Forty years ago, in many Indian homes, life moved with a strange certainty. A daughter’s future was spoken of almost like a railway timetable. Study enough to be respectable. Learn enough to run a home. Get married before twenty three or twenty four. Have children before thirty. Parents would breathe out quietly, believing they had fulfilled the sacred assignment life had handed them.

In those days, anxiety existed too, but it wore different clothes. Parents feared delay. Society feared gossip. Girls feared disappointing their families. Yet the road ahead, however imperfect, was at least visible.

Then the country changed.