How does the Supreme Court in its supreme wisdom have us counting the mustard seeds of substantive equality while it refuses to see the elephant walking away? Why is the 'sanatani savarna' mind obsessed with the itch it can scratch – the recovery of a lost self?

To come to terms with the Supreme Court’s verdict on the ‘creamy layer’ among Scheduled Castes, a poet and teacher of literature in a mofussil college returns to a Brazilian short story, the Preamble of the Constitution, and reflects on the cosy members-only club called the collegium which helps the judiciary savour the cream and leave the whey to the masses.

When Dalits are hardened by daily experiences of humiliations and mortifications, both physical and mental, and witness horrendous atrocities committed against their fellow beings, even by top liberal university professors of Savarna origin, perfecting their English is a luxury they cannot afford.