A Stone Is Cast

Art as a space has the ability to both transcend barriers and break them, while also creating newer, more sensitive and tolerant boundaries from which to view, like unexpected ripples distorting perceived perfection

- Praveena Shivram

The idea of memory is that it constantly deceives. Not intentionally, but by its very nature it shifts color like a chameleon, merging into the background of our minds till we are lulled into giddy acceptance, while it continues to move, so that many years later we realize it was not really what we thought it was and are either pleasantly surprised by the revelation or deeply distressed. It’s like an intricate maze of chameleons – you never know where you are going to find one, what color it is going to be, and whether it will still be there when you come back. I can almost hear Richard O Brian’s deeply theatrical voice saying ‘Let the fans begin’ as I am stuck inside the crystal dome of my memories, with golden and silver tickets (chameleons?) flying about me, flitting away from the grasp of my fingers in playful abandon.

But look, I caught one.

I am in P. Sainath’s journalism class at Sophia’s Polytechnic, Mumbai. P. Sainath is asking us if we know which caste we belong to. The class of 40 privileged, city-bred women replies as if in one voice of incredulity that ‘caste’ isn’t something we think about, that it is almost an uncivilized, self-deprecating question that surely we have outgrown, and we look at each other, an awkward, knowing smile on our faces. Then P. Sainath, a rural journalist, and Magasasay Award winner, tells us one of the Dalit farmers he met in Tamil Nadu was nicknamed