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“Do you know Aishwarya Rai? Have you watched Pink Panther 2? Bride and Prejudice, maybe? Have you seen the Cannes red carpet at least once? Did you see the most beautiful woman on planet Earth walk it? Yes, she’s Bunt.”

To study R.N. Shetty is to study how symbols become systems, and how intention becomes institution. He stood at the intersection of faith and function, turning aspiration into architecture — and in doing so, he gave the Midnight’s Children their most enduring inheritance: the confidence to build a future from the ground up.

For Bunts, he was proof that our community could move from wooden trunks to modern institutions, from feudal estates to professional futures. For India, he showed that institutions are not born from regulations alone — they are born from vision.

But how does that matter, you ask? Another thing you have to understand about Bunts is that we remain a vanity-driven society, and we attach value to people too. We ostracise those we think are falling from the threshold we have set for our social circles, we chase those who are rising above that threshold, and we mingle with those at equilibrium with us.

It's true: a name is a very important thing. If you'd asked me a few years back, I might have disagreed. I'd have said, "It's what you do that counts, not what you're called." But names do matter; they're how we recognize each other. While writing this, I got really into how people name their kids, and the different customs around the world

I’ve lost a lot. But what I’ve gained through that loss is perspective. These lessons don’t make death easier. But they make life fuller. If you’ve lost someone, I’m not going to say “sorry for your loss.”Instead, I’ll say: Tell me about them. Or don’t. I’m here either way.

Reclaiming the lost voices of Bunt women requires a critical examination of these power dynamics, a re-evaluation of the community's values, and a conscious effort to create spaces where women can once again exercise their rightful influence and leadership. Only then can the Bunt community truly honour its matrilineal heritage and harness the full potential of its members.

This essay walks through lived histories and personal echoes, tracing how Datth (adoption), Hakk (rights), Maryaadi (honour/respect), and Paal (division of property/inheritance) danced through Bunt's life—sometimes as a blessing, sometimes as the battlefield, and quite often as a very spicy family WhatsApp group.

Education is about more than memorizing facts. It’s about shaping minds that question, that think, that reach beyond what’s expected. It’s about preparing students not just for tests, but for a world that requires empathy, creativity, and adaptability. If we’re going to face the future with all its uncertainties, we’ll need more than algorithms. We’ll need people who can think—and who aren’t afraid to fail, try again, and learn from it.

I’ve always been a little Ron Swanson about it. The kind of person who throws out a computer if it gets too close. I love tech—I work in tech—but I also want to sip mimosas on a nameless beach, in a town where no one knows me. And for a while, the algorithm respected that. For a while, I lived in a little curated bubble of comedy chaos.

Again, this is not a study of how great or bad of a person he is—but how he had an impact on the Bunt community and the weight of his name that had garnered a fame like no other.

The evolution of the badhi system encapsulates the shifting intersection of culture, economics, and power. It highlights the ways in which marriage is not just a social institution but also a fundamental site of economic negotiation and redistribution. From its roots in securing family wealth and property to its contemporary expression in highly commercialized wedding practices, the badhi system reflects broader societal transformations—shifts from survival and alliance-build

Tulunadu is not utopia. But it is uniquely interwoven. Here, caste and religion are not flat categories—they are textured, nuanced, negotiated daily. Here, Siri’s curse and blessing still live in memory. Here, Podimma’s medicine lingers in old cupboards. Here, a temple wears a Sultan’s gift. And here, a Muslim, a Christian, and a Bunt may not pray together—but they know they belong to the same town.

That was my first brush with the word—what I’d later understand was the Bunt version of dowry. Since then, every time I’ve brought up the topic in conversations with people from Europe or America, I’ve noticed a similar reaction: a quick moral monologue, complete with a shake of the head and a “how could your country still do this?” tone. They’d launch into a takedown of the dowry system with the kind of conviction that made it hard to interrupt.

It began in 2020. The pandemic made everything foggy. I reached out to a friend in the mental health space and got myself a therapist. Let’s call them Therapist 001. We had a few sessions. Therapist 001 told me I had grown up in an environment that wasn’t entirely fair. It tracked. But after one session where I talked candidly about money, Therapist 001 increased their rates.

Panchaatige wasn’t just mediation—it was an institution. A person revered for their fairness, wisdom, and ability to weigh complex matters without bias would be called upon to resolve disputes outside the court system. Their final word was the paathera. It wasn’t notarised, stamped, or sealed. It simply had weight—because it came from them. Their word was their bond.

Sometimes, it’s a plan to reply later, a pause in the rush of digital life. Sometimes, my Instagram and TikTok therapists whisper in my ear that it’s okay to dwell beneath a rock, cocooned in solitude, and I take their advice to heart. Sometimes, I just don’t want to respond. Sometimes, I simply cannot. And sometimes, I need to breathe, to settle my heart before words spill out—especially when the text at hand tugs at something raw, a wound too tender for quick answers.

There are moments when we pause, caught between the practicalities of life and the whispers of something greater. In those moments, what drives us becomes clear—not always immediately, but in the quiet corners of our minds, we start to understand. For some, it’s the steady, reassuring rhythm of goals—tangible, practical, a checklist to be conquered. For others, it’s the fleeting, yet profound nature of aspirations—shifting, evolving, like the gentle pull of the tide, always m

In the often volatile world of film, art, and public scrutiny, Bunt artists don’t dazzle through noise or theatrics. They stand apart in the quiet certainty with which they carry themselves. They don’t chase fame as if it’s oxygen. Their bearing is different—anchored. Their boldness isn’t reactionary; it’s inherited, etched into their spine across generations.

There is an ache that rarely gets spoken of—the ache of failing quietly. Not the kind of failure that leads to a book deal or a redemption arc on a podcast, but the silent kind—the layoff you don’t share, the business that folded before it began, the days you couldn’t get out of bed and didn’t have a name for it. In those moments, what we long for is not a solution or a saviour, but something simpler: to be seen, and to not be left alone in the dark.