HER DAWN

Women in India no longer shy from achieving their dreams, making bold choices and breaking barriers in every field. There is no glass ceiling; only the open sky for them. Meet a bunch of women who are leading by example

- ANUJA CHAUHAN

Iijjat se jeene ka,” says Gangubai Kathiawadi, brothel madam and mafia queen, to whistles and applause in a new film currently breaking all records for movies top-starring a female actor at the box office. “Kisi se darne ka nai.” This dictum—demand respect, be unafraid—pretty much sums up the emotion simmering in the hearts and minds of Indian women today. The signs are everywhere—in the Shaheen Bagh protests, where women led the way, in the Instagram reels of The Rebel Kid Apoorva and the songs of Neha Singh Rathore, in the burqa-clad girl defiantly shouting Allah-hu-Akbar at a crowd of blood-lusting bhakts, in the post-marriage film choices of Deepika Padukone, the frontline reports of Barkha Dutt, the courage of Priya Ramani, the Ramanajun prize for Mathematics for Neena Gupta, and the audacity and unapologetic ambition of Priyanka Chopra and Mamata Banerjee.

Girls growing up today have more heroes and role models than ever before. In almost every field, they can point a finger at a female hero and say, “Look, amma, look appa, that’s who I want to be. She did it, and I can, too.” With agonising slowness but undeniable inexorability, stellar examples of female achievement are starting to bloom in what used to be a pitchdark sky, with Gangubai shining like a chand (moon) in her white sari, and dawn imminent.

Of course, the damning statistics and the savage backlash against this surge is there for all of us to read in the newspapers every day. But every day the shame shifts just a little, the awareness increases infinitesimally, the agency increases, the fear decreases and hope springs eternal in the feminine breast.