As a child, I heard vivid stories from my father about his fearless mother, a flashing firecracker, who thumped contrite men, foolish enough to interfere with her family and livelihood.
In the then small, close-knit farming community of Ruimzigt on the West Coast of Demerara, she took pride in her five growing children, fertile rice fields and fat herd of cattle. A pioneering parent, she sent all her youngsters off to the tiny school, insisting the three sons and two daughters, learn to read, write and count in proper English, only after they took the cows and other animals out to pasture, helped with the milking and tended to the poultry and kitchen garden.
Fighting the elements and the high tides that threatened the low-lying fertile expanse each glowing full moon, she slowly saved and invested her earnings from working on the estates. She acquired another precious plot of land to erect a small one-storey wooden house on tall pillars, trusting and praying that it would not go the way of crumbling defences and lost plantations, and that the green bulwark of tangled mangroves lining the nearby foreshore would hold against the bristling seas.
One account, he related, featured my pretty “ajee,” dark eyes flaring, heavy stick in hand, following a long, hot day on the farm, leading her scampering, excited brood in determined search of a repeat offender who she scolded severely and dealt several hard blows publicly, before striding back home through the dusk, along the rough tracks and earthen dams, in dignified triumph.
When I showed distinctive signs of an early temper and dogged persistence, my amused dad would chuckle aloud and warn, “She takes after Tankaria!” Her name was said to be a tribute to the dusty settlement beset by conquests, epidemics, shortages and floods, her parents had left behind in Bharuch, at the mouth of the Narmada River, in Gujarat, in western India, when they were recruited and travelled far across to the port of Calcutta in the late 19th century/early 20th century. Anglicised in the colony of British Guiana, it became her colourful nickname “Tantayra,” a clever pun for the omnivore weasel, the swarthy, South American tayra for their shared slender, smooth frame, fierce attitude and fearless determination.
As a spirited teenager, Tankaria was married off in the 1920s, in a traditional Hindu ceremony, to my contrasting, quiet “ajah” or paternal grandfather, the fair charmer, a grey-eyed, turbaned red head, the towering Surat Ramlochan, well over six feet tall, first named for the large Gujarati seaport city and district then controlled by the British, besides the Tapti River, close to the Arabian Sea, and now famous as a diamond cutting and polishing centre.
Tankaria died early and unexpectedly during complications with a late stillbirth, at the family’s home in the late 1940s, leaving her husband to rapidly remarry another migrant descendant, an enticing green-eyed beauty younger than his oldest son, my uncle or “chacha” Soogrim. Neither Surat nor his new wife had the business acumen nor management skill of my extraordinary grandmother. The centre could not hold, and things rapidly fell apart, with the cattle dwindling, the croplands lying fallow, and the animals, holdings and house all having to be sold off.
Soogrim had to assume responsibility for his youngest siblings, my bewildered father, Roopnarine, nine, and weeping baby sister, Daro, seven, eventually moving to Georgetown in search of work in the construction sector. Tankaria’s mother, a wiry, diminutive, life-long strict vegetarian who lived to more than a century, was legendary for her astonishing natural jet-black hair that mysteriously stayed that colour all her life, without any dyes or greys. She could manage just a few words of broken English. Having crossed the “kala pani” in a “coolie clipper” or sailing ship to reach British Guiana, she would travel by cart, bus, ferry and foot, from the other side of the river to bring her surviving grandchildren regular gifts of fresh milk, meals, and produce, cut from her vast garden. Among the rich varieties of “spinach” or “bhagi”-type dishes she prepared were the tender, delicious leaves of edible plants including pumpkin, ochroes and “saijan” or moringa.
One day, she arrived to find my father, a dedicated reader, hidden behind the big pages of a daily newspaper, the original broadsheet Guyana Graphic. Staring at the photographs on the front, and unable to understand the headlines or a word, she asked him in Hindi, what had him so engrossed. Carelessly, he replied in kind, along the lines of “war, crime, conflict.” Remembering the country’s racial violence of the 60s, and, therefore, deeply alarmed, she questioned him further, repeating “Dem gun come killa me?” Realising his mistake, my father quickly put down the paper and tried repeatedly to reassure her, but it was too late, she would have none of it, rushing to gather up her baskets, she hurried to Ruimzigt, besides the deer-haunted flatland of Windsor Forest and the swirling smoke of distant forest fires, ignoring his pleas, and never ventured again into the city, choosing instead to visit our extended family scattered along the hamlets of the West Coast.
Decades later, on a dreary, rainy day, my subdued father would take us back, his four children, to pick our way through the pot-holed streets, and the rural fields of his happy childhood, to meet the remaining relatives who had not yet migrated overseas, and to point out the weathered, grey cottage, that had once sheltered love, laughter and dreams. Still standing on stilts but having lost its timber stairs, the door was nailed tightly shut, the windows all shuttered.
Recently, I opened another tempting door of sorts to peek into my family’s past, deciding in the end to go ahead with a birthday gift of genetic testing, a scientific achievement that was inconceivable during the lifetimes of my grandparents and even my parents. Some of my friends are adamant they will never undertake such an intimate analysis with a commercial company, fearing the far-reaching consequences and the loss of privacy in the internet age. As my paternal great grandmother once worried whether “dem gun come killa me,” they too resist my assurances and instead contemplate what possible biological weapons may be created with the invaluable information.
The first set of personal data I looked at covered my heritage. There were no surprises with the 100 per cent “Broadly South Asian” tag as my ancestors have favoured marriage, nearly all arranged, within their respective religious, cultural and agricultural communities, a practice called “endogamy.” The distinct genetic clusters that form as the result can now be identified.
South Asian people represent around a quarter of the world’s population but are severely underrepresented in global genetic studies, according to the American firm I used, 23andMe. For instance, the company knows that both of my parents were born in British Guiana in the 1940s, and that my more recent genetic history over the last two centuries is widely like the diverse residents of India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. But until recently, they could not ascertain exactly where in these heavily inhabited, sprawling set of countries, my ancestors may have originated. Ongoing customer feedback and outreach efforts are improving the accuracy.
I have DNA most in common with people who report ancestry from India. Reflecting the firm’s growing database, they reveal that the strongest evidence they have of my current ancestry, as now, is in the regions of Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. In other words, I am a modern mix of the indentured Indian immigrants who migrated to British Guiana and extensively intermarried to carry on their lineages, discarding the division of castes. I am trying to work out in the complex family tree who comes from where and what of Tankaria and Surat, I may have inherited after several generations and genetic shuffles, opening old doors and windows, and gaining new insights into my past.
ID studies her Mahaica mother’s ancient maternal line that stems from “R5” to which about 2% of Indians belong. It reaches higher concentrations in certain states, including Madhya Pradesh (with Maharashtra to the south and Gujarat to the north), Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.
