I'll never forget watching Crazy Rich Asians because during the interval my sister had to chide me. The whole point of picking a somewhat mindless film was to indulge in some good old-fashioned escapism. I was in Mumbai. I thought I'd take my mum, sister and brother-in-law out for a movie. But I found it impossible to disengage from all that was unfolding on the M J Akbar front. My sister had to sternly tell me to put my phone away and take a break!

The last week had been even more intense than the previous. I returned from Italy and landed deep in the midst of the #metoo movement. Where before I had the luxury of negotiating how much time I would spend on activism, returning to India meant that I had to plunge into things headlong. That, like so many women who have been dealing with emotional triggers and mental exhaustion, I, too, am functional, able to commit to writing deadlines, interview people for assignments, and even form logical, coherent, sometimes beatific sentences is nothing short of a miracle. There is only one explanation for it. Other women are holding me up, refusing to let me sink into despair. It is on the level of militancy, how we are all communicating with each other, speaking truths about our lives to women with whom the only thing we have in common is a mutual aggressor/oppressor/assaulter. The sheer scale of the violations that have been committed against so many of us that had gone unspoken for decades, that had to be carefully repressed, is overwhelming. We are helping each other to heal, across caste lines, across class hierarchies, across political ideologies. It is the sisterhood at work.