- When I look back upon my life, I see the period of conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism as its most significant. Neither the children nor the elders had any idea what religion or conversion meant, of its significance, and about who could act as our guide as far as conversion was concerned. Yet we did convert. The meaning of the transformation began to become clearer to us gradually through the changing rituals and traditions and through the guidance of our political leaders. - Dalit means people who have been oppressed by a repressive social system and challenge the oppression from a scientific, rational, and humanitarian perspective. Now this meaning of the term Dalit is acceptable all over the world. - The village held a terrific attraction for us children. Whenever there was a holiday and no school, we rushed to our village, which was located in a far-flung corner among the hills. Swimming in the river, plucking raw mangoes and berries to eat, roaming the hills … these attractions drew us like a magnet. - Every house had its own share of drunkards. There would be at least one woman among them badly bashed up by her husband. She would walk painfully, somehow managing to drag her aching body along the way. If someone asked her what was wrong, her anger gushed out, “Let his drinking mouth be burned off forever. Let his hands rot.” - Sometimes, a bunch of Kulwadi women coming from behind would cross them, taking care to avoid their touch. Someone would notice that and flare up, “Look at them! See how they kept far from us! As if they are wearing the holy cloth like the Brahmin women!” Then another would be sure to answer her, “Let me tell you, a Kulwadi woman I knew kept a dead snake in her sari for eight days—completely rotten! And see how they show off as if we pollute them!” Then there would be a discussion about how the show-offs were really filthy. There would be frequent references to a “decomposed snake”! This would excite laughter from all! - At that time Brahmin priests performed the rituals of marriage and ceremonial worship for the lower castes, like the Mahars and Chambhars. But the priest would never enter the Maharwada to perform these tasks. He would climb a tree on the outskirts of the neighborhood, muttering some chants. The holy moment for solemnizing the marriage would be either in the morning or evening, when the trees cast long shadows. So the bhatji would climb the tree because he did not want to be polluted with the shadows cast by the people of our Mahar neighborhood. - Hari felt it was humiliating to have the rituals conducted from a distance. It must have been the influence of Mahatma Jotiba Phule’s Satyashodhak movement in 1873. So, during one of his visits to the village, Hari called a meeting of the villagers. They decided that in future they would perform all the rituals themselves. - Just one pantoji used to teach only Brahmin kids, on the verandah of a Brahmin house. My grandfather, Chimaji, had a great wish to educate his son, my father. His elder daughter was married to a man from a village near Ratnagiri, called Partavane. He was a havaldar who had given his house to Christian missionaries to set up a school. Since only the children of converted Mahar-Christians went to that school, it was called the “school of the polluted converts.” My grandfather sent my father to this school. - missionaries used to visit schools and went from door to door as part of their proselytizing campaign. They would give sermons on Christianity and encouraged people to convert. Some poor people did get converted. But because of the false caste pride (it was said that one should bear any calamity for the sake of maintaining one’s caste), conversion was not a regular thing. Maybe because Baba was a good student, or maybe they wanted to prepare him for conversion, nobody knows why, but a woman missionary had made all the preparations to take Baba along with her to England. - By the time Baba became a teacher, the Brahmin school was moved from the verandah to the courtyard of the house (it was held under the canopy of a creeper there). A few others, children from other castes like the Bhandaris and Kunbis, started attending school with the Brahmin boys. Some Mahar children also went to school, but they had to sit outside in the courtyard. The teachers taught them and examined their slates from a distance. They would hit the children with stones if they made any mistakes. Naturally, our cousins lost all interest in learning and bunked school. - Our village had a school, but it was only till the fourth standard. Moreover, girls were not allowed to enroll. My father kept my sister at a friend’s house at Partavane, though he could not afford it, and enrolled her in the fifth standard. - The Patit Pavan Temple, built by Bhagoji Keer, who was inspired by Savarkar, is on the way to this school. In this temple, Savarkar used to organize sahabhojan programs, in which untouchables and high castes ate together. - It was true that Dalits had the custom of all people eating from one plate, but that was usually because there were few plates in the homes. But this eating was a shade different. When men sat down to eat, they would count how many bites each one had. Everybody would count how much everybody else had eaten. - The houses of the Marathas and the Brahmins were at some distance from our house. Bhandari and Kulwadi women could drink water from their wells, but untouchable women were absolutely forbidden to do so. This was a permanent wound in Baba’s heart. Therefore he had given strict instructions to my mother to allow the untouchable women to draw water from our well. The rope and bucket were permanent