A Poem by Dr. Vaishali Sonavane

For the Ease Revolution of the Marginalised

A Return to What Was Taken

Ease is not a privilege — it is a birthright systematically denied to our people. For generations, Dalit communities have been conditioned into relentless labor, survival-mode urgency, and the belief that rest must be earned. This poem invites us to reclaim what caste stole — our breath, our pause, and our space to simply be.

The Poem: Ease — A Revolutionary Inheritance

By Dr. Vaishali Sonavane

Ease!
We come from a people
who worked so hard just to eat once —
and even that meal was leftover.

We come from hands
that built this country
but were never allowed to rest upon it.

That denial of rest
became our inheritance.

We learnt to rush,
to push,
to never stop.

To confuse exhaustion with worth.
To mistake survival for life.

This is what caste does —
it enters the body,
shapes the breath,
and teaches the mind
to live in alertness,
never at ease.

But healing asks us
to return to what was taken.
To reclaim the quiet,
the pause,
and the permission to be.

Ease is not comfort.
Ease is courage.
Ease is remembering
that we were never meant
to live in struggle forever.

Our rest is resistance.
Our ease is our revolution.

Why This Matters

This poem anchors the core philosophy of the ‘Ease Revolution’ — that healing is not a luxury; it is liberation. Reclaiming rest is a political act, a spiritual act, and a generational act.