Dregs of Yore

Imagine standing on a random street corner in an Indian city like New Delhi or Bengaluru where the air carries the dust, exhaust fumes, and the smell of peanuts being roasted on roadsides. Scooters graze past pedestrians, vendors shout over the honk of buses, a stray cow loiters beside a billboard advertising the latest smartphone. If, into this lively, pulsing scene, you stand, asking random passers-by an equally random question — say, “Why are sea turtles dying?”—  the answers would be many and mostly wrong. This, of course, is precisely why such an exercise would be worthwhile. One person would assert, with the complacency that only ignorance can afford, that “It’s climate change, of course! Everyone knows that.” Another, less confident, would mutter that they have no idea. A third, seeking refuge in levity, might suggest that “sea turtles are given to fits of suicidal insanity and like to fling themselves in the way of sharks.” A cynic would declare that “people die every day, ...

Dear Readers, I’m delighted to share my newest essay,  Why We Should Return to Ivan Turgenev’s "Fathers and Sons"  published this week in Merion West. In this piece, I revisit Turgenev’s 1862 novel as a meditation on a question that feels surprisingly urgent in 2025: What happens when ideological certainty overwhelms empathy? I explore how Turgenev’s restrained, humane vision—neither revolutionary nor reactionary—offers a third path in moments of political exhaustion: one grounded in reform, humility, and the difficult work of listening across generations. You can read the full essay  here . Or check it out directly on Merion West’s  website . Warmly, Sadhika. 

The question of how “situated” our knowledge is—how much it depends on where, when, and who we are—has become inescapable in the modern world. In the classroom, this takes the form of epistemic debates about standpoint theory and the authority of lived experience. In culture, it shapes how we read, teach, and even tweet. Each time we read a book, listen to a neighbour, or attempt to judge a politician’s claim, we wrestle with the same unease: How much of what I know is truly mine—the product of reason and experience—and how much is an inheritance of accident, culture, and mood? To acknowledge that knowledge is situated is to admit that we all see the world through keyholes shaped by history, language, gender, and temperament. Yet that recognition, taken too far, risks breeding paralysis. It leads one, understandably, to question: if each person’s knowledge is inseparable from their circumstance, can we still speak across the walls of culture or class? Can there be such a thing as truth...

I. One evening a couple of years back, I stood watching a cow tethered to a post outside a neighbour’s courtyard, just as the sun dropped low over the fields of Bidholi. Her tail flicked at flies, her jaw worked slowly, and her eyes settled briefly on me. And in that moment, I felt a strange exposure. I was being looked at, but not known. I was implicated, but not addressed. Levinas has claimed that the human face is the ultimate site of ethics. In its vulnerability, it commands: Thou shalt not kill. But the cow’s gaze complicates this claim. It does not command or appeal; it does not even seem to “address” me. And yet, when I met those eyes, I felt implicated in a way Levinas’ formula does not explain. The gaze does not forbid killing, nor does it sanction it. Instead, it exposed me to the raw fact of another being. Perhaps its power lies precisely in what it withholds: the refusal to deliver meaning. II. I felt a similar jolt a few days later, in a dairy shed. Rows of cows were tethe...