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...

  “They Blamed Her For Being Black” Aryan Mukherjee 18 months ago, an act of systemic racism during a GymStart gymnastics tournament for children in Ireland presented itself for all of those in attendance to see. Only just recently, the world finally found out what actually transpired that day. Upon completion of the tournament, a young black girl who chose to keep her identity anonymous was overcome with dejection upon finding out that she was the sole individual in a field full of white children to be denied a medal of participation. According to her parents, the denial was of pure racist intent, and the perpetrators “tried to cover up like it didn’t happen”. Later on, the event was put off as an “honest mistake”, one that allegedly had no racist motivations behind them and was simply an unfortunate fault of “human error”. Some people, especially those like the Irish Capital representatives and the members who hosted the event themselves believed this story, while others like...

The Need For Media Literacy            I was born into a world where technology was a future that everyone around me so vivaciously beckoned, while I felt like the stone on the ground that all of the sand would brush past with no effect. To me and millions all around me, the appeal of burning through the minutes of a digital clock when we could be playing around with the gears of an analog one seemed foolish, perfecting one’s craft on a set of 26 keys instead of the harmonious tunes of 88 physical ones seemed erratic, and spending any time at all learning how to maneuver the infinite number of digital facets seemed next to nothing when shadowed by the brilliant intricacies of the real world. Now, I can do all but wish that I had learned how, because there is no one left to teach me. And my friends, family, and so many others who I love and look up to who stuck by me to plant our feet in the soil of the real world are dying because of it. No longer ...

  To Belong in this World By: Aryan Mukherjee “ You Belong”. “Love Yourself”. “Be Yourself, Because Everyone Else Is Taken”. I see these words strewn from poster to poster, plastered along the walls of every classroom and sprung to life from the vapor of the teenage breath on the mirrors of their school bathrooms. But just like vapor, those words of feigned encouragement are chiseled into your brain for just a few moments before disappearing along with the rest of the day’s grievances, and belonging acts as myth portrayed only in the most fanciful of legends that you hear before being tucked in to sleep at night. Splash! The water curls its arms around me and I am lurched forward into a spiral of lightning fast strokes, as thunder chants my name from all sides. As I just barely snag the gold medal, a rush of paparazzi spawns in, from mobs of clout-hungry stans to clusters of random civilians whose piqued interests morph them into my number one fan despite not even knowing my na...

 The Environment at Stake      I saw the snake and I became a statue. Petrified, it was like Medusa had laid her cold, degrading stare upon me and it was all I could do but pray I would survive. Inch by inch, I braved myself to step back, until my foot caught hold of a twig on a tree and I was instantaneously sprung into motion, a single twinge sending thousands of volts of adrenaline down my back and compelling me towards taking decisive action. The velvet red kingsnake’s beady eyes batted in curiosity, and its black and white rings danced hypnotic mazes through my eyes. I screeched like a newborn who was deprived of his favorite toy, and my reaction beckoned the chuckles and forward strides of an administrator who was watching over us that day. “Don’t worry, he’s harmless,” the director spoke with a warm smile made warmer by the fact that only a handful of kids were present to witness my utter cowardice. At the time, that was like telling a vegetarian that tortur...