fixtures to the well. These were never removed. - They would also get tattoos on their and their daughters’ foreheads, arms, and hands from tattooing women. If someone did not get a tattoo, they scolded her saying, “When you face God after death, He will ask you, have you come with a tattoo or without one?” - I sometimes felt so mystified. He was the one who insisted on our getting educated, “Let the girls go to school. They have to stand on their own feet, be independent. They must also learn to ride bicycles.” But the same Baba behaved so irresponsibly in Susheela’s case. He never confronted her parents-in-law about their treating her so inhumanly. He never gave her any support. - We did not have the custom of sati. So there was no knowing who in our community had committed sati there. - The task of carrying the huge trees down the slope of the hills to the Shambhu Temple in the village would make people froth at the mouth. Then the huge trees would be made to stand in front of the temple where Holi would be celebrated. People from the Maratha, Bhandari, and Kulwadi castes would just touch the tree in name, but the real tough labor would be for the Mahars to perform: they would have to lift the heavy tree trunk and make it stand. But once the Holi rituals and celebrations started, the Mahars would be simply ignored. They had no place in them. - At dusk the Marathas, Bhandaris, and Kulwadis would worship the Holi and then set the trees on fire. This done, they would start praying loudly. This ceremony was called garhane. It featured lots of prayers for the village’s well-being and averting calamities. But, funnily enough, they also prayed for diverting the calamities to the Mahars. Then the ritual of howling and cursing began. Again terrible curses would target the Mahars. But the Mahars dared not lodge a protest against this. - On the Holi day, the Marathas and Brahmins would make sweet stuffed chapatis called puran poli, and in our houses we would cook lentils called pavata or varana. - Despite staying awake throughout the night, the women would still be charged with energy. They would be excited and eager to go to the houses of the upper-caste Kulwadis, Marathas, and Brahmins to beg for the festive food. Someone would say, “Last year I managed to build a compound around X’s chilli crop, all alone. At that time the bitch didn’t even piss on my hands. But I won’t spare her today. I’ll demand food to last me three whole days.” All of them had served the upper castes in different ways throughout the year. - They would carry with them separate containers and pots for collecting various dishes. But the Kulwadi women who gave them food would pour everything together in their baskets. Whatever they wanted to give—dal, vegetables, kheer—would all be poured on the rice in a mixed mound. - In some houses the flesh of dead animals would be eaten. But that was forbidden in our house. - I must have been just seven or eight then. The reason why I remember this wedding is that I was chosen as one of the five virgins called muhurtawalis. These girls were supposed to observe a strict fast till the marriage took place, which created an enormous problem for me. Hunger was not a thing I could cope with. - There was a game that taught the groom how to deal with his wife. The bride would be given a pot to carry water on her head and also a small jug and sent away with four or five karavalis or girl attendants to some distance. Then the groom would be made to sit on the threshold at the back door of the house, with a stick in his hand. They would teach him the lines he would have to tell the wife when she returned. When the bride came back with the water, he would strike the ground with the stick and demand an explanation, “Why are you so late?” The women would help the bride to come up with answers such as, “I was late because the cows muddied the water, so I had to wait till the water cleared,” or “The rope fell into the well and I had to wait till it could be brought out,” and so on. Then they would make her swear that she would never be late again. There was a game for the mother-in-law as well. The women would throw some very tiny black beads into the bride’s hair. Then the sasu would comb the bride’s hair with a phani—a lice comb. She would show the black beads on the comb to all and say, “Oh, look at this! See how her head is infested with lice! What a dirty girl this one is!” Then she would laugh loudly along with the other women and admonish the bride, “I will not tolerate such filthiness in my house!” - <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">In such games, even the sasra or father-in-law would participate. Once the couple returned from the bride’s place, where a ritual for washing off the haldi, the turmeric applied at the time the wedding, was performed, the sasra would hang a small bundle from a stick and threaten to go off to Kashi. Then the new couple would plead with him, “Please don’t go to Kashi; don’t leave us. We will serve you well.” All these games were basically intended to control the bride and keep her in check. But when they were being played, everybody laughed and had a good time. These were happy occasions in their lives.