I studied in a lot of schools and colleges on account of my father's transferable job. Many of these institutions were all-girls and it was not infrequent for me to feel this was less cool than a co-ed school, not to mention mourning the restricted opportunities for romancebaazi. But lately, I've had opportunity to reconsider this position.

Last week one of my old colleges, the Social Communications Media course at the Sophia Polytechnic, or as it is better known, SCM Sophia, celebrated its golden jubilee. Inaugurating the celebrations, its director said "the course was created to enable an early generation of women born in independent India to work in the media." Put so simply, this is suddenly an amazing fact. A movement for women's education had of course, existed since the 19th century but professional courses that did not draw on traditional roles and professions were still unusual in the mid-twentieth century. And, looking around an auditorium of stunningly diverse women professionals who have often held pioneering roles in all forms of media, art and activism, I could not help think how much the world shifts when we ask groups of people to excel for themselves, not just in service of something else; when you create a space that thinks of itself as "a means for both, personal and societal transformation."