When I read the Supreme Court Bench’s disappointing judgment on same-sex marriage, it was a line from Lalithambika Antharjanam’s autobiography that came to my mind. Remembering her youthful struggles against the barbaric oppression of women in the traditional Malayala brahmin caste, she wrote: “Never had my heart trembled so hard than when I placed my hand on that forbidding door”. She was referring to the terrifying, dehumanising, violent structure of restrictions under which Malayala brahmin women lived.  Over centuries, she says, innumerable women had battered it with their heads. Until one day it collapsed at a small push, soaked with their blood and tears.