Anoushka Agrawal

India’s intergenerational caste system highlights the aversion of the Hindu system to the theory of equality and its perpetuation of social hierarchies.

Most of all, I walk into my final year at a university that has given me so much with the knowledge that sometimes, lessons aren’t in textbooks or free solutions to problem sets on Chegg.

I am grateful I’ve never been exposed to only one single story at any given point.

I want to extend this advice to all readers: In this lockdown, watch some movies from different parts of your parents’ countries — or even your friends’. 

It is strange to me, then, that shelter-in-place orders have turned every day into a Sunday on the surface but, given the current circumstances, even Sundays don’t feel like the Sundays I once knew.

This is my plea to people across the world, and especially those in India who have the privilege to practice social distancing: Do your part.

Every day is a ping-pong game with my family back in India about whether or not I should decide to hop on a 22-hour direct flight back home because who knows if it is safe to travel?

I am the youngest member of my family of four. For years, I wanted to do exactly what my sister did — wear her clothes, listen to her music, read her books.

“I can’t; I have practice” is my most common response every spring semester.

I want to urge student activists in Berkeley and across the U.S. to make an active, informed effort to participate in creating change.