Caste never leaves us
Chasing us like a shadow wherever we go.
The harder we try to repel it,
The more furiously it hounds us.
Inside schools,
Within colleges,
It prowls everywhere.
The higher up we go
Caste is there,
Awaiting us.
To cities, if we move
It moves with us.
Haunting us
Beyond the boundaries of the country.
Crawling through the state assemblies
It has spread its tentacles in the Lok Sabha.
And then to the cremation grounds,
It trails and trails us
Until we are dead,
Killed mostly.
But even in death
It does not forsake us.
What a parasite, this caste is!
Latching on
Even to our dead bodies.
Because lives do not matter here,
Caste does!
Chintu Kumari is a PhD student at JNU.
Translated from Hindi by Naushin Rehman
Featured image credit: 愚木混株 Cdd20/ Pixabay