Community dining, caste , art and more
Dear reader,
Hello!
This is a longish email, I want to tell you about sharing a table with strangers during Iftaar that we did two weeks ago. It was such a lovely experience that we are doing another this Sunday and you can join too. You will find that as you scroll down, but before that let me list what all this email contains.
1. Community eating (past experience and an invitation to join us)
2. Sahodaran Ayyapan’s Misra Bhojanam
3. Colour and caste
4. Online and offline #ArtWithIndu (announcements)
5. Weekend #ArtWithIndu (for you to do at home)
All sections are marked with similar names, I don’t know how to bookmark on Substack, so you will need to search to reach the topic. Before I get into it, let me remind you, that five readers have paid towards my newsletter and I want to thank them. I’m hoping 245 more folks pay towards it, so I can have some income through it. Click here to pay. If you are unable to pay, please respond to this email and I could send you another option. Anyway, I will keep this letter open to anyone with a free subscription but paying helps me create work. Also, if you like the newsletter, don’t forget to add a heart, share it with your friends, etc.
Since the state has put the propaganda film - The Kerala Story - on state television - Doordarshan, I want you to share my Kerala story. You can read it here.
1. Community eating (past experience and an invitation to join us)
Sahodaran Ayyapan’s Misra Bhojanam
I re-read Sahodaran Ayyappan: Towards A Democratic Future Life And Select Works by Dr Ajay S Sekhar, and his thoughts on inter-caste dining. I’m quoting from the book and also sharing some pictures.
Mixing of saliva was a deadly pollution to Brahmanism. In the name of religion it divided people into untouchable and even unseeable closets. It never allowed the mixing and mingling of people for purposes of hegemony.
I don’t think us coming to eat is anything close to what Sahodraan Ayyappan did (in pictures below) but I feel community is important, especially in times of such polarisation and domestic isolation. It is important for folks to come and eat, make art etc so tomorrow they can come out to protest too and this is protest too.
Colour and caste
Recently, Mohiniyattam dancer Kalamandalam Satyabhama made the following remarks about fellow dancer, Dr RLV Ramakrishnan, who is Dalit.
“The person who performs Mohiniyattam should be a ‘mohini’ (enchantress). He has the colour of a crow. This is an art form that requires a stance that keeps the legs wide apart. There is nothing repulsive than a man who performs with his legs apart in this manner.
In my opinion, men should perform Mohiniyattam only if they are good-looking…But if you see him, forget God, even his own mother will not tolerate.”
This is Dr RLV Ramakrishnan, a dancer and an academic. He said he wants to perform Mohiniyattam at every stage in Kerala. “That is how I plan to protest against the racist and casteist slurs made against me.”
In October 2020, Ramakrishnan was denied a chance to perform Mohiniyattam in the online dance festival program of Kerala Sangeet Natak Academy. He reportedly attempted suicide for caste discrimination against him.
Please read this post
I intended to make a comic on colour and caste from my own experience but it became an email and I am going to share some bits with you. When Dr RLV Ramakrishnan’s story broke, there were a lot of dark UC folks who identified with Dr RLV Ramakrishnan because they had faced discrimination because of their skin tone.
And I can understand why, because darkness is a what most people associate with “matuvaar (others)” or “avar (them)”.
I want to start by recounting a story my father would tell me about his friend, a Syrian Christian writer. He’d tell his wife, "Njan vella vellanu irikyukka alley, I must have been Brahmin, ni karthu irrikyuku alley, ni tharnu jaathi aavum." I’m fair, I must have been a Brahmin, you are dark, you must be a low caste.
My mother who isn’t dark and has light eyes would often be mistaken for a Warrier (a Brahmin) in her youth. She often narrated it as a compliment. Another person in my extended family recently told me that she would get asked if she was Brahmin, again because she is fair. She too giggled when she told me, like it was a compliment. She said her husband shouldn't know or he would be angry. People know when you don’t ‘look like mattuvar (others)', whether on caste, race or religious lines, you face far less discrimination.
In a sociological study that I read about Ezahva (the community I belong to) men, it went into who people marry when they are upwardly mobile. If people make money in the abkari business (alcohol business, toddy is associated with our caste), they may have things that money will bring but then again they feel they lack 'respect' and so their daughters will be married off to men who may not be rich but are highly qualified. On skin colour too, the study said how “vella neram — white colour” is considred a sign of being upper caste which is why people are obsessed with marrying fairer people, so if not in the next generation, in three generations their skin tone may change and the chances of discrimination also go down.
If you are not dark and fit into what is considered beautiful by Savaranas and when they find out about your caste location, people say, "kandaal parayoola.. (nobody would have guessed)".
Recently at a cricket match in Ahmedabad, Pakistani cricketers were heckled and fans faced animosity and cricketing fans from Chennai said they wouldn’t face that in their part of the country because they were in for the game and that Pakistani fans were welcome in Chennai. To which some Pakistani fans said - who wants to be welcomed by you.
All of this makes me think that when people believe that they have higher ancestry, like Ashraf Muslims, or Syrian Christians (St Thomas is recognised as the founder of the Church of the Syrian Malabar Christians) or Upper Caste Hindus, they have to keep their hegemony by segregating from the “mattuvar” and the lower castes also do this because no one wants to be the ‘other’.
ArtWithIndu Announcements:
1. Come to my hood: On 13th of April, I am inviting you into my neighbourhood in Navi Mumbai, where we will go flamingo spotting and then hang out by my favourite fort and make some nature inspired books in either seedpods or matchboxes. I will be posting about this next week but if you want to sign up already, email me at indu14@gmail.com. It will be at Rs 500.
2. Indian men on dating apps — our ultimate muse: On 21st and 22nd April, I will be leading a two day workshop where we will turn our dating app experiences into comics, zines, poetry and more. Come share and find a community of people with similar and varied experiences, learn from each other and turn your heartbreak and tender moments, sex advice into comics and more. This will be 2 hours on each day and in the afternoon and will be at Rs 1500 for folks in India. For folks abroad it will be 25 dollars. You will get some reading material and hopefully what we produce can become reading material for others, hopefully in a form of a book. If you want to sign up already, email me at indu14@gmail.com. Like Maya Angelou said, " There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ So come and don’t let the story die inside of you!
Weekend #ArtWithIndu
I speak at a University in the Netherlands in the end of May and so I am going to ask you to look up the geometric and bright world of Dutch artist called, Piet Mondrian. You can recognise his famous paintings using black lines and blocks of red, yellow, blue and white. Please do look at Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, I love it!
We will be making a Mondrian inspired art piece and you will need some corrugated paper (from the cartons you get your online goods in), paper, colours. Here’s how I did mine.
More on Piet Mondrian.
If you make it, don’t forget to show me yours or put yours online and tag me.
Also before you go, please consider paying towards my work. Here’s how you can pay.
Have a good weekend.
<3
Indu