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.