4th letter

 Dear Naanna

You know that I have my own personal library of 2000 books at our mud house. Our mud house is full of wealth in the form of books, if not in gold, hard currency, jewelers, or diamonds.

Naanna, you know I have a book called "the Idea of History" by R.G. Collingwood. It is wonderful work, Naanna. It’s wonderful because we are related to this history.

How did you feel when the idea of caste, untouchability, impure, pure, sacrosanct, reduction was enforced upon you? I know you want to run away from them, but you do not have an English education to escape to the west naanna. Even in the west, they are everywhere. They are omnipresence.

Naanna, generally, ideas are mental representations of human beings. How did they frame us as untouchables, unseeables, unapprochables, unshawdoables in their mind? How did they construct the idea of us as sub-humans or walking-carrion?

Naanna, even Britannica defined us as "untouchables" or the lowest rung of Indian society, whereas it defined our creators as "superiors, scholars, pundits, and priests" without knowing the meaning of "idea".

Naanna' idea is associated with a progressive sense of universal good, but in the Indian context, the scientific or progressive word-called idea incarnated into "Avatar" naanna just like James Cameron did with Indian ideology.

Naanna, ideas of Indian ideologies have dehumanized you throughout your life. I am hoping that at least you will enjoy social equality, as John Rawls said in the Court of Christ. The Heaven or Heavenly Court may or may not uphold traditional threads like our Indian sacred thread.

I knew you had become a “walking-carcass” when I saw you a few years back. You were a female Mayflyer, naanna, just like any other antaraanivaadu. Our lives, deaths, ceremonies, education, breathing, everything is decided by them.

Naanna, I want to apolosize you for not being with you when you died. Naanna, I might be called a ‘cruel son’ in history for not coming to that muddy piece of Hindu land even after knowing your condition, because I am dehumanized by the idea of being an untouchable, naanna. I do not want to make my little boy into another untouchable being, naanna. I had no choice, so I faced their ideas about my identity. Naanna, but my little boy had the choice to escape from their ideas.  Naanna apologizes for being cruel in this matter.

Your son

Dr.Suryaraju Mattimalla