you're probably way more classist than you think you are.

privilege is when someone else bends so that you don't have to.

the waxing lady kept insisting she would stand.

i told her she could sit on the bed till the ac cooled the room down. it was unbearably hot. sweat collecting behind my knees. the fan circulating hot air like soup.

but she wouldn’t sit.

not fully. not comfortably.

she stood there smiling awkwardly, half-laughing, hands rubbing against each other like she had accidentally entered the wrong room.

“no no madam, it’s okay.”

then she slowly lowered herself onto the very edge of the bed. not sitting.

perching.

like her body wasn’t allowed to take up the full space. like comfort itself belonged to somebody richer. and something about that disturbed me more than i can explain. because a bed is just a bed to me. but to her, it was probably a line. a boundary. a silent thing society had spent years teaching her not to cross.

their space. our space. people like you. people like me.

we pretend classism in india only exists in villages. in old money families. in outdated generations.

it doesn’t.

it exists in posture. in muscle memory. in the way some people automatically stand when rich people enter rooms. in the way domestic workers hesitate before sitting on furniture. in the way security guards apologize before speaking.

hierarchy has entered the body now.

that’s the horrifying part.

not just the mind.

the body.

a few minutes later she asked me to place my legs on her thighs so she could wax more comfortably.

and i froze.

not because she was rude. because the request made me suddenly aware of how normalized humiliation has become.

i said no instantly. not aggressively. just instinctively.

because i realized i would never casually rest my legs on somebody i considered my equal.

never.

not on my friend. not on a classmate. not on another girl from college. so why did society expect this woman’s body to become furniture for me the second money entered the equation?

she looked shocked when i refused. then emotional. then she quietly said i was the first customer who had ever said no.

the first.

everybody else kept their legs instantly.

instantly.

that word made my stomach turn.

because imagine what repeated humiliation does to a person. imagine how many tiny moments slowly train someone to shrink themselves. to kneel automatically. to stand automatically. to apologize automatically. to believe that discomfort is just part of the job.

and the scariest part is that most people doing this are not evil.

that’s what makes it worse.

they are educated people. progressive people. urban people.

the kind who post infographics about feminism and empathy and mental health, then make another woman sit on the floor while they eat at the dining table.

india has mastered performative equality.

we say “didi.” we say “bhaiya.” we say “they’re like family.”

meanwhile the same “family” has separate utensils. separate bathrooms. separate entrances. some people literally trust domestic workers with their children but not their couch. that contradiction should disgust us more than it does.

i keep thinking about the salon aunty who has been cutting my hair since i was a child. from my awkward bowl cuts to whatever version of me exists now.

two days ago while cutting my hair she started talking about her dog. at first casually. then her voice started shaking. the dog had died because of a doctor’s negligence. and i watched her continue cutting my hair while trying not to cry.

that image broke something inside me. because why was she still working?

why do blue-collar workers have to keep performing emotional stability no matter what is happening to them? if my friend started crying while talking about losing her dog, i would stop everything.

so why should this woman continue holding scissors near my face while actively grieving, just because i’m paying her?

i got up and hugged her midway through the haircut. told her she could sit. told her she didn’t have to continue.and for the next thirty minutes she showed me photos of her dog. tiny stories. tiny memories. tiny griefs.

and i remember realizing how starved people are for humanity once they enter service professions. not politeness.

humanity.

there’s a difference.

politeness still allows hierarchy. humanity doesn’t. because a lot of rich people are “kind” to workers the same way people are kind to children. or pets.

there’s affection.

but not equality.

i think one of the darkest things about privilege is how invisible labour becomes.

someone wakes up at 5 a.m. to sweep your building before you leave for your job. someone cleans your toilet before your friends come over. someone waxes your legs before your date. someone carries your garbage while you build your career. someone cooks while you study. someone washes dishes while you work late nights pretending you’re self-made.

and yet society treats physical labour as moral inferiority. as if exhaustion lowers human value. as if english fluency determines intelligence.

as if sitting in an office makes you automatically more respectable than the woman whose knees hurt from mopping floors all day.

the scariest part is that most of this feels normal. that’s how you know something is deeply embedded into a culture.

nobody pauses before asking another human being to kneel. nobody pauses before calling grown woman “maid.” nobody pauses before discussing workers like malfunctioning appliances.

“she took leave again.” “she’s become lazy.” “these people are impossible.”

these people. as if poverty itself creates a separate species. and we learn this so early.

children absorb it before they even understand money. they watch who sits on sofas and who sits on floors. who eats first. who waits. who is allowed to be angry. who is expected to tolerate humiliation silently because they are being paid.

after a point, privilege becomes physical.

you can see it in posture

some people have never had to make themselves smaller in a room. never had to hesitate before touching something expensive. never had to calculate whether they belong in a space before entering it.

while others spend their entire lives shrinking instinctively. standing instead of sitting. smiling instead of complaining. apologizing before speaking.

there are people who enter our homes every single day and still feel like intruders inside them. that thought genuinely devastates me.

because the moment that aunty started talking about her dog, she stopped being “the haircut lady” in my head.

she became a grieving person. a person trying to survive a workday while carrying loss inside her chest. and that should not require some dramatic emotional moment to recognize.

that should be the default. but it isn’t.

because labour strips people of individuality in our eyes. once somebody starts serving us, we unconsciously stop imagining the fullness of their inner world.

their grief. their relationships. their exhaustion. their fears. their memories. their dignity. everything collapses into function.

and i think that is one of the ugliest consequences of classism.

not hatred.

erasure.

sometimes i wonder how many people spend their entire lives facilitating comfort for others while never fully being seen by anyone.

women who know exactly how we like our tea. workers who know our schedules better than our friends do. people who quietly hold entire households together while remaining emotionally invisible inside them.

and i don’t think saying “thank you” is enough anymore.

because politeness is easy.

recognizing equal humanity is much harder.

especially when society has spent centuries benefiting from convincing you otherwise.

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letters from nush runs on caffeine and the little life left in me after being a full time woman in tech, support my work and keep the coffee coming <3

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