End Notes

Abstract

End Notes Simona Sawhney (bio) He woke up from the dream, pulse stumbling, stuttering, mouth parched—his body smarting from a forest of blows. In the dream, his old, battered Maruti had screeched to a halt as the police van thundering behind had swerved right in front. He had been dragged out on the road, as ramshackle traffic roared and hissed around him. The moon hung a feeble orb over the rancid night air. They had wrenched open the containers in the trunk. The squeal of a lackey: “It seems to be beef, Sir…” Blows, kicks … “Don’t you know the law, you sister-fucker? But you won’t learn this way … wait till we teach you a lesson…” Spine, knees, groin on fire … raging pain. … “You will eatthe cow-mother, will you, will you, you bastard son-of-Babur?” “Let me go, Sir,” whimpering, sobbing, crawling … “You are mistaken Sir, you are mistaken, I have never eaten beef in my life, this is not beef.” “What is it then, sister-fucker, if it isn’t beef?” “It is not beef, Sir, it is … only … only … human-meat, Sir … flesh of some useless human beings.” That look on the policeman’s face, his lathi suspended in mid-air—idiotic, incredulous, disappointed. “Human beings?” He spat out the word with great globs of disgust. Then, suddenly, cunningly: “What was their caste, Asshole, what were their names?” He woke up. If you’re a foreigner, of course, you may eat beef.1 And that is as it should be. Because foreigners have lifestyles, food preferences, tastes and habits … and hell, we’ve always been ready to cut up and serve our mothers, whether bony or bonny, to the guy who lands from afar with a thick wad of cash. Especially if he be fair of skin. If dark, then it’s a different matter of course. Because the dark ones, don’t you know, they fuck anything that moves. That must be the reason they all have a strange smell about them … or maybe it’s the drugs. Prostitutes and addicts. They ought to be dragged out on the street and stripped, every single one of them.2 But we’re too tolerant, that’s our problem. [End Page 113] That’s why they all take advantage of us. So hospitable, so tolerant, so accommodating, that is why we are so abused. But enough is enough, right? No more niceness for these drug-pushing fornicators, these child molesters, these crazy beasts. They should go back where they came from. We will send them back, right back where they came from. Now the fair ones, the blue-eyed ones, glowing and gorgeous with the pure sheen of pure wealth—they are a different matter altogether. Clear as day, they were born to rule the earth. Yes, yes, I know, we booted them out, our Great Leaders booted them out a few decades ago, but truth to tell, we’ve been yearning for them ever since the day they boarded their ships and left our shores. We yearn so much, so longingly, so wistfully, we spend all our time trying to adore them, emulate them, become them—only in flesh, mind you, only in flesh … I ask you, is it not grossly unfair to be ugly, if you could be Fair and Lovely instead?3 It is time we seriously put our minds to the Whitification of our beloved Motherland. White is the American, our younger brother, White the Truth, and White the Cow. And White indeed, indeed, was our Lord, though playfully, jestfully named Krishna, the darkie, by his blessed mother. So, in the midst of this Grand Project of Whitification—blazoned on billboards and painfully etched on the skin—in the midst of this project of de-Beastification, which has strangely, paradoxically, morphed such that what is yanked out of the human is not the savage, violent beast, but instead the cud-chewing, ruminating, slow-gazing, unperturbed beast—in the midst of such projects, what on earth happened to one Rohith Vemula?4 On Earth. On the earth he too had lived. And on the earth, though suspended by a few feet...