Black Coffee in a Coconut Shell: Caste as Lived Experience

Caste, as it is experienced in everyday life, is the pièce de résistance of this book. Thirty-two voices narrate how from childhood to adulthood, caste intruded upon their lives—food, clothes, games, gait, love, marriage and every aspect of one's existence including death. Like the editor Perumal Murugan says, caste is like god, it is omnipresent.

The contributors write about the myriad ways in which they have experienced caste. It may be in the form of forgoing certain kinds of food, or e...