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Reclamation

January 26th, 2014 by admin

Sruthi Herbert

My story

Starts with me.

 

I am a woman

With a name

But

without memory

without a past.

 

This blank slate of existence,

Those non-existing photographs,

The missing tombstones,

And the unknown legacy.

What does that tell you about me?

 

The only clues I hold,

My name.

My father's name.

His two initials.

My mother

Her name.

Her two initials.

 

That is the whole and soul

The sum and substance

The living traces

Of unworthy lives

And unwritten glories.

 

Those initials,

The unwritten names

They are my passport

To a long-lost story.

That is my claim

To memory and history.

 

Sruthi Herbert is a researcher who seeks to interpret the Indian society from the vantage point of the oppressed and the underprivileged. She is starting her doctoral degree in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has previously studied at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

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