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Cast-e Your Eye Over : Happy Ambedkar Jayanti

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This one has been a long time coming. I've hesitated to write this blog for years now. Every time I hear the word 'caste' I get an uneasy feeling. Before, that uneasy feeling used to be fear and embarrassment. Who discusses such things? Today, it's guilt. It's guilt for not expressing my position so far. It's guilt for letting every casteist remark slide. It's guilt for not having the courage to challenge the narrative of our upper-class friends. It's guilt for being quiet. It's guilt for being ashamed.  My first interaction with caste was with my civics textbook. I'd heard the infrequent comment at school. 'Nuvvu Reddy caste aa?' or a 'We are proud Brahmins' was not unheard of. But it felt like everyone knew the history of the caste system. It was something that existed ages ago. In today's society, caste didn't matter. As one of my teacher's put it, today, when you go to eat a meal in a restaurant, do you care what c
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Over the MUN

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I used to scoff at the "MUN kid" stereotype. Obnoxious, bratty, condescending. "You don't know that also aa?"  I was not that kid. I was the kid who aced the tests, who would write an opinionated essay but whose ears would block out when handed a microphone. The one that said 'phew' after getting off stage. Going from that to winning awards at Model United Nations conferences was a plot twist Abbas-Mustan couldn't have predicted. 2023 was just one new experience after the other and I forgot to sit back for a minute and reflect on how much I'd changed. It was when my first grade teacher Kamakshi Aunty commented on a profile photo of me addressing a gathering saying "I'm so glad you finally overcame your fear of public speaking" that I realised that a change had happened at all.  In kindergarten, I was given an important set of lines in a skit for Independence Day. I came to school lines in hand, stuffed into an uncomfortable Nehru co
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The Comfort of Discomfort

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 It was recently Valentine's Day. The day where we commemorate the violent death of a saint by giving each other flowers and chocolates. Maybe when Oprah dies we can burst party-poppers.  Valentine's Day has lost its fervour. Sure, the consumerist "bonanza sales" and "heart-shaped pizzas" made the rounds in our circle but noone truly cared about the day. But I did. I always did. As a child, my favourite movie was always 'Dil to Pagal Hai'. Madhuri Dixit has a scene in which her friend (named Anjali, ironically enough) asks her why she spent so much money on herself for Valentine's Day. Madhuri replied that until she found the one destined for her she would love herself. She then proceeded to hop, skip and jump into the arms of a young Shahrukh Khan.  I never expected love in that sense. I didn't make sense of it either. It was just something that would happen one day I used to think. But coming to a new school changed my idea of it a little b
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