is the travelling scene- fast life, less of time which is aggravated by lack of adequate transport facilities. In a fully loaded bus or metro and I am speaking here as a woman and woman alone , where as it your back is pressing against somebody’s ass, if someone tries to pinch your butt or feel you up, you sometimes don’t even have the space to turn around and confront that pervert!! We do not mind standing but we want our decent space as every sane person does. Some sympathetic person in authority must have thought about reserving seats for women but we all know how far we can claim it. The recent spats in metro’s first coaches between women commuters and men who try to encroach on their ‘space’ have been in news. During one such encounter, I heard a man saying, “Yeh wahin auratein hain jinko kuchh din pahle tak hum apni seatein dete the! Aaj humko aankein dikha rahin hain kyunki inko khud ka compartment jo mil gaya hai!!”

What is evident here is anger and a very resentful grievance against the space allotted to women. When I stand in the reserved coach of the metro, I always feel some male eyes burning into me as if it’s my fault to be there, as if we women have committed a grave crime. And it’s not, that my community is all innocent. Whenever travelling with a male companion, some women tend to let their companion/s into the reserved coach and defend their presence. Well, if you so much want to be with your friends, why not travel in the general coach. But we see all kinds of hues here. There is a tussle between claiming and encroaching, vehement disapprovals, silent negotiations, and distasteful disinterest. Nonetheless, the women’s coach creates a ‘pink’ space, with a women only feel. It’s a sisterhood of the fairer sex which creates a different kind of bond between the fellow travelers, though it may be silent. Welcome to the women’s compartment.    

Yagyaseni Bareth, Research Scholar, CHS/JNU