Life with the Savarnas
Sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night, weird questions come. Like, why didn’t your people tell you that feeling even a little insecure won’t work in a world like ours? Why didn’t they tell you that being vulnerable in relationships is an affordable choice of the privileged? Why didn’t you realize, at some point in the past, that no matter how well you pretend, caste will find its way into your personal discourses with your friends? Perhaps the pretending and the blinding is all part of the grand design. Perhaps it’s really you who convinced yourself otherwise. Perhaps your people simply didn’t want you to carry the burden of their grim memories, and so made sure you never heard of it. Perhaps. Sadly though, what they didn’t know, and what you didn’t realize all your adult life, is that caste was, and in all likelihood will be, the deathless shadow in the relationships you make with savarnas. The key is to know how and when this gets played.
Remember that time when you felt, that somehow, in some way, they always seemed to be right? Like as though they were always on the right side, by default? That in a fight, you’d always, somehow, end up feeling wrong? That they just seemed to ‘make sense’? Have you listened to their language? That which comes laced with superiority; the talking-down, the patronizing, the know-it-all? Do you recollect the times when they have ‘called-you-out’, in the name of breaking stereotypes and supportive solidarity? Remember their humor? Their disgust for your loud noisiness, and their nausea for your meat foods? But most of all, tell me, do you recall their fragility? That absolute brokenness they feel when their little toy breaks, but with much nonchalance shoo away your everyday fight for dignity? The ‘betrayal’ they feel when you question their feminist hypocrisy?
You would I’m sure; these are lessons we’ve been making all our lives. And we know them — the women, the men. We’ve dined with them, we’ve laughed, we’ve shared, and we’ve done so much more. If we’d been lucky, we should have made friends with those that came with goodness. But if we weren’t, then what we are left with, are lessons. True solidarity can’t do much without true love.
