Reserved Compartment brings anti-caste poetry to Chennai's mainstream stage

English poetry, for all its lyrical beauty, often comes with invisible walls — the language itself, the exclusive venues where it is performed, and the homogenous crowds that fill those spaces. For Reserved Compartment, a collective of four Dalit poets, the mission is to dismantle these barriers by walking straight through them, carrying their own stories and their community's lived realities.

This weekend, the collective partners with Mahad Productions, a Chennai-based artiste collective, to bring its Dalit English poetry showcase to the city for the first time. The event will feature the collective's core members — Dr Abhijit Khandkar, Gautam Vegda, Daniel Sukumar, and Aleena — alongside Chennai poet C Nivetha, who will open with a performance in Tamil. Scheduled for August 22 at Medai - The Stage, the programme centres on protest and anti-caste poetry, but the poets are quick to note that their work extends far beyond any single label.

Their poems speak of caste and resistance, but also of food, love, memory, and the quiet, ordinary details of everyday life. On stage, these personal narratives become a powerful tool for questioning who gets to speak, who gets to be heard, and who feels at home in a cultural space. It's an approach that turns poetry into both a personal catharsis and a public political act.

For Daniel Sukumar, who is based in Bengaluru, the collective is as much about building lasting connections as it is about performance. “We are not building a show, we are building a community. After the show in Chennai, we'll still be in touch with our audience, and for the next event or workshop we do there, we want to invite them and might even have open mics in the future,” he says.

That sense of community extends to the very venues the collective chooses. Abhijit Khandkar, based in Mumbai, explains that performing in established cultural spaces is a deliberate political stance. “We try to do our shows in venues that are mainstream or the most sought-after venues in that city, because that is also our political statement. We want to open those spaces for our people, so that they can also walk into those spaces and experience how it feels,” he says.

The decision is rooted in a stark reality about India's spoken word scene. As Daniel points out, “Spoken word in India is basically run by upper-caste people who have access to fancy cafes where many people cannot just go, buy a coffee for ₹200 and sit and listen to poetry.” To address this, the collective sets aside community tickets at every show, ensuring that those who may not be able to afford a ticket can still attend.

But reclaiming a space doesn't mean filling it solely with declarations of caste. The poets bring their identities into their work without allowing them to become its only subject. Daniel, for instance, writes about his mother's favourite dish and his grandfather's habit of collecting coconut shells. “Most of the time we feel that this is only happening to us, but when you discuss this on a larger platform, people are able to resonate with it. We have stories like this across the board from the community,” he says.

Aleena, who began writing in Malayalam before moving to English, is wary of reducing their poetry to caste narratives alone. She explains that the power of their work lies in its personal authenticity. “What we are doing through our poems is just telling our truths to power, and hopefully those personal truths resonate with the public. The personal becomes public and political,” she says.

For Aleena, who is based in Kochi, the interaction with the audience is as important as the performance itself. “It's a catharsis. You feel seen, you feel heard. We also have a separate interactive session with the audiences at the end of our show and many interesting and free-flowing conversations happen,” she says.

The Reserved Compartment's showcase in Chennai is part of a broader movement to make literary and cultural spaces more inclusive and representative. By bringing Dalit English poetry to a mainstream stage, the collective is not just performing — it is building a more equitable cultural landscape, one poem at a time.

India's First Dalit English Poetry Showcase by Reserved Compartment will be held on August 22, from 6 pm to 9 pm at Medai - The Stage, Chennai. For tickets and details, follow @thereservedcompartment on Instagram.