FROM THE MARGINS

 

My woke friend wears a black lives matter shirt to class

The weight of which doesn’t weigh down on his back like it should

I’ve never known a black person too well

Yet to take their weight on my shoulders

Seems impressive

And yet offensive

Kendrick lamar tops playlists

The man is great

But I don’t relate

Boys reiterate

The need to say the word related to slaves

The word black people died, inscribed on their graves

You’re saying the wrong N word

Scrolling in on your in shorts

Narrowed discussion in your savarna cohorts

Say Naxals

Say Naxalbari

Say North East unrest

Say Narivaad

O well go back to Kendrick Lamar

Don Cheadle with the real questions, a sucker for a diplomat

Two first names, yo what’s up with that

A feeble attempt at denouncing caste

How you gonna outrun the pyramids of  your past

Yvette Smith, Michael Brown, Damien Rice

Your facebook posts, a social justice sympathy heist

And your angst won’t suffice

Your ignorance comes at a price

Rohith Vemula’s death

Nah it won’t make it to this reprise

I’m spittin verses out here, if I could only spit names

The media tellin me whose head’s worth a headline

And the men originating from feet

Their blood’s not written about with ink

Now i’m here about no black struggle

No american problem, read a book about it-struggle

I’m here for a made in india struggle

A centuries old shackled struggle

I’m here for a brown struggle

I’m here to tell you this colour

There no one kinda brown

Some of you aint even brown

You got this kinder joy shit going down, brother

Your fair and lovely shit for them brown girls you say

Not all brown girls brown, and your white girls ain’t fair

I got aryan propaganda so far up my ass

When you cry reservation, I’ll sympathise with your crass

Light up a cigarette in your goddamn sorrow

God induced systems of privilege

Oppressed and risen in Indigo

Your tobacco smoke blinds you to the men

Down in the drain

Smoking of their own

Smoking methane

Boy your tumblr reddit shit don’t mean shit to me

Your faeces and shit politically replete

On my college entrance exam they asked me what I wanna be

Wrote princess is my scribbly unclass writing

Mamma told me princesses were a part of a backward system of monarchy

Bitch I’m obc

I’m deemed backward already

I’m a brown bitch princess and I’m too brown

Got no glass, but live in CAST(L)E somehow

Only glass ceilings in here buddy

You out here talking caste like it’s only a rural study

But why do you even care

Unless it’s on a tshirt

Or you got a rapper with

No hoes, money, car

on this slur reclamation stage

saying Chamar without the ‘r’

 

This was written and drawn after discussion with other friends and educators from marginalised communities. I’ve taken care to never let my work be a product of appropriation. This piece is particularly important to me because I come from the ‘Backward’ Thiyya-Ezhava community from Kerala which has been oppressed for centuries. For reference, centuries ago women from my community were forced to be topless as covering their tops was a privilege reserved only to Savarna upper caste women. In protest, Nangeli cut off her breasts to oppose the breast tax. My tryst with caste has been weird. My grandma would regale me with stories of my great great grandfather, C Mithavadi Krishnan, who she’d say was a Freedom Fighter (google him). He was so much more than that. I later learnt that he stormed into temples that didn’t allow in lower castes, he argued and fell off with Gandhi because he believed in the eradication of caste before the attaining of freedom from the British, introduced Buddhism to Kerala and established the first Buddhist monastery in Kerala. He was a freedom fighter from the more obvious oppressors. My grandma also tells me that the Thiyya caste was better than the Nairs. As a kid, I didn’t know what that meant, I didn’t know how it mattered. In recent years, when she reiterated this statement of ‘betterness’, I asked her “aren’t we OBC?”. She sort of hung her head in shame like she had tried hard to hide and rub away the oppression but had failed. I didn’t get why, but then again I did. At the end of the day caste is a hierarchy based on oppression and the attachment of shame has always existed. So this piece is for my surname which is my middl ename and not my surname because I don’t have one, this is for my ammamma and her shame and this is for me and me reclaiming the ‘discourse’ around caste from Savarna individuals.