Telangana bidda makes waves in US thru her memoirs

​Hyderabad: A life story by a subway bus conductor in New York city, who happens to be the Telangana bidda (daughter of Telangana soil), is making waves in the United States.

The life story, titled ‘Ants Among Elephants’ is hailed by critics as an unflinching account of caste and family in India. She is Sujatha Gidla. She hails from Kazipet, a small town in Telangana state.

In her own words “caste is an accursed state in India, especially for Dalits: Your life is your caste, your caste is your life." Sujatha Gidla, who was born a so-called untouchable and now works as a conductor on the New York City Subway, has laid bare the labyrinth of caste system still existing in India.

She speaks of her life and her family and the plight of Dalits. She dwells at length on her life, parents, especially her mother, grandparents and Satyamurthy, a Maoist uncle who hoped that revolution would help eliminate caste system. With her memoir, Gidla joins the ranks of India's many Dalit women who are telling stories to be heard and counted in a system that seeks to keep them down.

The 53-year-old subway conductor has been luckier than most Dalits back home. Unlike most of her lot, her family was "middle class,", because the Canadian missionaries in her region who aided in education and offered them religion. Her family was thus Christian and benefited with education. Her parents held jobs as college teachers.

Gidla says that proselytisation didn't help her lot. It came to the same thing. She said, “I knew no Christian who did not turn servile in the presence of a Hindu."

The book chronicles unflinchingly the caste slurs and segregation Gidla and Dalits like her have to endure in India.

She has admitted that she had it better than many Dalit students, who “driven to suicide.” She studied physics in an engineering college and joined most-sought-after Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) as a researcher in applied physics.

At 26 she came to America "where people know only skin colour, not birth status", she writes.

There, she says, she faced racism. And caste was right here too. She says she found "petty caste discrimination" among the Indian community.

Her siblings, too, have left their life behind in India to find livelihoods and build families. Her sister is a physician in America and her brother is an engineer in Canada.

By: K Sriramulu