</mark> - Some of the people she sent me to never allowed me to enter their houses. They made me stand at the threshold; I put the baskets down and they sprinkled water on them to wash away the pollution, and only then would they touch them. They would drop coins in my hands from above, avoiding contact, as if their hands would have burned had they touched me. If the house belonged to one of my classmates, the shame of it was killing. - Once we were playing outside as usual. The priest was busy with his puja. But he did not come out as usual to give us the prasad. So we sat on the stairs patiently and waited for a long time. Yet he did not come out. After a long time the door opened and a Komti girl called Ulgawwa came out, her face wet with tears, in a terrified state. Then the priest also came out, but he left without giving us any prasad. Suddenly I was frightened of the priest. I wanted to ask Aaye why Ulgawwa was crying but could not do so. My secret would have been out. - Aaye would sit in the courtyard, thus, weaving her baskets, absorbing all the news that came to her, occasionally responding with a grunt, a word, or a sentence at the most. But she kept her thoughts to herself. She never passed on the news to others, nor did she ever use it for setting people against each other. Maybe that’s why women found in her a safe place to unburden their hearts. - I would dash across the road to their house for the pickle, tightly holding the coins in my fist. Taking care not to touch, or even let my shadow fall on things lying around, - Not only that, they also started making fun of our Bankoti dialect, which is spoken in the Rajapur-Mumbai belt. Not that they were wrong! Bankoti is a spineless dialect, with no pep and vigor in it! Even people fighting in it sound tame, like the insipid vegetable made with aloo leaves! The speakers of this dialect did not have the guts to counter the upper castes, in spite of the deliberate insults repeatedly heaped on us. - It seemed that in their village there was a ritual. An upper-caste man would inflict a big wound on a Mahar man’s back and his wife had to cover the wound with some cloth and go on walking around, howling! Quite a ritual, that one! - I had only two sets of clothes, which I wore alternately for three or four days. It was not surprising that they looked extremely dirty. My clothes made Biwalkar teacher froth at the mouth. “Why are your clothes so dirty?” She would invariably ask me. We did not have the custom of washing our clothes every day. - In those days nobody considered spitting a bad habit in our community. Giving favored guests a good massage and hot bath was an established and honorable custom. They would be massaged with dry coconut chewed to a fine paste in the mouth; naturally a lot of saliva got mixed into it. This paste would be liberally applied on the guest’s face, arms, and body and massaged well, followed by a good hot water bath. - some said, “I have brought poli today.” Poli? Then I came to know that they used this word for chapati. I was amused. When I heard someone say “dadpe pohe,” I was quite intrigued. How can rice flakes be oppressed (dadpe means beaten or oppressed in Marathi)! Dasara was called Vijaya Dashami in our school, but I was so confused when someone referred to bhakri as dashmi! - But I never asked myself the stupid question “Why don’t we make such dishes at home?” We were aware, without anybody telling us, that we were born in a particular caste, in poverty, and that we had to live accordingly. - This was a very tasty dish, and while it lasted our mouths kept watering. I would, however, hate to carry such things in my tiffin box, either to school or on an excursion. Why, I would be ashamed of even talking about them. It always made me feel terribly inferior to the other children at all times. - “Didn’t you find any other place? Why did you go and stay at that Mahar’s house?” Baby must have found this quite embarrassing, because she pointedly said to her, “This is our landlady’s daughter.” The woman’s face literally twisted up at this. Pointing at a bench, she said to me, “You stay there!” and signaled both Baby and Saida to follow her inside. They were there for a very long time while I kept sitting alone on the bench, waiting. The stink of fish was suffocating! I wanted to get up and walk off because of the humiliation. - My sister’s son Prabhakar, however, did not like the gods being discarded. He shed bitter tears. He remains a Hindu even today. Now he has got his caste changed to Maratha and had it registered as well. But people who know him still recognize him by his previous caste and make it a point to disclose it to people who do not know him. I do not know what he achieved by this change on paper! - There were some people in the college who behaved as if they were doling out the scholarship money for backward-class students out of their own pockets! - He is the only man I know who is very happy to participate wholeheartedly in the happiness of others. - Another extremely important topic among us girls was “menses.” We called it the touching of the crow. By the time girls reached their eighth class, they would have come to know the real meaning of this expression. Everybody would be “touched by the crow,” but few were willing to admit it. It meant that we were no longer children; we had grown up and become women. Nobody wanted to admit that. It was more or less a shameful thing! We would all hide our real ages, using as tight a bra as possible so the bust would not show. Some would even smash the pimples on their faces in order to make their faces look immature. - It was known that the beginning of menses marked the imposition of restrictions on girls who had them. “Don’t do this, don’t go out, don’t stay out for long …” There was no end to the no’s that we had to listen to. - This made me cry harder. As it was, people in the class kept me at a distance because of my caste. Now because of this even my own people in the house would keep me away! - A girl had said, “My stepbrother sits on my sister’s stomach and has threatened to do the same thing to me if I told anyone.” Another one said, “My maternal uncle plays dolls with me