If you insist that you do not recognize me, let me explain myself ... you will feel, why, yes, I do know this person. I’ve seen this man.

Translated from Manoranjan Byapari’s notable memoir, Itibritte Chandal Jiban, written by the author as a refugee post-Partition. He spent his childhood in the refugee camps, and ran away from poverty-stricken home at the age of 16. His roving experience around t India was strained with abuse and exploitation. On his return to Calcutta of 1970s he got involved with Naxal movement and political killings. While in prison, at the aged of 24 he was taught Bengali. On being released, he worked as a rickshawala and happened to ferry Mahasweta Devi, who later helped him to become a writer.

Despite the ‘Chandal’ in the title explicitly referring to a Dalit caste, this narrative weaves in and out of the margins. Today, as Sipra Mukherjee points out, ‘the concerns central to Dalit narratives no longer remain removed from the concerns of mainstream history’. The earlier distinctions and comfortable distances between classes, castes, genders, sexualities and ethnicities are being rendered archaic.