Are you a feminist?” she asked. The temperature was below zero, and it was raining incessantly. What could be a better time than that to enjoy every sip of hot coffee? I was holding a cup of black coffee. I don’t know why I sit on the table instead of the chair or why I sleep on a sofa instead of a bed. Anyway, that question certainly didn’t dissolve well in my coffee cup. So I asked back “What?”

“Are you a feminist?”

she didn’t bother paraphrasing it any further. As much as I love the yes-no questions in the exams, I hate them in real life. I think these invite confrontations. So I said “I don’t know.”

“Come on. How can you not know that for God’s sake?” “Okaay, I think I’m not.” I gave in. “So you’re an egalitarian.” “What? Hell no. I do believe in gender equality”, I retorted.

The next thing I knew, she was reading the first line from the page wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism aloud. It said “Feminism is a belief in the right of women to have political, social, and economic equality with men”.

I had nothing at all to dissent. Gee, so I have been a feminist all my life without even knowing about it? I didn’t like to call myself a feminist. I said I don’t think anyone today would think men are superior and women shouldn’t be treated equally.

So then virtually everyone’s a feminist. But she gave examples saying there are a lot who do think that women shouldn’t be treated on par with men. Now back to the point, why don’t I like calling myself a feminist? While trying to answer that question, I realised that I never knew the dictionary meaning of “feminism”.

All I had on my mind was an image of a stereotyped feminist. The impression that I have of a feminist is of a woman who usually appears before Singhadurbar, climbs on Prithvi Narayan Shah’s statue there and chants “we need 50% quota for women”.

So, I came to the conclusion that it’s not the dictionary definition that most of us relate to. With that I sighed and took a sip of coffee. It was so cold already. “Can you make me another cup of coffee?” I requested.

“No, I can’t. Can’t you make coffee yourself?”

“Of course, I can,” I said getting up reluctantly. Damn it, I forgot I was talking to a feminist.