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Sometimes, you do choke on privilege when you see your community to be the harbinger of pain and blood. Art that provokes the society to change or cure of its myths and wrongs is what, I believe, the most important and pure one. It is dangerous, absorbing, and cathartic for both the writer and the reader. Starting from David Constantine's Jimmy Knight, let's explore how artists see this unerasable bane.
Jimmy Knight by David Constantine
Waking this morning I remembered Jimmy Knight
From Hope Road Primary School. Every kid could tell
What sort of a family life every other kid had
By how they were shod and clad and fed
And whether they looked you in the eyes all right
And smiled or never did and by their smell.
Jimmy had none of the good signs and all of the bad.
I remembered his scared white face, the snot
And elsewhere of him that was damp, all the lights were on
Smog at the windows, in her normal voice Mrs Thomas said
Come out the front, Jimmy, love, and sing to us
And doing as he was told that's what he did
Came out the front and wiped his nose on his jersey sleeve
Covered the wet with his hands and lifted up his eyes
Towards something he could see and we could not
And sang us 'Somewhere over the Rainbow'
But without the words if I recall it right or none
We understood though a blackbird might for all I know
Or the angels I suppose, pure melody it was
Pure carolling, the breath of clearness, always near
Or perhaps already gone beyond a world of tears
Clean lovely it soared and dipped and soared again
It was grace, what he'd had given him not asking why, he gave
Till he stopped and returned from where he'd been
Stood still, eyes down, in the silence, and Mrs Thomas said
Thank you, Jimmy, love, and the small soiled lad
Went back to his place and looked the same
And outside was the smog that dripped from the skies
And left black on the masks we wore to school and home.
A charcoal painting by Pavithra Jaypal
The Most Suitable Environment for Touch-me-nots to Grow by Charuvi Khandelwal Untouchability was abolished in India in 1955 and is still practiced.
No place for Dalit and tribal girls in India. My school bus halted every day for 30 seconds at a traffic light where a young girl hula-hooped, in a non-traditional loop. She made every limb melt, bones dislocate then relocate to fit into the structure. And clung to the windows as we started moving away, to beg for money. She danced into her next meal, next assault, next sleep,
next day, while I became a graduate.
Crimes against Dalits rose by 746% in the last 10 years. My mother has a separate cupboard with separate utensils for our helpers, drivers, gardeners, and guards. She’d save our leftovers for their meals. And my old clothes for their kids. The definition of excessive changed every time I gave them hugs, music, fresh cake, stories, a seat on the table.
Indian man killed for eating in front of upper-caste men.
One Sunday, I woke up early enough to meet
my garbageman’s son, helping him through his runs.
I asked him what he wanted to be
when he grew older.
He looked at me like my words were too foreign.
His father said, “Didi, what can a scavenger’s son be?
A scavenger only. That’s our role.”
Dalit girl gang-raped by upper-caste men in UP, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand…all 28 states of India. My house helper was found hiding in the storeroom of my home, after days of being missing. Days after she was sent to her village. She said, “I’d rather make my existence forgotten than erased.”
***
For the love of art,
Charuvi Khandelwal
Thank you ☮️✨