On Being Female in India

My Indian grandmother was married at the age of ten. Her four daughters were married in their late teens and twenties. My father, one of her middle sons, completely broke rank, marrying an American when he was thirty. At forty-​three, I have just become engaged for the first time and have chosen not to have children. Some of my twentysomething cousins are holding out against arranged marriages they’re not willing to accept. This is a great, lengthy piece by Meera Subramanian, on Indian activists and slow shifts in a broken system. [VQR, via Longform]