and pretends to be my husband, drags me into an alcove, and presses me hard.” Recently one of my friends told me that their neighbor comes to play with her daughter and pinches the young child in particular parts of her anatomy. Every girl, I think, goes through this experience. - She would tell me the weirdest things. “Once you start your period, if a man so much as touches you, you’ll be pregnant.” She would also tell me that if a woman accepted things, like water, flowers, a leaf bowl, and so on, from a man, she would be pregnant. Then many mythological examples would follow. Karna was born out of an ear, Brahmadev from the navel; the mothers of Ram and Lakshman bore them because they had eaten rice touched by Dashrath! - Tai was the first Dalit girl to have passed the matriculation examination in what is known today as the Ratnagiri district. She had all the assets required for getting a good husband: good education, a job, and a well-placed educated family. Yet she could not get a good proposal. - When Tai went to high school, she picked up all the mannerisms of her Brahmin friends. First she started to call mother Aai (the standard form) instead of Aaye (which was used in the dialect). Then she made us change the informal way in which we used to call our sister-in-law, with the singular verb form. She made us use the plural verb form instead, like the Brahmins. She was obsessed by brahminic forms of behavior and language! - It was the custom for the children of the poor to impersonate a mythological demon called Shankasur and go begging for alms. They would cover their heads with black cloth on which they drew eyes and noses and go visiting people, asking for alms. - I don’t remember ever seeing her play. For that matter, neither did my brother Shahu. He sometimes played gilli danda with Shantaram in the paddy field, but that was very rare! All my siblings had somehow given up their childhood too soon and became adults at a young age! Who knows whether they had grown up prematurely or if it were I who remained a child, even as a grown-up! - They approved of each other. After this first meeting, however, a series of other meetings had to be arranged to obtain the seal of approval from the community and the Caste Panchayat. Poor Bhai had to do a lot of running around. First he had to organize a meeting of the community to inform them that Tai had received a proposal. In the second of these our future brother-in-law’s family had to propose to the girl in front of the community. A third was held to inform the community that the groom approved of the bride, and a fourth (this time both the bride’s and groom’s extended families had to be present) to decide on the date of the marriage. A final meeting was held among the officeholders of the local Panchayat to allow Tai and our future brother-in-law to apply for membership in the Bauddha Jana Panchayat and seek their permission to fill in forms and sign them at the time of the wedding. - She had to get up at the crack of dawn, make chapatis and vegetables for all the people in the house, and reach her office in time to sign the register. She returned to a house in which soiled clothes and dirty utensils would be kept so that she might wash them. Once she had cleaned them, she had to cook the evening dinner! Her mother-in-law had a rule that food should be ready before evening, though it could be eaten any time. She got angry all too easily—when Tai was late in doing something, when she took help from her sisters-in-law, when she did not like what Tai did. Any of these would make her get mad at Tai. - I used to feel so angry about Tai’s imitating the Brahmin Godbole family! Using honorifics before the names of husband and in-laws, indeed! Our uneducated illiterate village women were much better! They never addressed their husbands so! It was always the singular “you”! I think Tai’s use of honorifics created a distance between herself and her husband, which was never there in a husband-wife relationship in our community. - English had been advantageous to our community in many ways. People from the previous generations used to have names either like Kacharya (meaning dirt), Dhondya (stone), Dagadya (stone), Bhikya (begger), or they were given the names of gods. Then names began to be written with English initials, like R. L. Tambe, K. D. Kadam, G.B. Kamble, and so on. Our Nathuram Sakharam Kamble changed his name to N.S. after Nathuram’s terrible deed. Everybody called him by his initials, N. S. My sister changed her husband’s name from the caste name Kamble to a caste-neutral place name Dabholkar to indicate his town Dabhol rather than his Mahar caste. - Once she came and stood in front of my mother—her forehead covered with blood. Shantaram, for some silly reason, had bashed her head with a big stone. She lay unconscious in a pool of blood for a long time. No one demanded an explanation from him nor came forward to help her. People felt that he was her master and had the right to do anything to her. While she lay unconscious, her master, her savior, was shamelessly making a public announcement, “I have killed a sheep in our field. Anybody interested in getting the blood?” There were several such women around who suffered at the hands of their heartless husbands. When the torture crossed the limits of their endurance, they came to my mother to confide in her, to give vent to their anger. One such woman, I remember, came to us from the village Pali. - It was not only husbands or family members who beat up women. If a woman was suspected to have erred, she was brought before the Panchayat for justice and punishment. She was publicly judged, and her other relatives would beat her up as