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FROM THE MARGINS

By Priyanka Paul on July 11, 2018

 

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.

Posted in Caste, Poetry, Social Justice.
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