Review: Water in a Broken Pot byYogesh Maitreya

Maitreya has written Water in a Broken Pot because he has not read about his story; he has not inherited a lineage of ancestry. But he wants to change that; thus, the endowment is about a “legacy of talking to each other”. Language is a weapon drawn from the vocabularies of dominant cultures. This makes us victims of our own doing. With language comes a responsibility to tackle suffering. The Dalit deals with suffering uniquely, and Maitreya discovers the reason for the Dalit’s existence meticulously .

This is a biography of loneliness. The protagonist is a lonely man in search of solidarity. Caste, a script of his narrative, has precluded the nexus of respect and notice from the other. The memoirist style cruises through a hefty personal story, and it is genuine, for it brings out not only the desired-but-unattainable Dalit man’s sperm, but also his sweat demanded by a society that wants to kiss the warmth that many need. If not these two, then another fluid is immanent for the Dalit’s story to survive — his blood.

The Dalit company is a gravitational sphere that hugs the vulnerable, the confident, the drunk, the married, the foreign, and the acquaintance — all the Others who are scared of Dalit bodies but swallow them in pleasure. Yet, the Dalit is hated and feared. Still, the Dalit does not give up on the powerful possibility of loving and giving love, the ultimate option to interact excellently as seen in Maitreya’s life story. But hate teaches you to hate. So how do you love when you are hated? Maitreya says that despite everything, he was confident that he was “capable of loving. I never lost faith in loving and being loved.” To love is to expose the shielded vulnerability. Maitreya is not clean. He is addicted. He is attached. He is anxious. He is suffering. He is an Indian youth. His love is anti-caste. It is a project of the annihilation of caste.

Maitreya is in relationships with non-Dalits. He charts the intercaste ethnography of sex and personal space. By being inside non-Dalits, he surveys their fragilities. He is in command of attending to their needs. Thus, he writes with authority about savarnas. They are his subject. He commands them, and they submit to him. The interactions give him bare insights, and he writes for their redemption too. Why are savarnas cruel and hateful? Maitreya discovers, in his journey, that there is no knowledge (not mere information but thick knowledge) that made them “emotionally puerile”.

As Dalits, we are poets and soldiers, we are also the subjects of prose, of poets, and shahir’s qawallis (Maharashtra’s Dalit shahirs are the poet-musicians of the anti-caste movement). This beauty is captured with a charming reversal of words and profoundly simple explainers that should be read twice. Maitreya makes a call to his people. It is his story, but he calls to his people in the textual literacy known to few but experienced by many. It is a marvellous record. His texts are in the register in which I often proclaim on stage and in my writing. So, there is a common aspiration to arrive.

Water in a Broken Pot is not a page-turner. It is written in a style that will appeal to the interested. However, a regular reader might have to be convinced to pay attention to it. It is the work of an introverted, socially awkward person who did not think he would love reading, writing and expressing himself in profound ways. When Yogesh Maitreya finally takes us through the journey of the past 13 years and his cognisable triumph as a salesman of words, he writes of his memory as a story of his gifted dream: “That today you are reading these words is me living my dream”. We are all part of this, and what a pleasure to know that strangers are also part of someone’s dream. This is a moment of celebration; a moment to voice the slogan of “Zindabad” to which is added a sweeter, “Jai Bhim”.

Suraj Yengde, the author of Caste Matters, is a scholar at Oxford and Harvard Universities.

Imagine a plot comprising love, alcohol, marijuana, sex, pain, betrayal, and struggle. It sounds like the template of an Indian blockbuster. Yogesh Maitreya is an actor who is also staring right at the invisible audience; one that is not hidden in the dark. That audience invisibilises its sensibility and shouts out at any indications of a Dalit renaissance. The book under review is a memoir, written from a moral pedestal, that hopes to justify the author’s vulnerabilities with elaborate social commentary. An individual’s thesis written for the conflicted mind and one under physiognomic duress, it lucidly decodes society’s ways of sensing and seeing.

Maitreya has written Water in a Broken Pot because he has not read about his story; he has not inherited a lineage of ancestry. But he wants to change that; thus, the endowment is about a “legacy of talking to each other”. Language is a weapon drawn from the vocabularies of dominant cultures. This makes us victims of our own doing. With language comes a responsibility to tackle suffering. The Dalit deals with suffering uniquely, and Maitreya discovers the reason for the Dalit’s existence meticulously .

This is a biography of loneliness. The protagonist is a lonely man in search of solidarity. Caste, a script of his narrative, has precluded the nexus of respect and notice from the other. The memoirist style cruises through a hefty personal story, and it is genuine, for it brings out not only the desired-but-unattainable Dalit man’s sperm, but also his sweat demanded by a society that wants to kiss the warmth that many need. If not these two, then another fluid is immanent for the Dalit’s story to survive — his blood.

The Dalit company is a gravitational sphere that hugs the vulnerable, the confident, the drunk, the married, the foreign, and the acquaintance — all the Others who are scared of Dalit bodies but swallow them in pleasure. Yet, the Dalit is hated and feared. Still, the Dalit does not give up on the powerful possibility of loving and giving love, the ultimate option to interact excellently as seen in Maitreya’s life story. But hate teaches you to hate. So how do you love when you are hated? Maitreya says that despite everything, he was confident that he was “capable of loving. I never lost faith in loving and being loved.” To love is to expose the shielded vulnerability. Maitreya is not clean. He is addicted. He is attached. He is anxious. He is suffering. He is an Indian youth. His love is anti-caste. It is a project of the annihilation of caste.

Maitreya is in relationships with non-Dalits. He charts the intercaste ethnography of sex and personal space. By being inside non-Dalits, he surveys their fragilities. He is in command of attending to their needs. Thus, he writes with authority about savarnas. They are his subject. He commands them, and they submit to him. The interactions give him bare insights, and he writes for their redemption too. Why are savarnas cruel and hateful? Maitreya discovers, in his journey, that there is no knowledge (not mere information but thick knowledge) that made them “emotionally puerile”.

As Dalits, we are poets and soldiers, we are also the subjects of prose, of poets, and shahir’s qawallis (Maharashtra’s Dalit shahirs are the poet-musicians of the anti-caste movement). This beauty is captured with a charming reversal of words and profoundly simple explainers that should be read twice. Maitreya makes a call to his people. It is his story, but he calls to his people in the textual literacy known to few but experienced by many. It is a marvellous record. His texts are in the register in which I often proclaim on stage and in my writing. So, there is a common aspiration to arrive.

Water in a Broken Pot is not a page-turner. It is written in a style that will appeal to the interested. However, a regular reader might have to be convinced to pay attention to it. It is the work of an introverted, socially awkward person who did not think he would love reading, writing and expressing himself in profound ways. When Yogesh Maitreya finally takes us through the journey of the past 13 years and his cognisable triumph as a salesman of words, he writes of his memory as a story of his gifted dream: “That today you are reading these words is me living my dream”. We are all part of this, and what a pleasure to know that strangers are also part of someone’s dream. This is a moment of celebration; a moment to voice the slogan of “Zindabad” to which is added a sweeter, “Jai Bhim”.

Suraj Yengde, the author of Caste Matters, is a scholar at Oxford and Harvard Universities.