Children, irrespective of what a birth certificate claims, should be allowed to explore and own any gender role that they think fit. They should get to decide what they’re comfortable with before society imposes restrictions on what they can and cannot be.

Growing up, we women have been repeatedly led to believe that our own sense of being lies at the lowest rung of the ladder; that we must respect and bow before everybody but ourselves. So what if a stranger elbowed my breast? I am not going to disrupt an entire auto line over it, right?

In 2018, we don’t introduce ourselves on the internet. Instead, we ration our emotions, perfect our personalities, and assemble our opinions so we can sell ourselves as a faultless commodity. We create a brand of ourselves and then spend all our energy in selling the best versions of ourselves to people on the internet.

In a country that thrives on a population which spends most of their waking hours trying to get by, “middle class” is a necessary armour, a shared language, a value system, and more importantly, a way of life. It makes you realise the difference between luxury and necessity, and builds character.

As an Indian daughter, I was made to believe that fathers could be patriarchs, but they were not the kind we should be revolting against. Unlike movies, which gloss over the regressive mindsets of desi dads, the cruelty of real life doesn’t afford the luxury of skimming through. It’s something us daughters have to wrestle with every second of the day.