I was 16 when I first read a book by Anuja Chauhan. Her books had female leads living unapologetically grand Indian lives where the unlikely happened. These books were funny, spoke of the newfound freedoms of women with main characters who were capable, educated and yet found love. Which was important to me as a first generation college student. When I later looked her up, the internet called her books ‘chick lit.’ Publishers classify ‘chick lit’ as books (written by women - though that is not explicitly mentioned) about romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles written in lighthearted ways. In college, of the two categories available to me - “vain” or “boring” (female nerd) - I wanted to belong to the second so if anyone asked what books I read, Anuja Chauhan was left out and Murakami mentioned.

This was my first lesson that books, films or songs made for women or by women were for some reason…inferior. JK Rowling, the author of the most popular children’s book, is actually Joanne - her publishers thought the books would be read by more boys if they didn't know they were by a woman. And they were right.

Meryl Streep says “It’s like women have learned the language of men, have lived in the house of men, all their lives. We can speak it. You know how when you learn a language..it isn’t your language until you dream in it. And the only way to dream in it is to speak it, and women speak men. But men don’t speak women. They don’t dream in it.”

Like Joanne, I had learnt men. And I enjoyed it. I loved Murakami and King. I enjoyed my Dan Browns and Jeffery Archers. But female authors with female protagonists felt like a study in my own experiences. So time and again when I needed advice, not entertainment, I returned to them. I found words for my mother in Arundhathi Subramaniam - 'her eyes bright with defeat as I grow stealthily into her body. Here it is then – the treachery of middle age, of love. It gets no closer than this, Mum'. When Durga Chew Bose said 'Living alone is an elaborately clumsy wisening up', I knew why I was never the same person that entered the one bedroom flat on 156, Defence colony. Male friends who borrowed from my bookshelves found them both too meandering, too flowery. l wondered if that’s how I sounded to them.

At work, I spoke men. I was assertive and direct. But being a woman not only has the burden of working hard for a seat at the table but also holding up what a woman is (as per everyone’s definition) when you get there. Be warm and welcoming too.

Men all around us are just creating and working, our existence is political.