When I met my friend three years after her husband passed away, she insisted that I stay back to hear her stories. She had been married into a traditional family at 18. After 42 years, with her two children having settled into their own homes and lives in another part of the city, she was on her own. She was extremely delighted at her new-found freedom. Senior single women are now living the lives they lost to needless servitude for many years. They did not necessarily suffer in an acrimonious marriage, but had been held hostage to customs, rituals, practices and patriarchy of the earlier times. Many of them did not pursue a career. Even if they did, they gave up promotions and higher responsibility to take care of home…