On March 31, 2014, Rohith’s sense of humour was for all to see. He put up some photos of his house in Guntur. The caption for the photo of the fridge in his house reads: “We have a fridge and that makes our home more dear to the colony.... don't touch every water bottle in the fridge, most of them are neighbors.”
The 17 photos of the album “My Home” uploaded on Facebook provide a fairly three-dimensional view of Rohith’s house in Savithribai Nagar in Guntur. Savithribai incidentally, is also the name of a woman - Savithribai Phule - who started the first school for Dalit girls in the 1880s. But those images are also a kind of staccato film of his life; its quirkiness and deep poverty: the sewing machine that his mother used to provide for their family, their fridge which is the neighbours’ most prized possession, the kitchen where he tried to photograph the cat which did not stick around to pose, description of a ‘solar-powered’ house accompanied by a smiley.
On Sunday, Rohith hanged himself from a ceiling fan in one of his friends’ hostel rooms. He had been expelled from the NRS Hostel on December 16 along with four other students. Since then, they were sleeping in the open on the campus itself, and were later joined by other protesting students as well.
Currently, there are protests in Hyderabad Central University, with students and even some lecturers demanding that Vice Chancellor P Appa Rao resign. Appa Rao has been booked along with five others including union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya for abetting Rohith’s suicide.
The News Minute is reproducing the images from his Facebook account along with captions that Rohith used.
This was the main bread-earner for our home before I started getting JRF..... This is my mom's favorite occupation.... she used to say "machine" can make women powerful.... she is a teacher now, she teaches sewing and embroidery to the women around....
Dad's uniform, security guard in a hospital....
Solar powered (with a grin emoticon)
We have a fridge and that makes our home more dear to the colony.... don't touch every water bottle in the fridge, most of them are neighbors' (with grin smiley)
Almost all the time remote will be with next door kids
The source of water, the place of exchanging pleasantries.....
(No caption)
I was trying to click my mom's best friend, the kitty.... she calls it "rascal".... but the kitty is the only creature in my home who listens to my mom... It ran off, it never plays with me
