The suicide of Vemula has rocked the casteist status quo of India and forced it to reckon with the lived realities of Dalit-ness. This letter calls on me to acknowledge my own brahminical privilege that provided me the opportunities that allow me to study issues of the global South while sitting pretty in New York. It reminds me that the congealed privilege of coming from a brahmin family, both my grandmothers and grandfathers as well as both my parents have post-graduate degrees, forms the basis of the ‘merit’ which allowed for my queer body to remove itself from the quotidian dangers of the rising ultra-right presence in India. Reading this letter, I was hoping we could take a moment to consider what it is we write and why we write it.