well. - In another incident, when an eight-month-pregnant woman openly accused her husband of having illicit relations with another woman, the villagers gave her the same punishment. Women, mad with excitement, kicked her till the baby died inside her, and the woman died in pain in a week’s time. Why should this so-called honor, this murderer of humanity, this tool of self-destruction, be so deeply rooted in women’s blood? Why? - Harishchandra glanced inside the house. He saw the peon sitting there, eating his meal. He felt as if someone had thrown acid on his face, the acid of humiliation! The verandah, the filth, the chappals, the goat droppings … and the talathi deeply entrenched in caste ideology! He turned his back that very instant and vowed never to go to a village. He resigned from his job, though I do not know whether he was aware of what Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar had said: “Leave the village,” he had told his followers. “The village will never help you progress. Go to the city!” - I was not worried about any subject other than mathematics and English. Since all I would get in math was a big zero, I gave it up. - At that time, I possessed only one sari and two or three skirts. I usually wore a skirt to the office. Why not, I reasoned. Didn’t working girls in Pune and Mumbai wear skirts? So why couldn’t I? People, of course, did not say anything to my face, but they considered me a very “fast” girl! - “In the past, there used to be a “Mahal” or group of six villages, Kankavlli, Soundal, Kudal, Rajapur, Karveer and Salas. When people from these villages attended a marriage, they had to be honored with gifts. The bride’s or groom’s parents had to wash their feet. If they did not get the honor due to them, they would march off in a huff. Then the family would have to pay a fine. But now after the conversion, nothing of the sort happens.” Bhai put the same argument in front of the Panchayat who gave their consent in just one meeting. - “Where did they find this bride from, the Bele Mahars? Didn’t they get any from the Pan Mahars?” This was talk about the two subcastes among Mahars in Sindhudurga district: Bele Mahar and Pan Mahar. Nobody really had an idea about how they had evolved. But Shankar was the god of the Mahars. People who worshipped this god with bel leaves were called the Bele Mahars, and those who offered any other leaves were called the Pan Mahars. The Bele Mahars were supposed to be more advanced, compared to the Pan Mahars who were backward. There would be no intermarriages between these communities. Harishchandra was a Pan Mahar. Now, though in Ratnagiri there were no such subcastes among us, these women had branded me as a Bele Mahar and criticized me! I could not hide my smile. - Then both of us took oaths: to be loyal to each other, to do all the household chores without any complaint, to give gifts to the wife and to keep her under the thumb, and so on. Harishchandra got many gifts; I, however, got only a bowl and a jar! That was all my people had given me! - The day after my wedding, all my relatives from my mother’s side left for Ratnagiri without leaving any woman behind to keep me company, as was the custom. Maybe they thought, “She has done a ‘love marriage’! Now why would she need anybody as a support since she knows her husband and all his people so well?” In any case, my people allowed us to be married as if they were doing a great favor to my husband! - “So frigid!” He said in the morning. That was the certificate I had earned from my husband after our first night! Yet he smiled to himself. Maybe he did expect me to be “frigid” on the first night! A sign of my being a virgin! Had I taken any initiative, he would have suspected my virginity! I was not at all frigid! I understood every move very well. However, these were being done to me against my wishes. - My poor arm received yet another pinch! My husband’s frustration for the miserable night had found yet another expression! He kept complaining about my mother. Every husband abuses his wife’s mother when he is upset with her, doesn’t he? My husband was no exception. For the rest of his life, the shellfish bag provided him a stick to beat me with. - In Ratnagiri there were three Brahmin lanes: upper, middle, and lower. His hostel was in the middle lane. In the bus somebody told him that, since the hostel was in the Brahmin lane, nonvegetarian food was not allowed there. So Harishchandra gave away the lunch packed for him to a coolie at the bus stand. - A man always has greatness thrust upon him, whereas a woman has to achieve it! - These stories, however, went a long way to cementing the bonds of love between her sons and their wives. Theye really endeared our sasu to us. There was one more reason, however, why we felt that she was very close to us. She never allowed any backbiting. She never encouraged us when we complained about each other. Instead, she would effectively silence the person who complained. - One obligatory ritual while bathing the baby was to clean its ears with mouthfuls of water rinses, which were considered a very healthy thing. The woman bathing the baby spat out the betel leaf she was chewing, filled her mouth with water and then squirted it into the baby’s ears. This ritual was commonly found everywhere. All the women in my mother’s village considered it necessary, and those at my in-law’s place were no exception. This custom must have ruined so many ears! But they were not in the least aware of it. - When the baby’s nose was blocked because of a cold, they poured coconut oil into its nostrils, thus openly inviting the prospect of pneumonia. The oil would enter the baby’s lungs and prepare the