In honour of Diwali

Intricate Rangolis and lit diyas symbolise Diwali

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.