Not translated. Written originally in the English by the author, a native Konkani speaker.
Caste, I never understood it

I thought I wasn’t part of it

I thought it never affected me

I thought I was casteless.	
In the class they told us

Caste was hindrance to equality

I hated caste

but now when I look back,

low caste were lowered

in the lectures of the teachers

(a position which I’m trying to thread cautiously)

through the re-reading of the

old texts, without hint of the present.

They told us the caste pyramid

could be broken and reformed into a circle

when everybody would be equal

when everybody would be same.
Same! The word haunts me now

as I reflect back

look forward

and live in the present

Same? What does being same

as in similar means?

I understand now …

it got deeper implications

Who will become like whom?

Who will imitate whom?

In the quest of

becoming similar, same, equal?

(or did I confuse the words and misunderstood it?)

(But in the end this is what I understood!)
Why do I deny my caste?

Why do I say I don’t?

believe in caste?

My experiences I have understood

only in terms of rural-urban,

rich- poor and healthy- unhealthy.

But caste? It didn’t exist in my world

I am trying to make sense of it only now

it eluded my curiosity for long

and when I came to know about my caste

the next thing that I knew was

“It is low, lowest in the Varna”
And being a Shudra!

(I’m finally writing on this!)

Shudra! I only studied in books

Shudra or in Goa, the Sudir

came from the feet

were the lowest in the varna I knew

but when I came to know

that I am a shudra

I didn’t know what it meant …

what implications it had for me.
And moreover

Why do I want something low

when all my life I held my head up

and lived without it

why would I put myself

knowingly down when I was already

fighting a battle of being a

rural, middle class, unhealthy woman?
But no! I was fooled

Fooled to believe that there

is fault in caste- in my caste

and there is urgent need

to believe that we

all are equal

or on the path to equality.

They shut my mouth up

when I was about to declare

my caste to the class

And I wondered why? Is it so bad?

By believing that caste is bad

inequality was swept under the carpet

on which I stumbled now and then.
Life is not as simple as

the theories that I study

My experiences, my positions

are shaped by structures

which are beyond my comprehension

and it is more frightening to know

that I existed into it

without having any knowledge of it

and what havoc it played with me!
Under the guise of equality

we embraced their notions

and fractured ours!