When on a lunch date my friend served me the leg piece of our Achaari Chicken Tikka Masala, recollections of an old childhood memory flashed before me. On the days chicken was cooked, I remember the leg piece being saved for my father or my brother. On rare occasions, it would be mine even. But mom and grandma would never eat it themselves.

I never understood why but it sort of became an unquestioned default in my mind. If I picked out the coveted leg piece on my ladle, I’d put it back for the men. After all, this luxury wasn’t for me. Me – the inferior mortal. Until that day, when there were just two women on the dining table and the leg piece was ours – what do we do now? Are we to go looking for a man to serve? We weren’t prepared for this. So, my friend put it on my plate. I find it sad how even then she decided to actualize her instinct of serving the leg piece to anyone but herself.

When I share my thought – this ‘funny little family quirk’ – with her, she tells me it’s not just my family. Hers followed this unwritten rule too – Serve the leg piece to the men. This was when it dawned upon me – some bits of misogyny had made their way so deep, even in my woke, gen-Z, feminist, ever-so-curious mind, that I never even noticed them.

What’s so special about the leg piece anyway? My Quora degree in Food and Culture Studies lists a million different reasons – fat, texture, taste, moisture retention, blah blah blah. The reasons are irrelevant to this conversation. What matters is the fact that the question “Who eats what?” is also tinted with patriarchy.

Women are trained to practice the sacrifice of food/nutrition (and let’s be honest, all finer things in life) for the comfort of men. Applauded for it even. This sounds so painfully silly when I talk of it. But it is also a highly pronounced problematic default in our world – mine at least.

So that day, when the leg piece was ours – the two women on the table – we shared halves and relished every bit of it. We chatted more about the normalcy of these habits we were taught as daughters.

I can not come forward with a solution to this. But I hope to start a conversation. I hope to see a change with these conversations. And I hope to never see my daughter feeling guilty about the finer things that show up on her ladle. And that she is never compelled to put them back for a man.

Take care and serve yourself a leg piece.

I will too.

Anshika.