Aryan's A-Z

  How Does the White Man? By: Aryan Mukherjee How does the white man live this way with his own brethren? One plucked from the ovule and the other the petal, Both brewed and simmered in the same dirt pot, Yet the darker is evicted like gas from a kettle. How does the white man leave us to his toil? Our pockets run dry and our palms scathed like field rows, The same ones we were promised to withstand never again, And yet here pass the thorns of this feigned ruby rose. How does the white man dispose us like dregs? He takes the Constitution which he consecrated and swore by, And wraps it delicately ‘round our very necks, And strips us of pride, made a lynched martyr to glorify. How does the white man sputter out with distaste? The word “Negro” like venom as if he wasn’t the fang, Rounds us all up like hogs in the pig pen of Harlem, And sets flame and ruination to our humble black gang. How does the white man simply live with himself? He claims our craft as talent as if it were his own...

Written by: Aryan Mukherjee, in partnership with Currently Informed   I knew something awful was brewing when the ringing came back. The same ringing in my ears and spine that echoed from within and blurred my vision at every moment that I tried to exorcize it. It was the ringing of phones, of computer notifications, a chime shared by almost all 2,500 kids at my school as soon as they were notified of their next challenges. So far, I’ve tried my best to avoid these challenges, but they’ve had their own sinister ways of creeping up behind me when I least expect it and paralyzing me as I am forced to smell their rancid breaths. The same breaths, most unfortunately, that I should have smelled coming from a mile away. Those of the people enforcing the challenges of course, which just so happen to be a handful of scrawny outstated students who’ve convinced practically everyone I know to join them in partaking in the tasks in the first place. Eventually, it was too much, and I had ...

  The New Gilded Age for Workers The older you grow, the more and more you notice the fewer and fewer people that genuinely try to mask how little they care about you. While the once voluminous circle of your social relations is slowly etched down into a spiral that ultimately ellipses nothing but the starkly narrow stretch of land spanning from the tips of your toes to the scales of your heels, you start to notice a few paradoxes in life. The world is adamant to hurdle itself into war after war to end all wars to bring about peace to hopefully just get along with one another, and then instantaneously claims that getting along with one another is a feat to exigent to even fathom pursuing and then hurdles itself back into another war to end all wars. Freedom of speech is exercised so extensively that the ends of its charter are beginning to corrode, yet people state that we need more and more of it. The strong assert that others are too weak, while the weak asseverate that others ar...