I had no idea that patriarchy was just an excuse to mark inefficiency. I thought it was an all-pervasive malignant system that had treated half of this country’s citizens as less than human for as long as I could remember, but I was clearly wrong. It had been an excuse all along, and I found this out only a few weeks ago, thanks to one of our most learned ministers who revealed the truth in public.

For those who weren’t lucky enough to get that update, the reason patriarchy doesn’t really exist is this: if it did, India wouldn’t have had female politicians, scientists, or activists. We have them, which means there is no patriarchy. This argument didn’t make sense to me at first, because it felt like the equivalent of saying that Bombay’s roads are world-class because there are no potholes outside Mantralaya. Then again, given that I am probably less educated than most of our current politicians, I had to eventually concede that I must have had the wrong idea. Indian women must have been in power all along without my noticing it. I must have been brainwashed into thinking of them as marginalised.