ground for diseases like bronchitis and asthma. My own asthma and the flowing nostrils of my brother’s children are some obvious cases in point. There were many children suffering like this at both my mother’s and my in-law’s places. - When I lived at my parents-in-law’s place, it was high summer. Most of the wells in the Konkan go dry toward the end of March. Our well did too. At such times, our women went to the well of the Maratha caste to fetch water. One day, when Mai started to go out with the water pitcher on her head, I too picked up a pitcher and began following her. My sasu stopped me and said, “Don’t go there. It won’t be nice.” I countered, “Why not?” My sasu replied, “Just listen to me and do what I say.” I thought she was telling me not to go because I was a new bride. I followed Mai to the well. When I reached the well, I saw our women standing with empty pitchers, begging the Maratha women, “Sister, please give us some water, please, oh, please.” I retraced my steps with the pitcher empty in my hand. - My in-laws killed a hen that day and treated my brother to a delightful meal. My father-in-law could have taken offense at his having come without prior notice in my husband’s absence, taking them for granted, but did nothing of the kind. He did not make it a prestige issue. In fact, none of them did. On the contrary, they urged him repeatedly to extend his stay. - After that, she never came to our room, though, of course, she took a whole month to return my sari, all soiled and stained. When I grumbled about it, her mother said, “Look for another room!” Nothing made sense! But why do I say so? Of course, everything made sense! It was about caste! - My earlier landlady was a maidservant and this landlady was a municipal councillor. Yet the maid and the honorable councillor were united on one point: caste. Defenseless, I got up, and returned to our room. - Before my marriage, I used to hand over my salary to my mother. Now I started handing it over to my husband. If this is not like deliberately offering your head for the butcher’s knife, what else is it? - There was a man called Sawant from Bhiraunde, an acquaintance, who passed by our house on his way to the mental hospital where he worked. He shouted from the road to ask my mother, “Hey you, Powar woman, your daughter has delivered, right? What is it?” Aai replied, “She had a son.” The man seemed repelled! Walking away in a huff, he spat out abuses, “The bastards! They always have sons!” My mother shouted back, “Why, does that give you a stomach ache?” But he never waited to hear her reply. He knew that my mother-in-law also had six or seven sons. The fact that they were all educated and employed hurt him like a thorn in the flesh. After that, he always passed our house using the other side of the road, hiding his face. But Aai remembered his words, even after twenty-two years. - After she left, I had to employ quite a few girls to babysit. But none of them was able to work for long. They were mostly village girls, school dropouts really, who sat at home doing nothing. Somebody or other recommended them to me, and I brought them to Ratnagiri. But the ambience of the city had a bewildering effect on these village girls and they could never get used to it. I could see that they were young, forced by circumstances to work. Even so, I would lose my temper with them. I knew in my heart that I should treat them kindly, but I ended up scolding them. When that happened, some of them would suddenly leave. The baby suffered, and so did I, because I had to work harder, both at home and in the office. - A big drama followed this pronouncement! Many rich and powerful relatives of the architect came and shouted at us. Finally when they realized that it was their own mistake, they began to abuse us! “These are low-caste people! So what else can you expect from them? Look at their things! A tin cot and cheap pots and pans! The moment we saw their things, we knew what they were! Dirty, mean, uncivilized … !” We had to listen to all these insults, though it was not our fault, while the people in the building enjoyed watching the whole scene. - The import of Dr. Ambedkar’s words “Leave the villages and go to the cities” dawned on me afresh. I was getting an entirely new perspective here. - Sometimes I got severe headaches. Of course, I never asked him to press my head. How can a wife ask her husband to do such things! I also avoided asking him to do such things. Not because I wanted to save him that bother, but because if I asked for something, he would demand something else! Many a time, I would write in the dark. I would keep a pen and papers near the pillow and write whatever came to my mind, even in the dark. I did not want to forget and forego. Thus I continued to write. - You have lived abroad, but it has not affected the excellent grasp you have on the language. How is it so civilized, so cultured, so rooted? There are no traces of the other language! How did you manage this? It is a marvel, really!” He went on and on. But the word cultured pricked me like a thorn. What exactly did he mean? Which culture were they talking about? Whose dominance were they praising? Patriarchy? Caste system? Class? What was it? And why was our writing termed uncivilized, uncultured? How? These questions raged in my mind. I did not even participate in the discussion. Of course, the points could be discussed and debated. But there were two of them, whereas I was alone! Besides, I myself was a little shaky about whether I was right in feeling so hurt by that word. - I knew these upper-caste people so well! He had a great loathing for the poor, the beggars. “They do not want to use their brains! Every