CONTRIBUTED BY Richard Wm. Thomas
Many Indian media houses have been providing interesting morsels of the visit of Prime Minister Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar to her aboriginal home. Tribune India is one of the better ones, so it is on Tribune India I leaned to commence this latest chronicle.
When Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar makes the pilgrimage to the dirt-poor Indian village of Bhelupur on Wednesday, January 11th 2012, she will mark the return to her roots by planting five saplings -neem, pakad, pipal, ashok and barh- near the Sipariya Kali Mandir which has taken root on the spot where her ancestral home was once located.
Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s pardada (great-grandfather, on father's side), you see, was a young, unmarried man named Ram Lakhan Mishra, who bade farewell forever to Bhelupur in 1889, in search of his destiny.
The odyssey took him all the way to the By of Bengal, to the bustling port city of Kolkata, a place where a countrybookee could be shanghaied for less than a rupee, because Kolkata was the place whence Girmitiyas were lured and despatched across the Kala Pani to lands "teeming with milk and honey" and "roads paved of gold".
Many Indian media houses have been providing interesting morsels of the visit of Prime Minister Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar to her aboriginal home. Tribune India is one of the better ones, so it is on Tribune India I leaned to commence this latest chronicle.
When Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar makes the pilgrimage to the dirt-poor Indian village of Bhelupur on Wednesday, January 11th 2012, she will mark the return to her roots by planting five saplings -neem, pakad, pipal, ashok and barh- near the Sipariya Kali Mandir which has taken root on the spot where her ancestral home was once located.
Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s pardada (great-grandfather, on father's side), you see, was a young, unmarried man named Ram Lakhan Mishra, who bade farewell forever to Bhelupur in 1889, in search of his destiny.
The odyssey took him all the way to the By of Bengal, to the bustling port city of Kolkata, a place where a countrybookee could be shanghaied for less than a rupee, because Kolkata was the place whence Girmitiyas were lured and despatched across the Kala Pani to lands "teeming with milk and honey" and "roads paved of gold".
So it was, on Thursday July 18, 1889, the kumvara (bachelor) from Bhelupur found himself on a ship named "Volga", for the grim business of the Volga was to haul away Indian Sufferers enticed by Girmit offerers to venture aboard.
Throughout the eighty-three years of Girmit operations in Trinidad and Tobago, if there was one such ship aptly named, Volga was it -onboard conditions for human cargo and crew were as brutal and as vulgar as every ship conscripted for the treacherous purpose -limited food...very cramped accommodation...snail-paced progress through the sometimes-foaming, sometimes-becalmed waters of the Oceans Indian and Atlantic.
Throughout the eighty-three years of Girmit operations in Trinidad and Tobago, if there was one such ship aptly named, Volga was it -onboard conditions for human cargo and crew were as brutal and as vulgar as every ship conscripted for the treacherous purpose -limited food...very cramped accommodation...snail-paced progress through the sometimes-foaming, sometimes-becalmed waters of the Oceans Indian and Atlantic.
When Volga weighed anchor in Kolkata, its passenger manifest enumerated 555 souls; three months later, on Monday October 21, 1889, when she berthed at Nelson Island, the tally was 537, for 18 had died during the lengthy crossing.
(By the way, by that date Nelson Island had become the quarantine station and sorting-house for all Girmitiyas arriving in Trinidad and Tobago -once given a clean bill of health, from there they would be sent on to the Trinidad plantations which wanted them.)
Thus it was that the bachelor Ram Lakhan Mishra came to make Trinidad and Tobago his home. And in sturdy Girmitiya tradition, he'd brought with him the seeds of a culture and tradition so well-rooted, over the years nothing thrown at them or their descendants would ever dent their sense of who they are and why they came.
He was unmarried when he reached Trinidad and Tobago, then a British colony. Incidentally, Tobago only was annexed to Trinidad on Tuesday January 1, 1889, pursuant to the Royal Order in Council of Sunday November 17, 1888; thus, when Ram Lakhan disembarked, he was entering a Crown Colony which, ten months before, did not exist.
Ram Lakhan would eventually marry Subsequently, after he settled there, he married a local girl.
(By the way, by that date Nelson Island had become the quarantine station and sorting-house for all Girmitiyas arriving in Trinidad and Tobago -once given a clean bill of health, from there they would be sent on to the Trinidad plantations which wanted them.)
Thus it was that the bachelor Ram Lakhan Mishra came to make Trinidad and Tobago his home. And in sturdy Girmitiya tradition, he'd brought with him the seeds of a culture and tradition so well-rooted, over the years nothing thrown at them or their descendants would ever dent their sense of who they are and why they came.
He was unmarried when he reached Trinidad and Tobago, then a British colony. Incidentally, Tobago only was annexed to Trinidad on Tuesday January 1, 1889, pursuant to the Royal Order in Council of Sunday November 17, 1888; thus, when Ram Lakhan disembarked, he was entering a Crown Colony which, ten months before, did not exist.
Ram Lakhan would eventually marry Subsequently, after he settled there, he married a local girl.
The union produced a son named "Chauranji Persad". Chaunraji married Sumitra Persad their union was born Lilraj Persad, the father of the Satkrit Kamla Persad-Bissessar, incumbent PM of Trinidad &Tobago, who, at this time, is well on her way to her pardada's native village of Bhelupur.
When she plants the five saplings, no doubt she'd be in more than wonderment over having to nest their roots in a locale named the same as her own birthplace - Siparia, Trinidad and Tobago.
© Richard Wm. Thomas,
kid5rivers.com
© Richard Wm. Thomas,
kid5rivers.com
1 comment:
After each journey there is a destination. A destination for a better future. This destination should never be jeopardized by tolerating crime and lawlessness on the new shores. The fight for a better world must continue.Well done do not respect these buccaneers anymore.Erase them and the murderers of Peter Taut altogether.
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