I rejected 'needlework' when I was ten years old. It was a compulsory class in my coed secondary school, but only for girls. Once a week, all the boys were ushered into a separate classroom. The same 'period' was categorised by two different names, depending on your assigned sex. Boys were taught 'craft'; girls, 'needlework.'

I resented the gendered nature of this classification. I detested the fact that because I had been assigned female, my fingers were presumably biologically pre-destined to handle a needle. In this school, affiliated to the church, in Kurla, the average classroom had at least 80 kids, over-populated by most standards. Each week we were taught a different stitch, and our task was to complete a row of it on cloth canvas.