Articles by Anupama Sudesan

As a fervent traveller around the country, having visited most of the megalopolises, often I have been asked to elucidate on those places which I had visited. The queries time and again revolved around some of the aspects like beauty, development, fashion, modernity, people etc of those places. However during my recent visit to my ancestral home for a wedding, I have been asked by a fifteen-year-old girl, a question that left me in thoughts. Since the wedding was more like a platform for rebuilding the lost relations, I was keen in talking with the 10th standard girl, who was…

Like the age old tale of the elves and shoemaker, our cities too appear to have a group of elves that are hard at work before the sun is up and are completely responsible for the city’s garbage collection and clean streets. Almost blending into the scene, there is a group of women from largely dispossessed sects of society that are employed in the sector called the pourakarmikas. Belonging to low income or BPL families of a particular sub-sect, they end up at the bottom of the professional and social ladder, to be looked down upon by the upper castes…