A still from Shikha Makan’s film Bachelor Girls

No one will bring your rights to your doorstep,” Laxmi Nara­yan Tripathi said at one point during the panel discussion we were on together, titled ‘Breaking Taboos’. It was an event organised by the Asia Society and chaired by Annie Zaidi, the prolific writer and editor of Unbound: 2000 Years of Indian Wom­en’s Writing. Besides Laxmi and me, the panel included Shikha Makan, a filmmaker, and Kalyani Joshi, co-founder of The Period Project that is invested in creating menstrual hygiene awareness in rural Udaipur.