When your son cries do you tell him, ‘Why are you behaving like a girl?’ or do you encourage him to cry his heart out and probably talk to you.u00a0Can your son cook, can he clean the house and do his own chores? Do you heat the food for him and serve him or does he do it himself? Have you made a will where you leave everything equally divided between your sons and daughters? If not, have you made it clear that is so? Or will your flat go to your son and your daughter knows that. When you both come home from office, who cooks or heats the food and worries about the dabbas and the maids in the morning?

Those are my trick questions for anyone throwing indignant rage at the way women are treated. In the wake of the Delhi gang rape everyone, people like us, media, government, has been going on, rightly, about changing mindsets. Can we then include ourselves in this change? Surely as fathers, brothers, sisters and more importantly mothers, a lot depends on how we behave at home. What signals we send out to our children about women. If even half the mothers in this country decided that they will ensure that their sons believe, I repeat believe, that women are their equals, we could have a better society.