Sukirtharani’s Debt

A piece of hide
sewn into the base of the basket
she sets out.
The blunt-edged scrap-iron sheet
Piled with gathered ashes
is heavy in her arms.

Behind a house that’s fit to split

with too many people in it
she goes – stops there,
her eyes falling on a square
iron sheet
swinging from a nail.
Raising it with one hand
she throws a handful of ashes
inside.

And then,
scraping her forearm on the hole’s jagged edges, she
sweeps and scoops, sweeps and scoops from left to right
tilting it
into the basket.

And when it’s full, and heavy on her head

with the back of her hand
she wipes away yellow water
streaming down her brow.
And then,
with easy grace
she goes her way.

what I can do for her

is
not to defecate
once.
Sukirtharani
Sukirtharani is an Indian feminist poet who is widely acclaimed for her contribution
to contemporary Dalit and Tamil literature. She is also a Tamil teacher at the Government
Girls High School in Ranipet District. She has master's degrees in Economics and Tamil
literature. She published six poem collections. These works are described as celebratory
towards the female body and chastisement of the oppressive caste system which summarize a
dual experience of being born both a female and a Dalit. Her works have also been noted to
have an eco-feminist approach to them. She has featured alongside the poets Kutti
Revathi, Malathi Maithri and Salma in Lakshmi Holmström's translated compilation Wild
Girls Wicked Words. Holmström describes Sukirtharani as one who seeks "an infant language
with all the rough and physical reality of new birth, sticky with blood" in her anthology.
Sukirtharani is known for writing about the marginalization of the Dalit community
and Dalit women. She was born as the fifth child into a Tamil Dalit-Christian family and she
is very open and frank about her experiences growing up as Dalit in Tamil Nadu. She speaks
about many incidents from her own life and describes how the Dalit child would start facing
bias incidents like segregation of the group in the class and her friendliness in her school.
Though her father was a laborer and had low means, he insisted his children learn the
importance of education and advised them to get a formal education. The sisters were
studying in a government school and depended on the school to provide books. She
eventually became a devoted reader and started expressing herself through poems. So, her
thoughts on women and their lives are reflected in her works.
Awards
 The Thevamagal Kavithoovi Award
 The Pengal Munnani Achiever Award
 The Puthumaipitthan Memorial Award
Special Introduction
Sukirtharani distinctly remembers her two years of period in the teacher’s training
institute at Ranipet. She says, “Every single day of those two years, I encountered them. I
have watched them from a distance, walking along in silence. I have witnessed the casual
humiliation they had faced on the streets and continued with what they did – carrying shit
on their heads. The image stayed with me, somewhere deep down” and years later, an
image revisited her when she came across a manual scavenger on a railway line and says,
“No matter which party is in power, they continue to exist. They are forced to do the same
work. If this is not caste discrimination, what else is?” she asks. “I have no power to
change things for them. I honestly feel helpless and all I can do is write a poem.” The
outburst of the thoughts she writes Kaimaaru.
Kaimaaru is translated as Debt into English. It is a powerful articulation of the
indignity associated with manual scavenging, a brilliant takedown of the caste structure
that lent them this indignity, and a sensitive portrayal of the manifestation of this guilt at a
deeply personal level.
Keywords – Body, marginalization, land, nature, feminine experience, frank expression of
the female desire
About the poem
The poem is about a Dalit woman manual scavenger (lifter of human excreta)
carrying on her everyday work of cleaning a pit toilet.
Text
A piece of hide
sewn into the base of the basket
she sets out.
The blunt-edged scrap-iron sheet
Piled with gathered ashes
is heavy in her arms.
A piece of hide: animal skin with an iron sheet
She has the iron sheet on her arms, and the sheet has some ashes on it (in order to easily
scrape of the shit which she is going to clean)
Behind a house that’s fit to split
with too many people in it
she goes – stops there,
her eyes falling on a square
iron sheet
swinging from a nail.
Raising it with one hand
she throws a handful of ashes
inside.
With this equipment (an iron sheet and a basket) she goes into a house, and this house is
occupied by many people who live there, and it's so crowded that the house will almost
split (all these people will have used the “toilet” and she has to take out all the shit from
the bathroom, where everyone would have excreted) and she starts cleaning, the ashes help
to collect the dirt together.
And then,
scraping her forearm on the hole’s jagged edges, she
sweeps and scoops, sweeps and scoops from left to right
tilting it
into the basket.
Then she starts cleaning the place everyone in this house would have defected. She cleans
up the dirt, scooping out the shit from the hole and with the help of the iron sheet putting it
in the basket.
And when it’s full, and heavy on her head
with the back of her hand
she wipes away yellow water
streaming down her brow.
And then,
with easy grace
she goes her way.
When the basket is full, and the hole is now empty of all the shit, she has to now carry the
basket in her hand, but this basket is leaking, and the water (yellow) is falling on her hand.
She cleans this yellow water from her forehead with the back of her hand, and with an
“easy grace,” she does this feminine gesture using the back of her hand, to clean off the
water from your forehead, except this would be dirty and smelly. And she walks away with
this burden of human waste on her head.
what I can do for her
is
not to defecate
once.
And what can one do to help her, the poet asks. Maybe if we don’t dedicate one day! This
is to bring to the notice that it is human waste that this woman is carrying human waste, in
the poem it becomes clear only at the end.
The kind of manual scavenging that this poem describes has been officially banned
in India, for several decades now, but there may be remote areas where this practice
continues. And even if one to assume that it has been eradicated completely, this
experience of manual scavenging would remain in the Dalit Psyche. So, the poet’s idea is
to remind you of the horrific and disgusting nature of the task itself. (Even today in urban
areas and in many cities, the task of cleaning drains by human beings going inside the
drain is consigned to the lowest castes, it’s still an ongoing issue). Even if one may believe
that traditional manual scavenging has been eradicated, one has to create a new form of
scavenging, and it is oppressive. So, the poem brings to context a deep, societal problem
and it also highlights that it is a woman’s issue. By describing the nitty-gritty (essentials)
of the actual task, people are also made to notice that it’s the Dalit woman who is doing
this task.
***********