Segregation

Now, i know that a born and raised Southern titling an email "Segregation" is trouble from the beginning. But hear me out,...The South of my parents and grandparents was a VERY different souththan the one of my memory; especially in Birmingham. Most of my understanding of the events of the 1960's is textual and not contextual. As a result, i have come to think of terms like Segregation and Separate but Equal as 4-letter words. This leads me to the present. Madurai (where we are living for the next 3months) is in southernIndia. Oddly, southern India has some of the same traditional and conservative feel that the Ol' South once had. A common example canbe seen in mass transit. The buses are gender segregated. The men sit on the right, the women on the left, and married couples sit on the right with the man sitting on the aisle. I rode such a busseveral times (maybe 5miles, cost 2Rs (~5cents). I noticed when thebus was not full, the common filling would occur; people sit in singles. At one stop several school girls boarded the bus. The menjumped up to pair with other men and to offer their seats to the ladies. No one said anything, it's just what a gentleman does. {wherehave i heard that before}. Women would eventually sit on the men side, space permitting, usually in pairs. Paired men would not get uponce paired with other men. Courtesy only goes so far when one hastired legs. Men never sit on the women's side {not if they aredecent, at least}.Now, i'm as much of a feminist as the next guy. So when i first sawthis, i reacted with a "why can't we all just sit together", but theni bathed in the thought of 'why'. Why do women need women space and why do men need men space. It was nice to see men jumping up to lendtheir seat to a lady. It was nice knowing, late at night when all decent people should be in bed, there was not some creepy guy sitting next to a woman for some vulgar means (which is all too common on the 1 in Austin). What has been the cost of equality on the [US] buses? It would be nice to solve problems on a topic by topic basis [gender segregation on buses...Good, gender segregation in corporateAmerica...Bad] ... but, alas, the world is more complicated than that. All i know is, on the surface, it's nice.

Exceptions to the "rules" The buses get massively over crowded. Which is a bit of an understatement. What i mean to say is, the buses get so full that inside people stand pushed up against their fellow 8 Indians. I neverunderstood how crowds crush people at rock concerts until i rode anIndian bus at rush hour. Outside the bus, people (usually men) hangfrom the doorways (since there are no doors). The entire bus tilts,as if about to tip over, and the undercarriage (shocks & struts alike)moan in pain. Yet again, the sight and sound of India seems unreal.The first time i saw this, i thought the bus was broken, but when hordes of people exited the bus and the bus righted itself from its15degree tilt, i thought...oh. For these situations courtesy,politeness, and segregation do not apply.
Just git' on the bus,
there's no need to discuss much,
just git' yourself free