#rahee punyashloka

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Rahee Punyashloka

 “The Dalit Panther is an Elusive Beast #1” (2021)

[dysphoricvisions2021]

[Image description: A gif containing three images of me, Sneha. Image one is of a framed drawing of myself Tim Burton style - big eyes, wide slightly evil grin and a pasty skin colour. My two dimensional self happens to be in a graveyard. In image two, I’m wearing a purple t-shirt, my hair is grown out and shaggy and I’m sitting at a dinning table, smiling widely at the camera. Finally, image 3 has me walking down a city sidewalk. It’s snowing and my glasses are fogged up because of my N-95 mask. I’m wearing an olive green sweater, a blue jacket and my trustee headphones are covering my ears.] 

Disclaimer: Hair has always intersected with questions of access. Whether it be in relation to Black hair as a mode of expression, a symbol of resistance and a target of racism and appropriation or the notion that the barber is a divine caste location and so perfectly coiffed hair becomes one other way of making caste visible on the body - here, I must state that the only reason I know of this is because of a conversation that took place between Priyanka Paul and Rahee Punyashloka on Instagram. Hair, as it relates to migration and my queerness, becomes a way of casting me out of a home. 

And so, now we come to penultimate dysphoric moment - where is home? I can tell you where home is not. It’s not Bombay. It’s not Pune. It’s not Ottawa. It’s not Montréal. Home does not reside in the length of my hair, but in my partner giving me my first buzz cut as our roommate dies of laughter in the background. Home does not reside in my mother’s taunts, but in her dedication to calling me everyday if only to share family gossip. Home does not reside in my dadi who tells me I look like a boy as an insult, but a stranger who calls me handsome in a coffee shop as they compliment my spaceman shirt. Home does not reside in the multiple bureaucratic hoops I have to jump through for a new passport, for visas, for a SIN number, but in my father who has the least patience of anyone I know but will still sit on the phone with me as I fill out forms because he knows how anxious I get. Home resides in the countless in-betweens I’ve written about in my previous posts. Maybe home is dysphoria. 

[therewasabrowncrow]

by Rahee Punyashloka via Dalit Camera

Culinary histories suggest onions to be the quintessential Dalit 'vegetable', with diverse Dalit cuisines and food traditions placing this humble vegetable as their basis. That this food crop-associated with the stereotypically impoverished and hungry-has had a trajectory of becoming a perennial crisis crop, whose prices inflate exponentially, and supplies deplete every season, provides a glimpse of the broadly anti-DBA policy framings that have continued and accelerated under this regime.

Then there is the case of a key minister of this regime announcing-with apathy and disdain reminiscent of Marie Antoinette-that she doesn't consume onions and maybe we shouldn't too: the Brahmanical structure of those who rule, made explicit for all to see. Here is the humble onion, expressing solidarity with the farmers.