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 canefields, 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.
Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming
We Mark Your Memory: Writing from the Descendants of Indenture is a collection edited by David Dabydeen, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen and Tina K. Ramnarine and published by the School of Advanced Study, University of London and Commonwealth Writers.
It was published in 2018 to mark the centenary of the abolition of the system of indentureship in the British Empire (2017 – 2020). The volume brings together, for the first time, writings by the descendants of indentured immigrants from across the Commonwealth. The editors describe it as “a unique attempt to explore, through the medium of poetry and prose, indentured heritage in the twenty-first century”. Last week, we selected a poem from this volume – “Chutney Love” by Gabrielle Jenella Hosein.
Among the editors, Dabydeen, born in Guyana, built an outstanding career at the University of Warwick in his adopted home, England. He is a Professor who served terms as Director of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies, an avid researcher, critic, radio and television documentalist. As a foremost novelist and poet, he has won several prizes, including the Guyana Prize and the Commonwealth Prize.
Kaladeen is an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. She, too, is a prolific academic researcher who has done work on the system of indentureship that is at the core of this collection of work.
Ramnarine is an artist and a woman of letters: a musician, anthropologist and researcher of performance, politics and the arts. She is a Professor at Royal Holloway University of London.
They have drawn together in one volume, a mixture of established writers and new voices in poetry and fiction from right across the globe – from places where immigrants settled after joining the indentureship system between 1834 and 1917 when migration ceased. The system itself ended in 1920.
By that time, we learn from the volume in memory of the indentured migrants, more than a million of them left had India for several destinations during the 83-year period. The experience of working in an ignoble system is captured by these writers from South Africa, East Africa, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Ceylon, Fiji, and the Caribbean – from Trinidad, predominantly – and from Guyana.
The work of Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming, an Indian-Caribbean poet, fiction writer, artist and essayist, is an excellent example of work arising from the experience and ethos of the Indian culture reshaped by indentureship among the migrants. She is an engineer who has published several volumes and work in anthologies and journals.
The example of the poem in the collection We Mark Your Memory, selected here – “Sita and Jatayu”, is a much more accomplished piece than “Chutney Love”, the selection we discussed last week. While Gabrielle Hosein’s poem celebrates chutney music from a fairly limited perspective, Manoo-Rahming tackles a poem of Caribbean Indian heritage from a more profound depth.
It is now the season of Diwali (Deepavali), which is highly celebrated in the Caribbean, and most pronounced in Guyana and Trinidad. This is as fitting a poem as any to mark this festival, while observing the memory of those in the history of indentureship.
Diwali, with its theme of the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness, honours Lakshmi, the Goddess of Light and Prosperity, who devotees invite into their homes and hearts with spectacular displays of lighted diyas. The artistry extends to a grand and even more spectacular exhibition of lights, images and symbols in the popular annual motorcade. Art is further shown off in the Rangoli – coloured rice drawings displayed on the ground highlighting Hindu images and symbols.
This poem is based on the story of Lord Ram (Rama) and Sita (Seeta) taken from the sacred text the Ramayana. But this story is integrated with intertextual cross-referencing between the Ramayana and the experience of Indian women under indentureship. Besides, Rama’s story is also linked to Diwali. Rama went into exile from his home and kingdom in Ayodhya. During that period Sita was abducted by Rawan (Ravana/Rawana) and Rama went into the island kingdom of Lanka to rescue her. Following his defeat of Rawan he returned home in triumph to reclaim his throne in Ayodhya. It was the darkest night of the year and the people of Ayodhya lit diyas to light his way as well as a show of welcome to him.
The story is a complex one, and Manoo-Rahming captures the abduction of Sita in the poem. When Rama went into exile, his wife, Sita and brother Lakshmana (Lakshman) went with him out of loyalty. The demon king Ravana plotted his tricks, using a golden deer to draw the two men out of the way, leaving Sita alone at home inside a protective circle drawn by Lakshmana. Ravana then came disguised as an old beggar asking for food. The kind-hearted Sita went to help him and was enticed to step out of the circle whereupon she was seized by Ravana.
The kidnapping was noticed by Jatayu, a very old vulture bird, who was king of the vultures. In his younger years he was feared for his strength and power, but at this time he was very old and weak. Yet he was courageous and determined to serve Rama and Sita, so he attacked Ravana, wounding him and putting up an extremely valiant fight, especially considering his twilight years. After a long, fierce battle, Ravana prevailed by chopping off Jatayu’s wing, leaving him mortally injured.
When Rama returned and found him, he was overcome with grief as well as gratitude to the bird for the fight he put up. The poem tells how “Rama granted mukti [a transcendent state]” to his loyal friend Jatayu. But by that time Ravana had already escaped taking Sita off to captivity in his kingdom in Lanka (present day Sri Lanka). Rama set about gathering help and resources to launch his attack, vanquish the demon king and rescue his wife.
Manoo-Rahming deliberately confuses the story from the Ramayana with the narrative and experience of indentureship. She draws a parallel between Sita as Queen, as the king’s wife, and Sita as an Indian woman suffering the experience of life on the plantation as a servant.
Jatayu is cast in the plantation experience as a bird always nearby offering protection, as he did in the Ramayana. Sita’s voyage to the West Indies is likened to an abduction, which Jatayu could not prevent, yet he is pictured there as keeping protective watch.
Here we have in this poem a very good example of how this book of creative work marks the memory of the indentured labourers. It is a tribute to Sita with reference to Hindu mythology, and to the Indian woman in the plantation setting. It references the bravery of Jatayu and his mythical presence in the trees on the estate.
In similar fashion, the book itself is a tribute to the memory as the various poems, stories and works of prose capture several perspectives of the experience of Indian indentureship. The editors’ introduction set the stage with its historical background, setting the record right and placing the context of indentureship throughout history and in other places, while the selected works by the several authors play out the drama.
