Shudras


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March 22nd 2006
Published: March 22nd 2006
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This family lives on the sidewalk and eekes as living as best they can
This is my entry in the Narrative Creative Writing assignment due today

I was born….

Claire McManus
438

I WAS BORN AN UNTOUCHABLE
I was born a hapless shudras. I can not remember how old I was when I realized the there might be a different way of life, an alternate set of rules; my inexcusable ignorance restricted by a rigidly stagnant existence.
I was born a feckless shudras within an orthodoxy which predestined me to a sordid fate.
I was born a rebellious shudras. I listened when I should not, I did not pretend to be blind, I could and did smell above me, I touched surreptitiously and relentlessly and did not implode. I could taste the advances of betterment. I was repressed, beaten and degraded. I was made to endure and remained desisted; no outside influence would allow my obscure mutiny
I was born an appalling shudras; no absurd tendency could replace the plague of continuity, no blemish could mar the established traditional ways. I could not be assimilated by another ways of being. No other caste would absorb my strides.
I was born an abject shudras, I could not invade or conquer, my adventures and explorations could not be traded on merit. I had inherited outdated, outlawed discrimination banned by law and I could not react. I belonged to the lowest varna and there I would stagnate until death to a superior reincarnation.
Because I was born a contemptible shudras, I was jeopardizing any promised advancement in the next life by aspiring to unreasonable extravagance in this one.
I was born a wretched shudras and I could not even dream of emulating the vaishyas as I could neither change the colour of my skin.


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23rd March 2006

correction
It should be shudra not shudras, which is the plural form.
24th March 2006

Caste system scarcely exists in India anymore, what exists is social division based on economy. Like rest of the world there is the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The family in the sidewalk belongs to the later category. Like any hobo who live out of the sidewalk in New York city. These people are not necessarily "Shudra".

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