A Dalit

I would distance myself from an identity of mine which I had been shameful of for most of my life. I had been shameful of the fact that I availed something called reservation and got through universities like I did. My shame, for some comfort to me now, did not come from within in me but from what I had been taught and told through existing in the urban setting of a seemingly egalitarian cityscape. It took me some beating from the feudal lords in some not so feudal circumstances to realize this is the only thing I have inherited. What I have in me is generations of torture, pain and tragedy. Something I would continue to bear until I take strength from the trauma to shatter this abominable setting.

 

I am a Dalit who forgot her place. My place as a warrior in the shadows of misery to come up and take your insolence by its throat. Suffocate it until it speaks of the truth it so fastidiously hid from under the banner of ‘Umbridge’ eyes and disgusting pitiful smiles. Don’t you realise how easy it is to see where you stand despite the words you use to decorate solemnity of your stance. The only thing really solemn I see in you is your will to crush anything that opposes your tyranny. My will is to strip your souls the way you strip our bodies.

 

I look at a namesake and I see the carbon copy of a pain I know so well. How easy it is to recall the sound of one’s shattering will around those who have been through just the same. It winds up becoming a brotherhood of tears where our eyes meet with a longing to be seen and to be heard. Where we are busy knitting a world for one another to finally find solace to our woes since there is no one else who would care to see. I want to be called a Dalit for the struggles that unite us.

 

How disgustingly powerful can a flow of thought be to leech itself to power-seekers and glory-holders so much that you all consented to beat us up like this. Enough power for you to inject us with that dark matter and kill us in your own way. Joke is on you, for we survive like we have through rebellions where we shout and shout until your ears bleed. Until hearing us is not your choice but a necessity you cannot dare to avoid.

 

For those who falsely claim to be our allies, your words are merely bandages you dress yourselves with so neatly to cover up an unbridled guilt of self-preservation. Those who truly stand with us understand our trauma somewhat like an unspoken bond made through common suffering. I’ll end this with an appraisal to what is just and what is true as this is the only thing we fight for and will continue to fight for. Stand with us or don’t, just make it a point to never pity us.