Kolkata, West Bengal •
Sep 07, 2022
The boy who dared to drink
Moved by the death of Indra Kumar Meghwal at the hands of his teacher, a poet wields his pen and lashes at the age-old caste system that keeps many at the receiving end of injustice
Poem and Text
Joshua Bodhinetra
Joshua Bodhinetra is Senior Content Editor with PARIBhasha, the Indian languages programme of the People's Archive of Rural India, (PARI). He has an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and is a multilingual poet, translator, art critic and social activist.
Illustration
Labani Jangi
Labani Jangi is a self-taught painter from West Bengal's Nadia district. She is the very first winner of the T.M. Krishna-PARI prize in 2025 and was a PARI Fellow in 2020. A PhD scholar, Labani has been working on labour migrations at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
Editor
Pratishtha Pandya
Pratishtha Pandya is a Senior Editor at PARI where she leads PARI's creative writing section. She is also a member of the PARIBhasha team and translates and edits stories in Gujarati. Pratishtha is a published poet working in Gujarati and English.
