Amma,
Today in class, on a sharp, cold day in Minneapolis, we read Charles Tilly’s Durable Inequality and discussed the intergenerational nature of inequality—how it manifests in durable economic and physical effects, and how it is embodied in reduced stature, disease, and mortality. I looked up the word ‘durability’ in the Oxford Dictionary, which defined it as “the quality of being able to last for a long time without breaking or getting weaker.”
The thought, like so many others these days, led me back to you. And to that yellow ceramic cup with blue flowers that you cherished so deeply. I still remember the day you bought it. Before that moment, and even after, we always drank our tea from aluminum glasses. You made the tea sweeter than usual, almost as if you were offering something sacred. And when we drank it from that cup, it felt like the world had shifted, like we were tasting something forbidden, something we had no right to touch. And then, as if the moment wasn’t enough, you carefully tucked the cup away in a safe corner, away from our everyday lives, as though it were too precious for the likes of us. It was your dream to own a cup like that—similar to the one you washed in the house you worked at, the same cup you cleaned but were never allowed to drink from. You had been the maid, the help—and now, with that cup, you had something that was yours, something that marked the end of those years.
But I wonder, with the weight of time upon me, was buying that cup really the end of it all? When did you stop being a maid? When did I become the maid’s daughter?
But I wonder, with the weight of time upon me, was buying that cup really the end of it all? When did you stop being a maid? When did I become the maid’s daughter? I ask myself this as I sit in my office at the University of Minnesota, a Ph.D. student, someone who is supposed to be “somebody” now. Yet, every time someone asks me to introduce myself, I feel my back stiffen. I swallow hard, the words getting stuck in my throat. The image of that yellow cup with blue flowers floods my mind, and for a fleeting moment, I’m back in Mrs. Subramaniam’s house. I can hear her voice—cold, calculating—demanding, “Diksha, you need English if you want to be some-body. Can you say your name and grade in English?” I want to scream at her but instead, I look down ashamed and say, “Englissss, i no.” I can still hear myself say it, dragging out the word, “En-glisss,” each syllable hitting the air like a slap. I remember how I squeezed my mouth tight, nose pointed up, fighting the anger that rose within me. I go to an English-medium school, I add defensively, as if that should settle it. And in that moment, I knew that Mrs. Subramaniam was right: If I wanted to be somebody—like her (and not like you)—I knew what I had to do: add more English to my speech. But will it ever be enough? Will it ever erase what came before? Or will it always linger beneath the surface, reminding me of who I once was, and who I’ll never truly escape from? Will my body ever stop becoming? Sometimes, I wish my body would stop thinking, stop spending a third of my brain constantly preoccupied with knowing who I am. Is this what Ta-Nehisi Coates meant when he spoke of being “aware of the price”? I think I, too, somehow knew that a third of my brain should have been concerned with more beautiful things. I think I felt that something out there—some vast, nameless force—had robbed me of… what? Time? Experience? As I sit here, ruminating in school, I think about how I didn’t become a maid’s daughter—I was born one. And if I wanted to become “somebody,” I had to be in school. Because for us—for only us—the other side of freedom, of free will, and free spirits, has always been a world of labor. A world tethered to sweat, exhaustion, and struggle. This is not hyperbole. When you presented school to us, it wasn’t a place for discovery, for intellectual joy. No—it was framed as a means of escape, a way out from the unrelenting grind of poverty, a lifeline to something that wasn’t toil.
And perhaps this is what guaranteed what Victoria Reyes called “academic citizenship”. The term strikes me because it demonstrates not only the rights and responsibilities of those in academia—differentiated and tied to ranks—but also encompasses a sense of belonging, access to political participation, and sets of practices and claims-making related to academic life, all underscored by race, caste, class, region, and gender. Amma, you and Appa didn’t just read very little—you didn’t have the time or energy for music, theater, radio, or even the daily churn of politics and current events. The demands of work and life left little space for those things. This set our home apart from the families of many of my peers in college and elite universities, where cultural and intellectual life often seemed inherited, expected. That difference still lingers—it shapes how I move through academic spaces, always aware of what wasn’t passed down. It’s a feeling of being the outsider within. Can we ever escape the weight of being labeled an outsider, or does that label remain with us, embedded in every aspect of our academic journey, reminding us of the gaps we have to fill just to belong? When we focus only on learning the “rules” of the game—those unwritten codes of academia—do we miss the bigger picture of how academic success is not just about mastering these rules, but also about belonging, claiming space? Does the persistence of these invisible walls, these enduring marks of difference, confirm that inequality is not just structural but also deeply embedded in the way we experience and participate in academic life? Is it possible to truly escape the cycle, or does the very nature of durable inequality mean that the mark of “otherness” is something that will continue to define us, regardless of how much we achieve or assimilate? I wish I could ask you…
Yours,
diksha