One’s been getting a lot of enquiries about one’s emotional condition. While we all have fair weather friends, we all thankfully, also have people who are there, when the shit hits the ceiling. What can one say? Like I said, if I’m damned if I talk and I’m damned if I don’t, then it’s better to just shut the fuck up.

Let me just say, this has to be THE MOST defining moment of one’s life. To call out misogyny, when one sees it, is very different from standing up against in in your personal space. Unfortunately, a lot of what my mother and I put up with, will go with us to our graves. But sometimes, you just have to say, enough!

So, this is that moment. This is the time to say, I ain’t going to run, I ain’t gong to hide, I am going to show you what I am made up of. Sometime, next year, I will write about this in retrospect. I will tell you how I crushed the patriarchy! I will tell you how, women are the biggest perpetrators of patriarchy and the kind of bullshit I have had to put up with, if I were a guy, no one would have dared to say, think or do it. I will tell you, how I did it all alone, by myself. I will tell you every little detail of it- the pressure, the emotional blackmail, the justifications, the mind games and the manipulations. I will tell you how, there was no man, hence, no shoulder to cry on, no hand to hold, no one to say, ‘don’t worry, we got this!’. I will tell you, how I, Saadiya Kochar, came out of this guns blazing ; yes, single, yes, without boyfriend or husband!

But for now, I just have to get through it. I have to survive till next year. I have to remain in one piece, irrespective of what happens. I have to remain in one piece, irrespective of how many times I am told who said what! Irrespective of who knows me how well or so well , irrespective of who thinks what and irrespective who does what! I have to keep reminding myself of what I think I am. I have to remind myself that I am my mother’s daughter and how forward thinking, she was. I have to respect her wishes. I have to look at myself and see the lioness in the mirror, even though I feel like a bheegi billi, right now.

This moment will define me. Someday, when I look at my little girl, I will tell her, how hard it was and how I fought, with everything I had! So, that she learns from her mom, like I did from mine, to never play second fiddle to a man!