Sita and Jatayu 
It was Jatayu who tried to pursue
Rawan to save Sita, his treasured King’s
wife, as she prayed to her Rama to free
her from Rawan’s clutch, squeezing tight her spleen.
The Vulture King, Jatayu’s time was due.
The demon Rawan’s blade had chopped his wings
and, to his friend, Rama granted Mukti
as he lay dying in the forest green.
Yet the atman of Jatayu mamoo
calmed the sea, while Sita and her young twins,
in the Fatel Razack, crushed and thirsty,
longed for lassi and their royal cuisine.
And wasn’t it Jatayu’s glance askew
that Sita saw while being weighed from springs
on Nelson Island, then given sari
and a bar of blue soap for her hygiene?
It was Jatayu’s steadfastness, like glue,
through the jungles and cane fields, and wasp stings,
that feathered Sita as she ate roti
while fighting off brute hands, rough and porcine.
By the light of her bedi, Sita knew
she was tethered strong, even in wind swings,
by Jatayu, anchored in the flame tree,
who shielded her, as if she were still queen.
Lilawattee Manoo-Rahming
Great-grandmother, Ma
I remember you
with the scarce economy
that fuels story,
your seldom visits
from town country. Home
was Rio Claro –
an entire town,
the place you journeyed from
unannounced
to children too possessed
by holidays and the sea
to have time for you.
All day you sat like a murti
you never prayed before,
serene and strange
on that one peerah
stationed like a hyphen
in the corridor of a house
that opened at one end
to Point Cumana.
At the other was the ocean
that delivered you,
a just-budding adolescent
from a ship, its name
long lost to you,
though not the reason
you came –
to marrid he fadda
(the gesture to the son
who wed Africa and settled
on the rim of the Gulf).
Turteen chirren borne
to the Pa, my father remembers
as a quiet man
who spoke a sweet
and secret Hindi with his wife
and became after
the unspoken before, a tailor.
a man who loved cinema
for the movies of India –
I was too young
to treasure answers to questions
I never asked;
but I remember you,
a small woman draped in cotton
and sheer, perpetually
pulling an orhni forward,
like a private discipline to forfend
an unspoken return, [. . .]
Jennifer Rahim
VISIT VI
No potable water and no electricity.
What fuss when there’s ‘Dig Duttee’ in the night.
A string of fairy-lighted women
Sculpting the night
With tools as old as man-made light.
The Dulha smiles his last smiles
Of bachelorhood.
Miles and miles away the Dulhin
Smiles at her departing flow
Of lamp-bearing women.
From this remote country house
Relatives, friends, guest and i
See two unmarried smiles melt into
Each other and illuminate
The night
As the women head back from time
With dancing lamps
We all see
Fingers of our lost flame of innocence.
Sasenarine Persaud
To India
O land mysterious – dear to me!
Some warbler new will sing of thee!
And tell a greater story;
Go on achieving more and more,
Above life’s petty trifles soar,
And strive in earnest to restore
Thy past resplendent glory.
When Ravan over thee would sway,
Thy hero Rama led the fray,
And saved his lovely Sita;
No happier memory lives in thee
Than his unequalled chivalry,
No wife to thee as chaste could be
As Rama’s faithful Sita.
Save Greece, like thee, what other land
Could dare produce two epics grand
That yet would charm the ages?
Except those classic works were sound,
Containing thoughts both wise, profound,
Could they their readers still astound –
Those deep immortal pages? [. . .]
W.W. Persaud
Diwali (Deepavali, Divali) is one of the great festivals of the Caribbean. It has survived since Indian indentureship (1838 – 1920) in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, when the workers brought it over from India where it is still a foremost national celebration. In the Caribbean Diwali has evolved among the local festivals with their own identities as national events.
It is one of the most spectacular religious festivals. Known as the Festival of Lights, it is sacred to the Hindu religion and is a particular time of worship for devotees of Hinduism. But it has a very wide popular outreach which serves as a vehicle to publicly broadcast the principles and beliefs of the religion. For example, the very attractive and magnificent spectacle of the lighting of diyas in households and other buildings, grand meelas, chowtals, music and dance, the creation of Rangoli, and the grand motorcade promoted by the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha in Georgetown and practiced in villages elsewhere. The motorcade has been severely curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was cancelled in 2020, and this year it will be substituted by the grand lighting of diyas at the Kitty roundabout in Georgetown.
The poems above are in honour of this religious, national, cultural, traditional and popular calendar festival.
“Sita and Jatayu” by Lilawattee Manoo-Rahming of Trinidad and Tobago, is worth revisiting because it is a remarkable poem in its own right, but one which draws closely and cleverly on the Hindu faith, its myth and belief in crafting post-colonial political positions related to indentureship and Caribbean society.
Diwali is an occasion for the worship of a major Hindu deity, Lakshmi, goddess of light, prosperity, power, wealth, fortune and beauty. The lighting of the houses is a symbolic way of inviting her into the homes, hearts and consciousness of the devotees.
But the lights are also related to the conquest of good over evil, enlightenment over darkness, which is manifested in the triumph of Lord Ram (Rama) over the demon king Rawan (Ravan; Rawana).
It is the victorious end of Ram’s exile from his kingdom in Ayodhya on the darkest night of the year when the people lit rows of diyas to guide and welcome him. Manoo-Rahming’s poem alludes to the capture and abduction of Ram’s wife Sita (Seeta) by Rawan. The King of Vultures battles Rawan in a heroic but vain attempt to save her. She is later rescued by Ram in the victory over the demon king. The poet casts the experience of indentured Indian women brought over to the Caribbean in the role of Sita and her protection by Jatayu, transferring the tale from the Ramayana and setting it in the Caribbean.
There is also reference to the Ramayana in “To India” by WW Persaud, who praises India for its great cultural and literary depth, exemplified by such tales as the rescue of Sita and the defeat of Rawan. Persaud highlights the chastity of Sita, who is exemplary as the faithful and ideal wife. This is a very interesting older poem in the development of Guyanese Indian poetry in the 1920s and 1930s British Guiana. This poetry was characterised by imitation of English verse, but it also illustrates the development of an Indian cultural consciousness in the colony.
The selection from Sasenarine Persaud does not represent his very deep explorations into Vedic philosophy and religion, but it ventures into his interest in Hindu mythology and ritual and is among his more worthwhile verses. “Visit VI” is interesting because of its treatment of a Guyanese tradition related to a Hindu wedding. The Dig Dutty or Maticoor (Maati-kore) is practiced on one of the nights before the actual marriage ceremony. It is a religious ritual in which women play the dominant roles and it is very interesting to see Persaud as a poet giving an account of one of these rites, very relevant to the marking of such a tradition as Diwali.
“Great-grandmother: Ma” by Jennifer Rahim, poet and fiction writer of Trinidad and Tobago, is closely related to indentureship. It is a tribute to Rahim’s great grandmother who arrived in Trinidad from India on a ship. It is of interest here because of its subtle interrogation of traditions, the change and the tragedy of the passage of generations with great sensitivity to the silent experience of these by heroines such as the poet’s ancestor.
All of these poems relate in various ways — not all celebratory, but all relevant, socially and historically — to the celebration of Diwali, a great festival, a powerful cultural tradition in the Caribbean.
