Reading Amitava on 09 Jun 2009 09:32 pm
A Place Under The Table
Photo by Ritesh Uttamchandani
Rahul Pandita writes in an email to me: “Sunil and Arvind Parmar, owners of a tea stall in Surendranagar, Gujarat, break for lunch while their servant Mangal, an 11-year-old Dalit boy is made to sit under the table.”
on 10 Jun 2009 at 11:06 am # krishna
I Wonder when these kind of people stops such acts. Its too bad.
In other sense I dont know wht to say here. Whether i need to feel happy that he has got some food to eat (while still many people are starving for a one time meal in a day) or feel bad for the way he has been ordered the food to eat ?
on 10 Jun 2009 at 11:19 am # Anshu
Why under the table? Sick people, He could have sat on the ground if not on the table.
on 10 Jun 2009 at 11:19 am # Amit
Man, why don’t you come back to India, open a restaurant, sit Mangal next to you while he eats and get photographed? This living in New York and crying a Hudson for India is both incredibly funny and sickeningly obscene. If writers don’t begin to realise this, I wonder who would.
on 10 Jun 2009 at 11:26 am # Anshu
Amit, right attitude of the person is more than enough for people to make change. I wonder what you & me have achieved so far by staying in our country and being one of the spectator of such sights almost everyday in life. And why only writers? Don’t you think we also have some special powers of our own? Chill!
on 10 Jun 2009 at 12:09 pm # Amitava
Yes, Amit, I think I will. I don’t know you and, in the past, have sometimes deleted your scabrous comments, but you must understand that your moral approval is very important to me. And your purity, your intense self-regard, your zeal, is especially impressive.
on 10 Jun 2009 at 3:34 pm # Amit
This is your space Amitava and you are free to delete my ‘scabrous’ comments. But I wish that by doing so, you could run away from the truth. I’ve been trying to make a point for the last few years, and now that you’ve got it, I’d stop bothering you, but not without hoping that you’d live up to your promise. And if you do, I’m sure that this country of ours will return you something priceless. The soul of your prose. You see what I’m saying?
on 10 Jun 2009 at 3:51 pm # Amitava
No, I don’t. But don’t say anything more just yet. Let me first build a temple for you.
on 10 Jun 2009 at 9:46 pm # Genevieve
The day will come when Dalits will be empowered. The Sunil and Arvind Parmars of this world better get down on their knees and pray Mangal has learnt to forgive by then.
on 10 Jun 2009 at 11:15 pm # Amitava
Thank you for your note, Genevieve. I agree with you. It was refreshing to read your mail after having had to suffer, earlier in the day, the unwanted attentions of the self-righteous. What to do with tone-deaf critics who don’t know sarcasm or bitterness unless it emerges from their own moralizing mouths?
on 11 Jun 2009 at 7:49 am # Ruchi
Such a shame but it is true, it still exists… we cry about Aussies, I think Indians are even more racists than Aussies. We can’t stand what’s happening Down Under because somehow it reminds us of something we deny i.e. our real self.
I wish, people start narrowing the term to just “Human Beings”
whether they are responsible citizens living outside India
or moral policing natives who give themselves the right to judge,
crticize anything which is in their terms is “non-Indian” ; be it a thought, or an action.
In short, people need to grow up..seriously!!
on 11 Jun 2009 at 12:56 pm # ritesh
am taking the freedom to say some stuff
It was election time in Gujarat,
Narendra Modi, was campaigning hard, for a third term,
am pretty sure if the publication I worked for at that point in time, would have showed some spine and published this, it may have at least started some form of a debate, sadly we don’t talk about these things, we don’t call a piece of trash a piece of trash, we avoid confrontation, of any kind, even if we are right.
several things became clear when i took this picture, and it’s journey from my camera to this black-hole called the photo library, at various levels, across organizations of any kind, we, indians, treat our own kind, like trash, and very openly too!
on 11 Jun 2009 at 2:10 pm # Amitava
Thank you, Ritesh. And thank you for taking that picture. I have got a lot of mail from friends who have applauded your work.
on 12 Jun 2009 at 8:40 am # Dev
This photo is disgusting. We have much good in our country, culture and civilization. Let’s keep the good things and remove the bad ones.
on 12 Jun 2009 at 9:44 am # Genevieve
Amitava,
Re: the unwanted attentions of the self-righteous. Self-righteousness by its very nature is acceptance of the issue. The irony escapes the Amits of this world
Ritesh,
You did what your publisher didn’t have the balls to do. Your picture is now making its way around the globe….and serving its intended purpose.
on 12 Jun 2009 at 7:35 pm # Om
I was wondering how much of the fact that Mangal is made to sit under the table is because he is a Dalit and how much because he is a servant. I am well-aware that Dalits are treated in a horrible way across much of the country, so this question is not meant to suggest otherwise. It’s just that I’ve seen little boys at various restaurants, and more generally, servants at various places treated really badly. (Of course, I realize there is no precise answer to my question above – more a curiosity on how, for instance, a non-Dalit servant in Surendranagar would be treated.)
on 12 Jun 2009 at 11:15 pm # tchandra
What cruelty.
on 13 Jun 2009 at 5:10 am # Abdullah Khan
Nothing special about it. It happens everyday.
on 15 Jun 2009 at 9:48 am # Dilip D'Souza
I really don’t know what to say. But thanks, Ritesh.
on 17 Jun 2009 at 7:12 pm # gaddeswarup
Interesting. Both status and/or purity seem to be invoved. I remember that when I was about ten, my father sent me to another teacher’s house during vacations to learn some subject or other. The family was friendly, I used to play with the children, sleep on nearby cots etc. But when it came to food I had to eat alone in the verandah served by one of the widows in the family, and take the banana leaf out and throw it the garbage in front of lot of villagers sitting on the other side of the road. The teacher had some daughters and probably it would have been troublesome for him to marry them off later. I did not keep track but heard that one of his sons married outside the caste.
on 18 Jun 2009 at 4:45 pm # Pochu Rani
What to do? We are like this only.
on 20 Jun 2009 at 4:28 pm # Nandinee
…. and chances are these gents at the table will be farting freely, scratching their gonads, stretching their legs–unmindful of the human being eating below.
Many years ago, while traveling by train in India, I saw an old couple traveling together, after their meal, the wife took out some Amrutanjan (an ointment in a small bottle), massaged her husband, and then went to sleep in the small space UNDER the berth. I thought they could have both slept on the berth if they had only one berth. Dalits, women, etc. are expected to be useful and then retire into small spaces, till they can be called out again to be of service.
on 22 Jun 2009 at 9:14 am # Amitava
Thanks, Nandinee and Gaddeswarup.
Here’s something I read this morning on the Outlook site—a Black student describing his experience in India:
http://bit.ly/f1HdK
on 23 Jun 2009 at 11:02 pm # Sara
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked browsing your posts. In any case
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!