PJ, a PhD student and now a postdoc, is our common friend. He is a very interesting guy. The story of Hindi movie “PK” is inspired by our friend PJ. One day he met me at the bus stop and told “भैया मेरा ये जूता 165 डॉलर का है. इतना महंगा कोई जूता नहीं लेग. अब मेरे पास खाने के पैसे नहीं हैं”.

After some day, we met to my best friends Samarendra Singh and Sudhir. Sisodiya Siromani asked in his witty style for the price of PJ’s shoes. PJ told just 30 dollar भैया.

I got shocked and confused. After five days of undigestion, finally, I asked my friend Sudhir, he is a businessman and knows PJ very well as both live in the same society, about this. He told “PJ got the shoes while they were returning from jogging. It was left by somebody for poor people”. I asked why he told me that he purchased and the price as $165. Sudhir told shoes are like girlfriend. One should know when to tell she is my friend’s sister. PJ told you 165 $ because PJ loves Indian history and he keeps reading before sleeping even if he is a student of science. I was totally confused how it was related to history. Sudhir explained me that PJ thinks I am from Andaman- Nicobar islands where people are poor and live the life by asking help or money from others. I asked what about Samarendra. My friend told PJ was confused with the term “Sisodiya Siromani “ which I use to call my friend Samar. To understand the meaning of it, PJ searched it in Google and found that Maharana Pratap, a king from Rajputana, was also Sisodiya. So he concluded that Samar is from Royal family. PJ also found that Indian kings used to donate their money to poor. So by telling 30 $ he showed that he is very poor and he is expecting that one day our friend Samar will donate all his wealth to him.

The moral of the story: Caste based discrimination is now no more effective and face based discrimination is now stronger in India. Every educated young Indian tries to look like a foreigner or Hrithik Roshan. However, still people associated with AISA, and other communist student organizations think that Brahmin and other upper caste are exploiting lower caste people. If that is true, why PJ think I am a beggar even if I am from upper caste?

Parmit Kumar Singh