Culture shock

[Teenr0cker]

Okay, so, this was on the front page of the ctrl-alt-del online comic when I found this, and goddamn is this powerful stuff...

http://cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t= ... ge=1&pp=20

Oh, and his button on the side? yeah, for all you music-noobs, thats F-A-G as read from left to right in music

I admire this person immensely for his courage. Anyone have any DECENT and GODDAMN POSITIVE comments or does anyone know any other sorts of examples?

[Vaylos]

Well, it was certainly a powerful read. I can't think of any similar stories offhand though =/ Certainly nothing as personal, and coming from an individual. Nae, nothing I can think of holds a candle to what that man has been through. I'm glad to hear he got out of it though. He should write a biography, and publish it to inform and educate others of the situations of his mother land. Kudos to him, and best of luck to his future endeavors.

[Forerunner]

You're right. Thats powerful shit. I havn't seen or experienced anything like that before, and if I did I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't think I would survive it.

My opinion on the subject is the same as hbbes':
"If anyone makes any comments that make fun of Natraj or his situation, you will recieve a permanant ban from CAD. No questions asked. There is no wiggle room with this."

[Poenaensis]

Basically, this world really sucks!

Someone should do somethign about it! Any ideas?

P.S I can't remeber where I saw the story, but there was this woman who worked as a prostitute until she realised that her cleints would pay more to violate her 9 year old daughter. That's quite high up there on the sick scale.

[Ghoti]

The world really isn't beautiful.

That story really had me in tears, but it was mostly from how he was able to get out of his situation. Y'know, tears of happiness. And yeah, reiterating what others have said, he is a very strong guy. It's a very inspirational story which has forever etched itself into my memory. Makes me feel guilty for everything I have. My life philosophy is to enjoy it as much as possible, and when I read stories like this, I realize that it isn't always possible. It makes me feel like I should try helping out people in his situation. Heck, I don't have any other life goals. Maybe I'll try something like that sometime.

And Teenr0cker, I think you did good posting this story here. Maybe it'll teach some of those arrogant assholes, not naming names, to respect others a bit more.

[_MurtagH_]

wow... That really was moving. I don't think i've ever seen/heard about anything like this from the people who have experienced it and I feel touched. I really do. I've heard about the untouchables before but i had no idea this was how they were treated. It truly is amazing how brave young people like this boy can survive such a horrific ordeal. I'm happy that he has been saved from this by whatever charity/person it was that saved him. We need to do more about this.. heck i think i'll go donate to the red cross or something. But this just can't go on.

[Poenaensis]

Some people come through a hell of a lot. Makes you see how easy we have it really.

[Greatchickenman]

My computer won't open the page. can someone C&P for me?





btw, I am an arrogant asshole.

[Non-Sequitur]

I've never done something like this before, but in casual conversation, I often seem to say things that make people curious/shocked/confused. Hopefully this will help clear up confusion, because I don't like to continue turning innocent chatting into heavy depressing talk about the injustice of the caste system, but quite a few people so far here have expressed an interest in hearing about my background.

I must put now a disclaimer: The things I am going to talk about, they are unpleasant. The way of life for us over there, can be very horrendous and are very unlike what most people who have not experienced it have had to know about. So please, if you are going to continue reading this all, please know it is maybe not the average journal of an 18 year old that you will find here.

My twin brother and I grew up in the state of Tamil Nadu in the south of India. Our mother died when we were infants, I believe - at any rate, I do not have any memories of having any parents. In the caste system in India, Dalits are the untouchables - the lowest caste, or, more accurately, the casteless - those people to whom all the dirtiest "polluting" types of jobs are given. My brother and I were Sikkaliar - that is the lowest sub-caste of dalits in our community, and to us were given all the worst of the dalit jobs. The sikkaliar community is responsible for removing all the human and animal waste from the town, and also for removing from town any animal corpses before they degrade and make sickness come. From the time I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, I had to begin working. In our village most of the latrines were dry latrines, toilets without plumbing, basically just holes in the ground. My job was to go in with a basket and sometimes a broom or a pan or sometimes just simply my hands and scoop all the waste from the toilets, put this all in my basket, and carry it on my head outside of the village. By law, this practice of cleaning human waste manually is illegal in India; still, it is a widespread practice and always this job falls to the lowest of the dalits. For many of us, we fall ill often from this work, and die young, it is very unsanitary, and the feces it gets into your eyes and your everywhere and many of my community become alcoholics because working while intoxicated is the only way to put up with the smell. In the monsoon season, especially, things are bad for working, because the rain floods the basket and the waste leaks all over you and it is so hard even after the day is over to get rid of the smell; for most of the monsoon season I would be ill and unable to eat very much if at all.

