They Came in Ships
They came in ships
From far across the seas.
Britain, colonising the
East in India.
Transporting her chains
From Chota Nagpur
and the Ganges pain.
Westwards came the Whitby
Like the Hesperus
Alike the island bound
Fatel Rozak.
Some came with dreams
Of milk and honey riches.
Others came, feeing famine
And death.
Alike, they came
The dancing girls.
Rajput soldiers
Tall and proud
Escaping the penalty
Of their pride.
The stolen wives
Afraid and despondent.
All alike.
Crossing dark waters.
Brahmin and Chamar alike.
They came at least with
Hope in their hearts.
On the platter of
The pantocracy
They were offered
Disease and death.
– Mahadai Das
No More Kitchree for the Groom
I squirmed
for me, for you,
especially for the young Hindu bride who,
but a while ago,
smiled in maiden innocence,
glowing in magenta wedding garb,
sindoor brilliant on straight hair-part,
eager on the threshold of womanhood.
In an instant this unique emotion gave way
To hurt dismay,
shattering dreams, joys, ideals
as groom and relatives played
a game of cheap bargaining
for costlier, more lucrative gifts,
as though treasured maiden daughter
was snatched from a brothel
to bag a husband.
Where in the scriptures is it writ
that groom in Sasur’s home
should slight the kanyadaan
in lieu of filthy lucre
with saffron rice
honourably placed to satisfy
the physical hunger?
Fathers, brothers, uncles: Hindu men arise!
Let not diabolical custom
defile the consecrated Maro,
humiliating Innocence, Parents Man.
Away … Away with it now!
No more kitchree for the groom!
– Rajkumari Singh
From Hospitality
. . . ‘Is bout two year now since it happen. Was August mont. The chap name is Chandi. Was bout six in the aftanoon. E come wid a parcel undah e arm an ask us to put e up fu the night. E said that e gat some relative livin at New Amsterdam, an e miss ferry.
‘E didn’t tell me all this in simple English as I tellin you. E was spittin backraan English like wata from well pipe. Me excuse e biggaty an yankee talk an put e up fu the night. Me son kil a big damanic fowl cock; an me wife bhoonjay am in ghee. Fry chicken an roti an rum: the chap eat an drink e bely full.
‘The man is a barn gaffah; gaff me till first cock crow. Nex day me go ovah New Amsterdam wid e. Fu lunch me tek de chap to a boadin house. We lash gillbackka curry wid dallpurri an grag. E didn’t get de people he was lookin fah: so me tek e to cinema. Me treat de bitch to me bes; like me own buddy from one mumma-daddy!
‘Nex marnin me company e to train station. De last thing e tell me was: “I gine to see you, man. Keep the note wit my address. I gine count it the universe a insult if you don’t look me up wheneveh yu bam in town. Not a bloomin ting in dis wide world I won’t do for you if I can.’ “
It is remarkable how well that Berbician remembered those words spoken briefly amid the hustling and bustling of a busy railway station at train time. I wriggled in my chair, took a deep breath and asked:
‘Did you go in town? And did you meet him?’
His half glance bore a strong tint of scorn.
‘Sure! Me meet e. An you go surprise when you hear. Me been to town fu de Actobah races. Soon me lan in town, right away me seh leh me look e up; but the address e give me dint deh, su me give up de whole idea. But aftah races me been hustling to get the train when me bump into e, at the carnah ah Lamaha an Vlissengen Road, bunin gaff! Me gu to e. E grabble me han an want shake am out. Den e ead me in the rum shop.
“Manniwell, come man,” e said like a big shot, “give us two six-cent shots.”
Me angah-passion wake up. The begga guggle down the rum like was the las shat in the worl, an call fu anatha shat. Manniwell bring am, an seh: “Tutty-six cent. Come on, payup!” The basted seh, saaf saaf like when man coaxin bull to tek yolk, “Aah! Why the rush, son? Can’t you have some human etiquette? My friend is a Berbician; he will pay in due time.”
Me angah passion meet tip-tap! But me count ten to keep back me han fram levellin e face!
Me drap ah twelve cent piece in the snap ah rum an walk out.’
I was not hungry anymore. I was cold. And I am yet bitter against the like of Chandi. But, reflecting, I smile knowing they make up only a small bit of our world.
– Sheik Sadeek
These selections of Guyanese poetry and prose fiction are in honour of Arrival Day marked in Guyana on May 5 each year. “They Came In Ships” by Mahadai Das is a signature poem, which, with a tragic and post colonial consciousness, gets to the root of the scheme of immigration. Sometimes called the Gladstone Experiment, it brought workers to address a labour shortage for struggling sugar plantations in British Guiana post emancipation in 1838.
It documents the immigrants from India who disembarked the ocean going vessels Whitby and Hesperus on May 5 to start off a mixed history of human struggle and conquest. The poem recounts the tragedies which they fled in India and those to which they came in British Guiana in the logies and estates haunted by the shadows of an even more tragic slavery. Yet it also refers to the dreams with which some came. That is significant because such dreams might have motivated a perseverance which eventually led to a Guyanese nation built on the struggle, hopes and aspirations of people who came and those who laboured here before emancipation. Arrival Day honours the contributions of immigrants from India, China, Portugal, Europe and Africa who arrived in several different voyages by ships as indentured servants under that scheme.
Among the greatest contributions made by the immigrants is the creation of a national literature. The selections here speak to that literature and the history of its development. In spite of more than 60 years of local writing since the emergence of modern Guyanese literature, Guyanese East Indian literature by local Guyanese did not materialise until the 1960s. The early novels by non Guyanese like Jenkins’ Luchmee and Dilloo and Webber’s Those That Be In Bondage are subjects of debate even Mittelholzer’s Corentyne Thunder and Harris’ The Far Journey of Oudin.
It was not until the arrival of the plays of Sheik Sadeek, and his short stories such as “Hospitality”, that East Indian writing began to address local setting, issues and language. That did not happen during the periods of the imitation of English poetry in the 1930s and through the rise of Indian cultural awareness from the 1920s following Joseph Ruhomon’s exhortations (1894), right through the 1940s and 50s.
We see examples of the emergence of this Guyanese East Indian literary consciousness in Rooplall Monar in the 1970s and 80s, and in the samples printed here of Sadeek and Rajkumari Singh before him, representing the first signs of this literature in the 1960s and 1970s. Sadeek tells a story of working people on the Corentyne with unbridled use of the Creole language. Singh questions unprogressive customs or the abuse of traditions of the people in “No More Kitchree for the Groom”. She introduced a strong feminist note in the literature to add to positive identity in a ground breaking prose piece “I Am A Coolie”.
Mahadai Das who wrote “They Came In Ships” went on to become Guyana’s foremost female poet to date, from the major evidence of her collection Bones. She was a protégé of Rajkumari Singh and had her beginnings in the Guyana National Service and the writing group called Messengers mentored by Singh. She was part of the post-independence nationalist movement in Guyanese literature, but advanced to join the feminist and post colonialist orientations represented by Singh. Das, however, was an original independent spirit who found her own identity highly informed by existentialism.
