Saranya Subramanian

---

​Sunita Aunty

The sound of Marathi filling my house, a rough
dialect from Raigarh cut and sharpened
by the edges of Bombay’s glassy English, tells me
that Sunita Aunty has arrived. Her mouth breaks
apart into a wide smile when she sees me. Limping
her way across the hall, she hugs me tightly and I
feel her back bent more than the last time I saw her,
ever since her roof collapsed. “I carry the whole
house, what to do.” Her voices squeezes itself
out of her hardened throat, hardened by years
of pollution—the complimentary dish
that comes with city life. Sunita Aunty has brought
homemade sheera for dessert. “I have added
banana, but don’t worry, it’s not too sweet like
how those Brahmins make it. They don’t understand
the delicious spice of flavour. They put sugar in
everything,” she says. Her lips turn upward, disgusted
by the sickeningly sweet stench of Brahmin
purity. We eat sheera that’s not too sweet
and talk current affairs, talk of Hathras and Ambedkar
and Dhasal, and Sunity Aunty’s eyes soften. “It is terrible,
what happens to Dalits, but you don’t know how
dirty they are, how they get everything for free,
from college admissions to train seats to jobs, and how
they abuse it all,” she says while waving her hand, like
this is her final verdict, like she really has no time
to waste on obvious politics. Just then her Nokia
ringtone slices our conversation in half. She sighs
a sigh that only means it’s the husband, picks
up and presses her knee, wincing at its sudden
stinging pain. The conversation is brief but enough
to infuriate Sunita Aunty, whose nose stiffens
as she slams the phone. “Those gunda politicians
came to our chawl again to beg us to vote
for them, telling us that they belong to the same
community. We know it’s all bullshit. They are caste-
-less, spineless, heartless. They built us a building
made of cotton walls and cotton roofs that fly away
or thin down in the rains and crumble over us,”
she says. Sunita Aunty is too angry now to eat
sheera or talk current affairs or share any recipes.
She has more important things to think about.