to a young dalit careerist

respected Saralaji,

IAS is but a name of service

and servitude to your masters

in Delhi or Gandhinagar.

to serve is the traditional task of Shudras and ati-Shudras

and to rule is their hereditary job, you know.

even then, you see --

Reena Roy and Rati Agnihotri get selected everywhere,

be it IAS or air hostess!

we have heard you don’t make up your face,

rosy or pink

even for GDs and personal interviews

and that you look simple and chaste

like the virgin deity Saraswati. 

that’s why they threw

your unglamorous, weather-beaten face

in the basket paperwith the remark :

unfit for IAS?

you are a great scholar of the literature of the subaltern –

give us a spark from the black poetry,

sprinkle some drops of elixir of knowledge

on us carcasses,

in stead of signing on the DO letters,

come, and carve on our foreheads message of liberation :

dalits of the world, educate, unite and agitate !

tell our young careerist instead :

IAS is Amrapali, it will make you mad

IAS is Menka, it will make you bad

it will turn you into dalit-hating elite

or a misanthropic neo-Brahmin.

See, our Rami, Mani, Amtho, Kacharo –

toiling in fields and factories,

sweeping and scavenging

roads and streets and offices

are despaired at the thought :

you will forget us

mixing as you are with big and high,

and helpless and alone,

we will drown in these stinking cesspools and tanning pits !

Saralaji, this deceptive IAS is but all out brain-drain, you know.

an illiterate Phoolan first took to Chambal ravines

and then to Delhi’s parliament house,

only to avenge her desecrated dalit dignity,

can you pick up dear vidushi, from where our savior baba left?

the unfinished yatra of his caravan,

the juggernaut for dalit emancipation?