So since I was young, this is what I did every day of my life; and from the time I started until the time I left my village I never once received any payment for this, which perhaps makes it slavery. My wages supposedly were somewhere around 150 rupees per month (this is maybe $3.40 each month) but I was never once paid, because I am Deaf and in India, having some disability, then people feel free to treat you like you are nothing. My brother he some months would receive payment, some months no, but this is hardly enough to eat for long, and mostly we had to live on the scraps of food, often rotten, that the upper-caste people whose toilets we cleaned would throw to us.

Aside from the work, being an untouchable is hard. We were forbidden from touching (even accidentally) any people who were higher caste; even making eye contact was something I sometimes would be beaten for. Sometimes, sikkaliars would be beaten to death for making the mistake of touching someone outside their caste. If we tried to buy something in a store, we have to pay only in coins, because people will not accept money directly from us; generally if they accept our money at all, they have a dish that we must drop our coins into, then they will pour some water over it to purify it before they will touch it. In places like tea shops, they keep separate dishes and cups for our use; often these are broken and frequently dirty. In schools, the teachers will often refuse to teach the sikkaliar children; they will keep us seated far from the rest of the class and will not allow us to touch the books or papers or pens or other materials we need to learn; so hardly any children go to school because there is no point in it when you are not allowed access to the learning and the teacher only the whole time tells you how you are worthless and are polluting her classroom.

Also, being an untouchable does not seem to apply when it comes to sex. During the day, I could be beaten for looking at someone above me. At night time, the men in town, they could come and take me for sex; since I was very young, maybe 6, 7, 8 years old this happened frequently. On the times that my brother or I tried to resist them, we still were beaten for raising hands against the Thevars (Thevar, that is the higher-caste people who we often would work for) Very often, dalit girls are forced into prostitution, so then it seems that it is alright to touch us when someone wants sex with us. I was not made a prostitute, because I am male; in India homosexuality it is frowned upon. But still men would come and force sex, from the time I was a child. I think for me it was harder than for some of the other Sikkaliar boys, because I am Deaf, and since I was a child they told my brother that he should just kill me because I am only a cripple that is not worth living. As I said before, it is already very difficult for dalits to get education - it is even more difficult for Deaf people to get an education. I was never taught of anything such as "sign language", and since I was also never taught to read and write, this made communication near impossible. I learned after a time to lipread well enough, but I still could no verbalize; and so when things happened like rape, there was nobody to tell, and even if I had managed to communicate what was happening to someone, nobody would believe me or care - this is just the normal place of a dalit.

So that is how I have grown up, I was born into a sub-human caste, and treated accordingly. To me, rape and this unpleasant work, that was a normal everyday kind of thing in life. This August I have come to America, and everything is so frightening and new. Until this August, I had never in my life had a roof over my head - not ever. I had never had a bed to sleep in. I had never known what it was to have enough to eat. I had never known what it was to have a friend. I had never known anyone who regarded me as equal to human beings.

So if I sometimes seem a little bit out of place, it is because I am. If I make comments that are confusing, it is because I was raised this way, in a totally different culture, in a place where nobody ever treated me as a human, but only a bhangi cripple - that is worse than dirt. I am adjusting to many things, here. I am adjusting to learning a new language, to having people treat me with kindness, to learning about strange new things like computers and the internet and couches that turn into beds and back, to supermarkets full of food and shopping malls full of lights and people and things, to a place where sex is something that is fun and special and not something that is just forced upon you and you have no say in when or how.

This is all very new to me. I hope that you can understand.

[Greatchickenman]

Man, sucks to be an outcaste.


However, it seems hard to believe that he could write so fluently in English if he only got here in August. And if he's uneducated and poor how did he even get past immigration?

[TeWuicah]

Man, sucks to be an outcaste.


However, it seems hard to believe that he could write so fluently in English if he only got here in August. And if he's uneducated and poor how did he even get past immigration?

To tell the truth, I'm a little bit skeptic too. It took me years to be about as good in English as he is in a couple of months. It's possible if he learned some while he was in India, though. He got to USA by getting help from someone coming from USA. It's said in the discussion there.

[Greatchickenman]

Ok. that would explain it then. I haven't seen the discussion.

[_MurtagH_]

Or maybe someone translated for him? It seems likely.

[Teenr0cker]

No, he's learning english and yes he does have some interesting wordings...however, if you'd said that on the CAD boards, you'd get yo' ass banned....


The amount of respect I have this guy cannot be described in words. There will never be a greater feeling of sympathy I have for a person I never even met than that which I feel for him.

[Greatchickenman]

I wasn't assaulting him at all. I was just expressing some of my doubt in the authenticity of the writer. After all, the writing is done by someone with obviously an upper education. Outcastes don't get education in India, as he's already said. I find it hard to believe he could have written something like this. I'd require a decent explanation before I'd believe his story. I have a friend who moved from Korea and has lived in America most of his life and still is terrible at grammar.

Hate me because I bring up some reasonable doubt, but hate him more if this story is a fabrication.