The other day I had an unusual conversation with a friend from college, about what kind of young women we had been. She began living away from family at 16, as a paying guest, while in college. When a girl from her class eloped, the parents immediately landed up at her doorstep, convinced that she must have led their daughter astray. "Can you imagine this?" she asked indignantly. "But, hats off to me, you know, because at that age, I told that lady she had no business doing this." I felt my heart blossom a bit. Not because she had told off the narrow-minded parents, but because she said "hats off to me" about a small, but important, personal quality. How often do you hear a woman say that about herself?

Success is a funny thing. We are all supposed to aspire to it, or be thought of as losers, and it's always defined in limited terms as particular public achievements — territorial conquest, in other words, by gutsy warriors. Women consume a lot of motivational material in part because their relationship with success is so complicated. They feel they must succeed more and prove themselves doubly to be taken seriously. Yet, too much success or ambition, and they're deemed unlikeable, threatening, intimidating, opinionated. Having a sense of value for yourself? Vinasham! When I commented the other day that I wasn't impressed by the attention of people who didn't value my work before #MeToo, it caused a nervous giggle, because such self-worth, yaniki, arrogance aurat ko shobha nahin deti, na? Actually, even I felt, for a minute, that god would punish me for saying it.