SHE'S NOT THE PLAN B

The girl who wasn't supposed to win – but did anyway.

- Himanshu Shukla

Let's talk about something nobody really wants to talk about at birth: biology. You know the scene. A child is born — pink, crying, full of possibility. There's joy in the room, yes, but in far too many households, there's a flicker of something else. A pause. A polite smile. A silent sigh.

Because the child is a girl.

Not because she did anything wrong (she's been alive for five seconds), but simply because she's not a boy.

It's a ridiculous reaction, especially when you understand what it took for her to get there in the first place.

Let's rewind to conception — not the romanticised version with soft lighting and harp music, but the real one: a microscopic war. Two to three hundred million sperm, all charging toward one egg. No mercy. No democracy. Just biology in its rawest form. One winner. Everyone else? Gone. Eliminated. Forgotten.

Now, here’s where things get awkward for those who still believe boys are “stronger.” The mother’s egg always carries an X chromosome. The father’s sperm carries either an X or a Y. If the Y wins, it’s a boy (XY). If the X wins, it’s a girl (XX). That’s it. No divine intervention. No karmic engineering. Just chromosomes.

And here’s the twist: Y sperm are faster, lighter, and supposedly more agile. X sperm, on the other hand, are slower, heavier, and built for endurance. So in theory, the Y should win. Every time.

But it doesn’t.

If a daughter is born, it means the father’s X sperm beat out all the Y sperm in that race. Despite the speed gap. Despite the chemical “opposite attraction” logic. Despite the evolutionary advantages stacked against it.

The X didn’t just show up — it outlasted. It endured. It won.

That girl— the one everyone thinks arrived by default — actually outperformed every boy who was ever “meant to be.”