That night, over dinner of ragi mudde and soppu (finger millet balls and greens), the men watched the news. A female wrestler had accused a powerful politician of assault. The room went silent. Meera’s husband looked at her, then at his mother, then at his daughter. He turned off the TV.

She wrote a post: “They say a woman’s culture is to adjust. I say our culture is to adapt. We are not the clay. We are the kiln.”

With one hand kneading dough for rotis, Meera balanced her phone against the spice box. On screen, an American colleague’s video played about catalytic converters. In her ear, her mother-in-law, Savitri, recited the Tiruppavai —a devotional hymn. This was the Indian woman’s genius: the seamless blend of the ancient and the algorithm.