man is happy in his own situation. But you unnecessarily force your ideas of happiness upon them and pity them.” He used to say with contempt. He also believed that one has to be born with a high IQ. He would cite the names of all big scientists in support of his argument. I angrily retorted, “IQ is a big myth. IQ depends on the opportunities a human being gets for his or her development.” - This incident, however, also added fuel to the fire of resentment some people had already started feeling about me. They resented the reservation policy and my caste, because of which I got the promotion. In truth, my promotion hardly meant anything to me. There would be a meager raise in my salary, some fifty or sixty rupees. But I had achieved some power, and that was precisely what irked people. - During the ten years after that, that is, up to 1976, it was rare to hear people say, “Oh these low castes! No less than the sons-in-law of the government!” or “They are such a pampered lot!” or they would refer to low castes as “the arrogant,” “the bigheaded!” But in 1970 the roster system was introduced in government jobs, and it became mandatory to appoint Dalit and tribal candidates. The resentment against the Dalits and other reserved category people began to rise. This was the period during which such expressions began to be increasingly used against the Dalits! - The people from the Dalit movement, however, treated women in the same discriminatory manner, as if they were some inferior species, as they did the ones at home. Probably it was unconscious behavior. Once I was invited to a program organized by a group of Dalit activists in a printing press. They repeatedly called me on the phone and urged me to deliver a speech as a part of their program. I accepted their invitation and reached the hall in time. But there was nobody to receive me there except the man whose loudspeaker was hired. So I quietly sat down on a bench outside. - Other people also found him a man of simple habits. He was really a simple man, too. But when it came to his wife, he was transformed into a different being altogether. This system has a special chemistry for making husbands! - When I asked for Harishchandra’s consent, he said, “Look, you can do what you like only after finishing your daily chores in the house. Cooking, looking after children, and all that stuff. If you think you can do this and get more education, fine!” This was actually his way of saying “No,” but I took it up as a challenge. - After a week, I discovered that my woman friend was a little upset. She said, “You know, his wife does not live with him. And yet you go to his house every day! What must people be saying!” I was simply aghast! How we women nurture and protect patriarchy, like a baby in the cradle! A woman’s character is always on display! Always suspect! Anybody can come, gaze at us with their eyes on our flesh, drool, and lick their fingers! - Because of Harishchandra’s encouragement and my newly earned confidence that I could do well academically, I enrolled myself for the M.A. course. Frankly speaking, I had a great desire for further education. It was at this particular point that Harishchandra realized that he had lost control over his wife, that I had gone too far ahead of him. - My younger daughter, Manini, must have been in the fifth standard then. It was her birthday and she invited her friend Kishori to share the birthday cake with us. Kishori and her brother came, ate the cake, and went home after celebrating the birthday. Kishori’s brother told his mother that he had seen photographs of Ambedkar and Buddha in our house. The next day, Kishori’s mother came and stood at our door. Without even stepping inside, she started abusing us. “We did not know that you belonged to this particular caste! That is why I sent my children to you. From now on, don’t you give my daughter anything to eat if she comes to your house. We are Marathas. We cannot eat with you.” Before I could say anything, she had left! - Before joining the Maitrini group, I knew I was a woman and looked at myself with patriarchal eyes. Gadkari’s Sindhu had entrenched herself deep down in my unconscious. I slogged the whole day in the office, at home, and after an arduous journey was dead tired by the time I got back home. And yet at night, though my body was a mass of aches and pains, I pressed my husband’s feet. I was ready to do anything he wanted, just to make him happy. I was ready to die for a smile, a glance from him. But he accused me, “Let alone an ideal wife, you are not even a good one!” Later on he began saying that I was far from being a good mother as well! I failed to understand what exactly he wanted from me and became miserable - On the other hand, the people of my community often confronted me with, “Who are those women you are mixing with these days? Take care; they belong to a different caste. Our community does not need their thoughts and values.” While they said this, their way of talking made me feel as if I had joined some criminal gang. I had realized that I now had a new vision, a new perspective on looking at women. I had lost my fear. The women’s movement had given me great strength to perceive every man and woman as an equal individual. It had taught me to relate to them freely, without any prejudice whatsoever! - She said, “I have seen many women’s conventions; but this is the first time I’ve seen so many men on the stage!” The statement stung the men present on the stage to the quick! One speaker, a man, retaliated in his speech, “We like to be with our women always. That is our custom. I don’t know what your customs are!” Women clapped loudly at this! Should not men give freedom to women