This past monday I was returning home from a grueling day at work. It had rained that day and the air was muggy as I squelched through the lane getting my kohla-puri chappals soiled in the mud. I was tired and disoriented and walked onto the wrong metro platform twice waiting to catch the metro. Finally I arrived at the correct platform just as the train was pulling up. Sprinting a little, breathing heavily I collapsed onto an empty seat (surprisingly!) in the women's compartment of the Delhi Metro. As I settled in for the long ride home with my headphones in I thought I saw someone familiar sitting across the aisle. I shrugged it off.

Eventually the train pulled up at the next platform and a woman looking as tired as the next walked in asked the woman sitting opposite me to scooch up, to which the latter replied that there was another woman behind her with a child who probably needed the seat more and the initial lady, quite respectfully, stepped aside. I thought to myself, such is the power of womanhood.

I looked around the compartment - the women's compartment in the Delhi Metro. It has come under a lot of fire from sexist voices that exist in Indian society. "If they're so equal, why do women need a separate compartment in the metro?" they say. "They already have an entire compartment to themselves, why are they coming into our compartments and taking up our seats?" they argue, dripping with entitlement. As though the general compartment is meant solely for men. As though women should be marginalised while using public transport as well; half the population confined to one-eighth of the space. Not realising that the existence of the Women's compartment is purely a safety concern, and rightly so, given that New Delhi is the rape capital of the world. Are we not allowed even one-eighth of a train where we can be safe from the ogles and leches of the average Indian male without our integrity being questioned?

Nevertheless, I looked around the compartment absentmindedly, the compartment was starting to fill up. It was rush hour and people were returning home from work. I saw another woman who looked awfully familiar. Did we go to the same school? As I kept staring around absentmindedly the women in the compartment began to look more and more familiar. I started to notice their clothes, the way they carried themselves - backs stooped and tired after a long day's work, a few of them had children in tow, some carried laptop bags. These were working women. Most of them in their twenties no doubt, recent additions to the workforce putting themselves through the grind in order to earn a living. It wasn't long until I realised why so many of them looked familiar - it was because I saw myself in them. In their eyes, I saw a fire. This fire represents a changing India, changing mindsets and a fight for equality and justice that is reaching its pinnacle. This torch has been passed down through the eyes of generations of women who have struggled against a society stacked against them. With each passing generation however, the flame has become bigger and brighter and it is finally our turn to carry this torch forward. More and more Indian women are stepping out of their homes and joining the workforce, they come from different backgrounds but they all seem to want the same thing - independence and liberation. Some of them simply want financial independence so that they are not forced into an undesirable marriage where they will be further coaxed into "settling down" - a euphemism in Indian society for producing offspring, preferably male. Some want social liberation, economic independence, they want, nay DEMAND, their due as per the Constitution of India and they are not afraid to fight for it. Even if it means working 9-7 jobs in a male dominated office space, travelling by public transport teeming with disrespectful stares and leches, going home and cooking for their families, draining themselves of energy in order to gain the satisfaction of independence and freedom of choice. Every second of their existence is a fight.

In that moment I felt humbled, but oddly connected to everyone else in the compartment simply on account of being strong Indian women. Everyone in that little compartment was linked by a shared history, a shared struggle and shared conviction to keep marching on and changing the very fabric of the society that raised us so that our daughters will grow up in a world where the only soul they are answerable to, is their own.