Laundry Day

Our hostel director locks the roof doors at sundown because a student committed suicide on campus last year. What’s more integral to the story, though, is that the student was Dalit, or a member of the lower caste once subjected to untouchability, and by default darker skinned. So rather than complain about having to do laundry at normal hours of the day, which was my initial reaction, I try to use laundry time to take space for reflection; check my privileges; learn about the oppression of people from far away who look a lot like me; attempt to understand the powers of whiteness and colonialism in a country where I’ve taken partial refuge that in many ways feels like a big hug but in others reflects my own.