I met a Dalit with an iPhone this evening.
Yes. A real, living, breathing, medical-degree-holding, internationally travelled, customised-Ambedkar-T-shirt-wearing Dalit with an iPhone. And he ordered a Scotch. Neat. At the Residency Club bar, where the bartender calls everyone “Sir” before quietly asking for their membership number.
As he flexed his powerlifting muscles to scoop chakna into his mouth, fresh from recounting his well-applauded DEI-festival appearance (funded, no doubt, by a guilty savarna corporate’s CSR budget), I, a Chitpavan Brahmin with an Android that faints at 9%, felt something shift.
Here, in this dimly lit sanctum of elite leisure, looking at his conditioned hair and customised tee and branded jacket, it struck me. I realised suddenly that three thousand years of caste oppression had finally been paid for. The account settled. My ancestral guilt cancelled.
Naturally, this means reservations can go. Social justice can retire. My Brahmin guilt can be gently put down and walked away from. Phew. I wondered when I would be able to set that weight down.
Oh, did I say he writes poetry?
In English.
Not Marathi, the language subalterns are expected to narrate their trauma in, but English, the emotional support system of Brahmins and convent toppers.
And, as if this wasn’t destabilising enough, he casually mentioned he reads Marcus Aurelius, which really sealed it, because what could be more post-caste than a Dalit quoting Stoicism to a Brahmin waiting for victimhood porn?
So, if a Dalit is writing English poetry and reading Roman Stoics, the caste question is obviously solved. Right?
I mean, look at the evidence.
A Dalit with an iPhone.
Wearing Ambedkar merch.
Drinking Scotch.
In an elite club.
Writing English poetry.
And a stoic. For fuck’s sake.
What more proof does anyone need that the caste system has expired, and poor Sudamas like me, typing this on an Android with a side of rum & coke, can breathe easy about all the bullshit about millennia of forced inequality, servitude, and oppression?
And there he was. Smiling. Laughing. At himself. At me. At his poetry. At the world. I asked him to recite something, prepared for a dark tale of persecution, and listened open-mouthed as I received crisp satire. Funny. Smart. Biting. I caught myself giggling a little too nervously, unsure who I was laughing with. Or at. Because nothing confuses a savarna more than a Dalit who refuses to perform pain on cue.
And then he finished his drink, handed his iPhone to the receptionist for the perfect photo, and this English-poetry-writing, internationally travelled, iPhone-owning, single-malt-drinking, powerlifting, chakna-chewing Dalit doctor climbed into his Uber Premium and disappeared into the night, leaving me standing there like a man convinced he has just witnessed the annihilation of caste.
Except the joke was on me.
And I will still post the photo. Because nothing teaches a Brahmin the limits of his own allyship like meeting a Dalit with an iPhone and realising he has been the punchline all along.
Note: Tonight, Dr Khandkar recited his powerful satirical poem, “Dalit with an iPhone” to me. And it inspired this post. I have requested him to record and post it so it can reach more people. I hope he does it soon.
