SN Rasul

In this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, money is Supreme Court-sanctioned free speech, but criticism of Israel isn’t.

When I was born, my skin was dark, like my grandfather’s, in whose arms I discovered my first home. Relatives old and new, whose disappointment was being nursed by my parents’ fair complexions, looked from afar as my rotund cheeks melted into the sleeves of my dada’s discolored half-sleeve shirt.

In the Bollywood film 3 Idiots, one of the characters, Chatur aka Silencer, mocks what he presumes to be the protagonist’s profession thus (in loose translation)—“Namaste Masterji. What heights you’ve reached! You’ve become a schoolteacher in the village! A for apple, B for ball!”