Five poets — Aleena S, Abhijit Khandkar, Daniel Sukumar, Shripad Sinnakaar, and Gautam Vegda — will take the stage this weekend at a performance venue in Lower Parel. They’re part of a new initiative, The Reserved Compartment, a community-driven platform that aims to amplify Dalit Ambedkarite voices through poetry, storytelling, and music. Sukumar reveals that the thought behind the name was to reclaim the word “reserved” and one’s identity from caste and gender-based segregation. “There exist strict boundaries on what you can write about, and perform on stage. [Reclaiming the word] is to say, we’ll build our own stage. This is not just a compartment; the whole train is ours,” he shares.

Daniel Sukumar performs a poem