Part II: Bama — We Too are Human Beings

The second account, by Bama, recalls how she first came to understand the reality of untouchability, when she was studying in the third class. As a small child walking home from school, she is by nature cheerful and easily distracted; a ten-minute walk would stretch to half an hour or more because she stopped to watch everything along the way — the performing monkey, the snake-charmer, the tireless cyclist, the spinning wheels, the temple bell, the fried-snack and sweet stalls, the seasonal fruit, and the coffee-club waiters pouring coffee from tumbler to tumbler. The ordinary bustle of the bazaar delighted her and "tethered her legs."

One day, near her own street, she notices an elder of her community coming from the market, carrying a small, oil-stained packet — she guesses vadai or bhajji. What strikes her, and at first amuses her, is the odd way he holds the packet — by its string, without touching it, keeping it away from his body — and the exaggerated deference with which he bows low before an upper-caste landlord and hands it over, cupping the string with his other hand. The landlord opens the parcel and eats. Bama finds the sight of such a big man carrying a parcel in that fashion so funny that she wants to shriek with laughter, and at home she tells the story to her elder brother, Annan, "in all its comic detail."

But Annan is not amused. He explains the bitter truth: the man was not being clumsy or foolish — he carried the packet by its string because the upper castes believed they would be "polluted" if an untouchable touched it. At this, Bama no longer wants to laugh and feels terribly sad. She is "so provoked and angry" that she wants to touch those very vadais herself, and she rebels inwardly against the idea that her people must fetch and carry so meekly for those who "had scraped four coins together," insisting, "But we too are human beings." …