I was 12 and at a big family gathering in the summer holidays, eating spicy fried fish by a dam. The aunts were in one corner, the uncles in another, and the cousins were in the center, drawing all the attention with their silly games.
I wish I could recollect what made me laugh so hard, but every time I think about it, my smile dies down as I recall how I was scolded.
“Don’t laugh so loudly,” said my aunt. “Girls shouldn’t draw attention.”
I shrank into myself, suddenly aware of how much space my voice took up.
I was at school when a classroom debate unfolded about Juice — an Indian short film about a get-together of families where the men converse in the living room and the women do all the cooking for them in the kitchen.
I was angered by the familiarity of the scene and struck by the feminist angle. To my horror, my classmates – kids my age, kids who had been educated alongside me, kids who were part of my world – all thought I was just focusing “too much, too unecessarily” on the way it revealed gendered power dynamics in my society.
My voice reverberated loudly across the room when the bell cut me off.
Later, a professor – well-meaning, I suppose – leaned across the seminar table and warned me, “You’ll never find a husband if you keep arguing like this.”
I laughed politely, nodded as though chastened, and slipped out of the classroom without a word. But my silence was only on the surface; inside, anger pressed against my ribs.
This anger was soon reflected in the space women-written books occupied on my shelf, and turned into a search for more voices who had been considered “too much”.
A visit to Pondicherry in the south led me to a text titled ‘About Women’. As I clutched it excitedly in my hands, my brother looked over to my father and said, “I think she’s going to be a tad bit of a trouble when she’s older.”
Trouble. The word clung to me. Trouble for buying books. Trouble for asking questions. Trouble for refusing to smooth the edges of a self that did not want to be smaller.
And that’s the thing – what begins as a warning to shrink ourselves in the smallest ways rarely stops there. “Don’t laugh so loudly” becomes “Don’t argue so much.” “Don’t argue so much” becomes “Don’t be so difficult.”
Soon enough, it stretches into the larger, heavier accusations:
“Don’t expect safety if you’re out late.”
“Don’t be naïve enough to think your word will be believed over a man’s.”
“Don’t demand rights without compromise.”
The scale changes, but the script doesn’t. How many of us have been told, in a hundred different ways, that we are too much?
It’s a phrase that floats through Indian life like background noise. I hear it at family gatherings where, ironically, the only voices that fill the room are the men’s. The women are in motion, carrying trays from the kitchen, or else still, seated as a silent audience to this loud play.
I see it on television, in my political science textbooks: debates where women are rarely invited, and when they are, they’re sexualised or spoken over, words reduced to static. Even protests are dismissed, recast as shameful or hysterical (“Go home and tend to your infants!”), as though women’s collective outrage is nothing more than a glitch in the system.
But what is “too much”? Is it wanting to walk home safely at night, or be safe in our homes? Is it wanting to be believed when you say you’ve been harassed? Is it wanting rights that aren’t decades late, or riddled with terms and conditions?
India is a country of irony and contradictions. We worship goddesses – Durga for her fierce aura and her ability to fight injustice, Kali for her rage and sexuality, Saraswati for her intellectual freedom and Radha for her desire of love. I see them being draped in silk and gold; I see people sing their praises every festival.
But the same hands that fold in prayer can point in judgment.
My neighbor, Mrs. Rao, once told my mother, “Your daughter is too outspoken. She’ll have trouble later.”
I wonder if Mrs. Rao ever thinks about the Devadasis.
The Devadasi system began as a revered tradition in India, where girls were dedicated to temples and honored for their artistic and spiritual roles. It was never voluntary nor benign, but for some, it was a path to education. The girls sang hymns, made flower garlands, lit lamps, danced, and tended to the temple’s daily needs. Sometimes they came from elite or landowning families, and their service could give them status, wealth, and influence.
Over time, the religious veneer crumbled, and what had once been presented as sacred service increasingly became coercive. More and more girls came from Dalit communities – groups historically pushed to the margins of society by caste oppression. Families were pressured, or felt compelled by poverty and caste hierarchies, to dedicate their daughters. The girls themselves had no choice.
The weight of discrimination, poverty and patriarchy – along with increased stigmatization courtesy of British colonial rule – further hollowed out the way Devadasi were treated and seen. A role once celebrated for devotion and artistry was revealed as one of exploitation, with many forced into sex work.
I met Lakshmi, a former Devadasi, at a women’s collective in Karnataka.
“They called us goddesses, but treated us like property,” she told me, explaining how she was worshipped in the temple, yet claimed by priests and landlords who felt entitled to her body.
When the mainstream doesn’t listen, we build our own microphones.
In Uttar Pradesh, a group of Dalit women started Khabar Lahariya, a rural newspaper that tells the stories big-city journalists overlook – land rights, gender violence, corruption – always with women at the center. They’ve reported on everything, from four women killed while working in an unlicensed firecracker factory cracker factory explosion this June to the murder of an elderly woman accused of witchcraft. Watching their journey in the documentary Writing with Fire, I was struck by their courage.
“If we wait for someone to give us a voice, we’ll be waiting forever,” said one reporter.
In Telangana, Sangham Radio broadcasts to over 100 villages, run entirely by rural and Dalit women. I listened to a broadcast where a farmer’s daughter, barely 16, explained how she convinced her village to let girls ride bicycles to school.
“They said I was too stubborn,” she giggled on air. “But now everyone wants a cycle.”
Change isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s a mother quietly nudging her daughter to speak at a village meeting. Sometimes it’s a former Devadasi – once pushed to the margins, treated as less than human – now teaching other women how to open a bank account.
I think of my friend Priya, who once challenged a local politician about the lack of street lamps in our neighborhood.
“You’re being too aggressive,” he sneered.
“No,” she replied, “I’m being just enough.”
Two months later, the lights were installed.
To everyone who’s been told to wait, be patient, be quiet – don’t. Be too loud. Be too angry. Be “too much”. Because that’s how change begins: not with permission, but with persistence. The world doesn’t change for the grateful and the quiet. It changes for the ones who refuse to shrink.
Cover by Atul Pandey