at least to appreciate the point made in their favor? - One thing was, however, very clear to me. Women’s issues did not have any place on the agenda of the Dalit movement, and the women’s movement was indifferent to the issues in the Dalit movement. Even today things have not changed! - We visited a few more flats there. We came across similar women. The same attitude! We tried to locate images of the Buddha and Ambedkar to ascertain whether it was an A.P. house or D.P. Some had hung the image of Padma Pani rather than that of the Buddha on the wall as a decorative piece and some kept tiny images with their plants, so that they would not show clearly. Some had hidden them in embroidery and knitting and hung them as showpieces with decorative frames. In short, they took great care to keep these symbols of their caste hidden from the public eye, in a less prominent place. - We had a lot of places left to cover. Our Saturday meetings were strange. Women who turned up one Saturday did not come on the next one, when there would be an entirely different set. On the third Saturday there would be still different women. Sometimes the number would be good, sometimes frightfully low. Once again we had to go on a membership hunt. - Dalit does not mean only socially suppressed or oppressed people! It also signals rational, secular people who have discarded the oppressive system and concepts like God, fate, and the caste system. Dalit is being replaced by Phule-Ambedkarite or simply Ambedkarite. - They all seemed to feel that the programs we planned were of no use. Instead they wanted us to distribute saris or sewing machines among women or books among children or mosquito nets to save them from malaria in the slums. Such programs would indeed be useful. But our point was a more basic one. We wanted to treat the root cause rather than give a symptomatic treatment to the disease. We wanted to awaken the sense of identity and selfhood in everyone! That for us was the root cause. But educated people—who matter—also failed to perceive this. And people also told us, “You are hypocrites!” - <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">My experience with people in Mauritius had convinced me that it was wrong to say caste cannot be cast off. They had done it! They knew only that they were Hindus and had forgotten their castes. But then people told me that some people from India have started digging up the history of their ancestors, giving them caste labels. Will Hindu society never be free of the obsession with caste?</mark> - It was the Bhau Beej Day during Diwali. Before our conversion, we never celebrated brahminic festivals like Padva and Bhau Beej. But we did have the custom of giving gifts to newly married women when they came to visit their parents at the time of the Gauri and the Ganapati festivals. In my family, we never had the privilege of being honored this way, because Aai was nothing less than a miser. Gradually brahminic customs and festivals had stealthily entered Dalit households, especially the affluent ones, during the exuberant period of Dalit writing, though nobody would have publicly admitted it. - “You are a mother, but at the same time you also are an activist! An activist has no relations, no personal life. All that she has is her consciousness! That is why please forget your grief and start working once again!” - Once both of us were at a function, which Mr. Pawar had been very reluctant to attend, and I had literally dragged him there. When it was time for his drinking session, he got up to go. A sensitive artist sitting there asked him, “Why, you are leaving?” “Oh, yes,” Mr. Pawar answered easily, “we have to leave. This is the time when we get water in the house. So I have to go fill it up.” I could not help laughing at his histrionics. After a few days, I heard this sensitive artist telling his friends, “The poor husband was going to store water at home, and this shameless woman was laughing!” How easily men appear “poor” and women “shameless”! - I had no place in my house, though I had bought it with my own money; the installments were deducted every month from my salary. “Don’t step into this house. I don’t want to see your face!” Mr. Pawar shouted at me. Though this incensed me, where was I to go, wasn’t there another daughter who was dependent on me? I continued living in the house with a smiling face. That is what a woman is trained to do in spite of such intense humiliation. - Now I was convinced that he would not go against Manini’s wishes. And, all the while, when Pawar was fighting with me, tearing me into shreds, using the choicest of ugly words, a feeling kept surging up from the bottom of my heart. Basically, he was not all that hard-hearted. He had adopted a public posture. People had to see that he was far more concerned with morality and prestige! He wanted to show people that his values were more important than his wife and his children and that he would not compromise his principles for them! - After the husband’s death, a ritual is performed. The wife’s mangalsutra is pulled out and broken at the dead husband’s feet. She is made to wear green bangles, which are also broken. She is made to wear a string of flowers in her hair, which is then pulled out, and finally the kumkum on her forehead is wiped off with the toe of her husband’s left foot. This ritual is a relic of the past, but it continues to be performed even after the conversion. This ritual is no less than a drama, a big show. Moreover, it is also an insult to the woman. I refused to perform it. This angered quite a few people, but they had to hide it under the garb of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s philosophy.