When I was a little boy, my aunts used to tell me a story. It was an anecdote from a time when my dad was still a bachelor. My grandmother, lying on her deathbed, expressed her desire to return to my father as his child in her next birth. My father had replied, "I will wait for you, but please come back to me as my son, for if you're my daughter, I'd have to send you off to someone else's household eventually." Even today, that fine line of discrimination exists, unspoken and unacknowledged. The girl child of the family may very well be Ma Lakshmi (Goddess of good luck), but she is meant to bring fortune to "others.