Some people graduate once in a generation.
My oldest memories are of seeing a room full of onions—or in this case, two-thirds of the house filled with onions harvested from our ancestral agricultural land in Unhel, Madhya Pradesh. I remember exactly how much land our family had, “बारह बीघा,” as my Dadi (paternal grandmother) would say with pride and a spark in her eyes. A simple Google search will tell you that 12 Bigha is roughly around 1.214 hectares, a calculation too advanced for my kid-brain, which was completely mesmerized by the sight of onions piled so high they touched the ceiling. All I wanted to do was climb this pile of onions, but the thought of an onion avalanche crushing and smothering me to death stopped me from climbing too high! God bless our brains for creating scary scenarios to keep us out of trouble because my small frame could have definitely submerged in that onion avalanche.
This “बारह बीघा ज़मीन” (literally translates into “12 Bigha land”) was shared among the five male siblings my grandfather had. He also had six sisters, but they had the misfortune of living in pre-property law reform India. So, to do the math, 1.214 hectares were divided among six brothers and their multiple offspring, with a small piece of land coming under my Dada’s (grandfather’s) share. These onions were from his field, harvested the previous night, and stored to wait for the right price hike to fetch the best price. One thing about onions that makes them a preferred low-risk crop for farmers is their storage duration and handling requirements. Since they are such sturdy crops, they just need a cool and dry storage environment and can last an entire agricultural cycle. This, I would tell you, is a myth that many farmers believe. Their high preference in the farming community makes them so abundant (supply > demand = thus reducing the price) that the market refuses to give these farmers a competitive price because there is always someone willing to sell them for cheaper. As for the Minimum Support Price (MSP), my Dada claimed he never got it and sometimes sold his crop at a price lower than the production cost.
I was oblivious to all these nuances. For me, a room full of onions was akin to a ball pit, even before I saw one for the first time in my life—at 24 years old, to be precise. Meanwhile, in the adult world, my Dada acted too pricey and waited too long, only to sell these “ball-pit onions” at a price below the MSP. I guess he didn’t believe in selling himself for the bare minimum—something my female friends and I could learn from him!
For Baby Vaishnavi, life was about seeing her grandparents bring fresh produce from the farm every time they came to her hometown—Kota. Or watching her mum run her salon while her dad was a mechanical engineer (or at least that’s what she wanted him to be, though he clearly wasn’t). He barely passed 12th grade, a fact she would learn later in life when she applied for an international college scholarship. As for the other members of her family, most of them were farmers or had low-income government jobs with matriculate pass degrees, just enough to put their kids in school. She knew people could be doctors and civil
servants but never thought to question why no one around her was one. I guess onion ball pits were too distracting! It would take her a few more years to realize that if she studied hard enough, she could be a doctor or a civil servant herself. She wanted to be the former until 10th grade when she realized her strong sense of justice demanded she become a civil servant “who will change the system.”
It was only when she went to Miranda House in Delhi that she realized there was no novelty in being a doctor or civil servant—multiple generations of her friends’ families had already been that. She even met people who could trace 4-5 generations of their family in law or governance. Now that was inconceivable to her! How could someone’s great-grandfather be a doctor or civil servant in British India? Last she checked, her whole family suffered from collective amnesia! We couldn’t even trace our ancestors, and when we did, they had “lame” professions like carpentry or farming! Why did her faceless, nameless ancestors choose such mundane professions, and why can’t she trace them? How else is she supposed to boast about their glory and success in 1951 or 1967? Why don’t her elders have any pictures of their ancestors one generation removed, and if there is a picture, why don’t they have the same self-assured, prideful look on their faces? To her, they all looked a bit too skinny and a bit too exhausted!
I believe this present-day Vaishnavi can give her some answers. They looked skinny and exhausted because they were underfed and tired in every era of their known history. She and her elders cannot trace them because we only recall things worthy of recollection. Sadly, these individuals led lives spent trying to disassociate from, and rise above their own poverty and community. In most cases, they wanted to make enough money to make ends meet and act decent enough that they didn’t seem like outcasts—which sadly, they were. They traced their ancestry not to boast but to weave a murky story of lineage tracing them to a nomadic king, noble and deserving of the respect their present clan was stripped of. Little did they know, caste is sticky, and no piece of storytelling can earn you the respect you desire. Those who boast about their ancestors relish in their history, supported by artifacts and folklore around their clan. They revel in the confidence that they have in their right to be respected, whereas she imagines her ancestors suffering from imposter syndrome. These stories, with no artifacts, were their shot at acceptance and dignity.
This Vaishnavi has also learned that Marx was wrong. Monetary capital is not the only form of capital you need to live a dignified life—at least not in India. You need social and cultural capital, which proliferates across generations. A doctor begets a doctor, and an engineer begets an engineer. So, does that mean a farmer begets a farmer? Realistically, yes! You can work hard to break out of this cycle, but how will you get that crucial socialization that makes you “ready for success”? You can learn English, but can you master it? You can learn how to speak in public, but can you adopt an accent that inspires respect and confidence? And let’s not forget, how will you hold up in conversations about Satyajit Ray or Peter Sellers’s body of work? Let’s be honest, having an education is one thing, but being “educated” is another. Being educated makes you witty, critical, confident and just the right amount of polite, and most importantly, it makes you respectable. Can one degree in one generation match up to generations of being “educated”? You can learn English within one lifetime, but it takes generations to master its grammar and cadence. Good luck beating that!
Adult Vaishnavi believes she’s been to places, and all these places gave her simple people she loves and some very smart, well-read people she dislikes! She always thought teaching people about historical injustices was the best way to mediate them, but no one warned her about this very niche and hard-to-be-accepted-in category called “The Subaltern.” The Subaltern is a specific category, and once you make the cut, you are both hated and applauded for being in it. It is truly a split existence. It’s about having and not having, being and not being.
Let me explain: a Subaltern is marginalized to the point that it cannot speak for itself and therefore needs mediators and allies. And if it can speak for itself, it ceases to be a Subaltern—a tricky situation indeed. Therefore, a Subaltern needs mediators and allies at all times to exist. These mediators are “well-meaning” and “well-aware” folks from “educated” backgrounds, and in most cases, they have a strong sense of justice. However, they are also products of the same systems that have created this category called the Subaltern—talk about escaping cycles, huh?
You can choose to love or hate these well-meaning folks, but they love you and cherish your Subaltern status—so much so that they make a living talking and writing about you. These days, a doctor begets an academic and a social justice activist! Don’t get Vaishnavi wrong—she loves these academics and social justice activists. She just cannot stand listening to their narrow definitions of marginality and subalternity—for she always believed onions can also make ball pits.
She believes in the power of existing beyond these connotations, and she is learning to appreciate the “lame” jobs her nameless, faceless ancestors did. She is fighting to take back the narrative, but she is also trying to stay sane and happy while doing it. She understands that one master’s degree in a family full of matriculate pass adults doesn’t make them “educated,” but she is hopeful it leaves a mark.
For one person making it to the finish line, albeit very late and exhausted, still amounts to finishing the race—and being respected for it!
