An unfamiliar setting. A fast-crowding-up Metro compartment, but it’s a crowd with a gender-bias — or should we call it gender-fairness? It’s one of the two Ladies Only compartments of the Metro that enjoyed a brief life from September 1 to 7. Two or three oblivious (or errant or devious, if you please) men have got in. They show no signs of discomfort, nor any urge to proceed down the vestibule. “Janen na eta ladies’ compartment? Ekkhuni ekhaan theke chole jaan (Don’t you know this is the ladies’ compartment? Clear off at once),” barks a middle-aged woman who has just got up from Rabindra Sarobar and has not taken a seat yet. “Look at how these boys have got into our compartment,” she says and looks around for support. She is greeted with a stony silence. Soon there is an army of women reproaching her for her rudeness, pointing out the many practical problems of having a reserved carriage for women in the Metro.

Six days later. The same compartment again, but no longer the exclusive domain of the fairer sex. Two boys stand against the rails of what used to be, and is now again, the ladies’ seat. They are exchanging notes on the “deprivation week”. “What is a Metro ride if we cannot catch the sight of a few lovely girls?” says one of them, and lives to regret it. The ‘lovely girls’ within hearing range don’t take it as a compliment.

Since the idea of the Ladies Only compartment has met what can only be called its logical end, there is little point in asking whether women want segregated spaces in the Metro. But it might still be pertinent to ask why it was felt that the old system of reserved seats for women in every compartment needed to be traded for two compartments marked out for them. And why it took so many women by indignant surprise when it was introduced in their characteristically arbitrary way by the authorities. Is gender-based segregation necessary in public transport or in other areas of public life?

Commuting is still an ordeal for most women, though it may be marginally more comfortable than before. A crowded vehicle means that women have to spend their whole ride fiercely guarding their bodies and their purses. The aisle spaces are wider in the Metro trains, but the skewed ratio between travelling men and women means that there will inevitably be men in the aisle between the ladies’ seats. And therefore the same, single-minded struggle here too.

But does the answer to the problem lie in creating separate compartments for women? It must be remembered that segregation and reservation are not the same thing. Reservation is a tool used to empower individuals or groups that are socially, economically, racially or physically vulnerable or ‘backward’. Segregation, on the other hand, serves to disempower though it may profess to do the opposite. Segregation on the basis of gender is a form of sexual apartheid that does nothing to address the problem at its root. Earmarking a compartment or two for women is unlikely to enhance their image before the opposite sex. If anything, it will give men another excuse to accuse women of exploiting their victimhood. The derisive and angry comments faced by the women who got into the general compartments of the Metro during the segregation prove that such measures do a world of harm to the delicately poised relationship between the sexes. With the Metro, of course, the unanswered question remains, “Who felt that segregation was necessary, and why?” In the absence of any movement by women demanding separate carriages for themselves, the move, obviously destined to fail, was truly baffling.

There are moments in a woman’s life in Calcutta, though, when she is forced to see the segregationist’s point. Going to watch a film on one’s own, for instance, is like diving into a lake of piranhas. Of course, there is a chance that you will be flanked by women on both sides. But what if you aren’t? How you wish then that the seats for unaccompanied women came inside glass cubicles, which men could only circle around but not enter.