Cancer Survivor PHOOLO DANNY-MAHARAJ shines

Ariti Jankie

Former Express South Bureau editor, Phoolo Danny-Maharaj, a national award winner added to the Williamsville Festival Committee’s celebration of Indian Arrival Day last Friday when she picked up one of the two prestigious awards this year for her sterling contribution in the media and community service.

Radiant in a blue salwar-kameez (Indian traditional wear) she took the microphone to congratulate the hardworking committee and express her sentiments on the occasion.

Phoolo with members of the Williamsville Festival Committee

She said, “Today marks 169 years since the first of many ships arrived with our ancestors. Their courage to leave India, their janma bhoomi (birthland) to venture into the unknown was God’s plan in creating our destiny. Even those who were forced to board the ships and cross the Kala Paani, had a place in His plan.”

She said that as descendants of the indentured labourers, members of the Indo-Trinidadian community were the real beneficiaries of their struggles and sacrifice.

“Slavery had ended when they arrived, but indentureship was nothing less thana new enslavement. They were called docile and illiterate because they were not understood. As worshippers of Dharti Mata (Mother earth), their work became their worship. They found comfort with the earth - many times watering the cane fields with their tears and praying that their descendants would be more fortunate. We are the reasons they went without many things, to save every cent to give us a better life. Their prayers and faith in God, their culture took them through dark difficult times.  Beyond the exploitation and ill-treatment by the colonial masters, they looked towards the light at the end of the tunnel. That light was not the flambeau, candle, deya or the Home Sweet Home lamp.  That light was their descendants – their children, grand-great grand ….…We were their hope, their light. They toiled for us and we should never forget their sacrifices…we must continue to show our gratitude.”   

A mother of two of Iere Village, Princes Town she said that Indian Arrival Day gives the community an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the arrival of their ancestors, their achievements and to rejoice in the emergence from the bowels of the cane fields.

“We should not be ashamed of being children of indentured labourers. Our ancestors have done us proud,” she said.

She noted that as Trinidadians (Trinbagonians) and like other peoples who arrived, the people of Indian origin have achieved in every field – literature, politics, science, business, music, and many more areas.

Phoolo and Seeta Persad, sister of Ariti

 

“We must continue the journey of our ancestors and contribute to create a better T&T and a brighter world for our descendants.  We owe it to our children, because soon, we too would become ancestors. And our descendants would want to know what we did for them.”

She said that the award provided encouragement to her to continue her writings at a different level.

Danny-Maharaj went on to say that the occasion was bitter-sweet as she lost her role model, her Naani (maternal grandmother) 22 years ago on May 30.

“Even in my sadness, I feel her spirit in my veins prodding me onwards. So too, the spirit of our ancestors live within us – in our way of life, in our thoughts, culture, celebrations and prayers – whatever we do is a reflection of what we learned from them. The mantle is now on our shoulders. Although, Indian Arrival Day is celebrated once a year, every day, we should thank to our ancestors for setting a foundation for us in this beautiful island,” she concluded.

 

THE PAST IS IN THE PRESENT

Another time, another place, another journey...

by Ariti Jankie

The journey of life often takes us to places we are least prepared for.

Texas was never on my radar as the place where I would live but as fate would have it, the children moved and I had to follow. The search for fellow Trinidadians continued with little success (most of them too busy) for many months. Then I stumbled upon a temple group comprising about 15 middle aged couples. My childhood resonated in the pooja (ritual worship), music and bhajan singing and soon I was downloading songs to learn and each Friday evening when Durga Pooja was held, I had a new song to sing.

I pitched Indian Arrival Day to them simply because I have been so involved in the celebration held in Trinidad. The idea evoked pent up emotions and was ripe for the picking. Within two weeks, there was a larger venue than the one where the weekly pooja is held, artistes were booked, a video-recordering company hired, a podium built, the menu planned and invitations went out. I laid out a plan for a “Jahajee Walk” half expecting these Americanised Trinidadians, Guyanese, Fijians and Americans too, to be so open to the idea.

 

They came out early as early as 7.30 am. It was a beautiful day; the sun shining brightly as the walk began beneath the shady trees. Larry Sawh formerly of Santa Flora wore Indian traditional cotton, tied his head (like the typical coolie), and walked with a saank (conch shell) in his hand.

The temple group; a Sat Maharaj Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, Branch 377 of Texas led by Couva born Dharam Vishal Chatoor wore white cotton with a toupee on his head as did Fiji-born Ram Sharma, Peter Gooman and Tulsi Mahabir both from Chaguanas. The ladies came too; many of them arrived late well dressed for the formal program that started at 10.00am.

Beneath the trees, mats were spread for a damadol (tomato) choka and sada roti with lipton tea but not before stories were told of the Aja/Ajee – Nana/Nani (grandparents) and the early days of struggle.

Sharma’s father left India for Fiji at the age of 19. He had gone to the shop when he was persuaded to join a crew which he believed were working for some quick money a few miles from where he lived in Basti, Uttar Pradesh, India. Six months later, the parents who believed their son to be dead, received a letter he had written in Hindi telling them that he was safe in Fiji.

Chatoor remembered his grandfather building a mandir at his home in Exchange Village, Couva that stands till today. He had tears in his eyes as he recounted tales from childhood when he had to take a bath and perform pooja before attending primary school.

Mahabir, the uncle of Bhojpuri singer and pundit Sat Mahabir painted a vivid picture of life in Charlieville, Chaguanas in the 1950s and 60s.

They had chosen nine pioneers of Indian Culture in Texas to be honoured including Mahabir and his wife Chandra, Ramkissoon Goonie who was born in Cushe in the Biche district and Trinidad born Rajkumar Soodeen. Four Guyanese were chosen. Pundit Sais Narain, Jankie Soomar, Sundardaye Gooberdhan and Bhanwattee Sanacharra as well as Fiji born Pundit Rajendra Sharma received plaques after an aarti thali was waved around them to ward off evil.

 

Tassa commanded attention and Bobby Teelucksingh with his band of boys did not disappoint. Sawh with jhaal in his hands danced in a folk rhythm while some the ladies moved to the rhythm in keeping with the temple atmosphere. Amrita Chatterpal performed two dances. She is the teenage daughter of a Trinidadian mother and Guyanese father. The temple singers performed classical and folk songs and from 10.00 am to 2.30 p.m with more than 200 in attendance, the program flowed smoothly with Sharda Jaishree as Master of Ceremonies.

There were many speeches and I have learnt to add drama in my talks. I called it “ THE SAGA OF INDIAN ARRIVAL.”

“There is a crowd at the banks of the Hooghly River in Kolkata. All eyes are on the river where a boat is about to sail.

Someone calls out to a man boarding the ship, “Bhaiya, Jaldi wapas anna.”

And you strain to hear his answer, “Mei Zaroor awoonga.”

The man stands in soiled cotton, barefooted.

He is thinking that in an hour or so he would have crossed the Kala Paani to begin sifting “chinni” (sugar) in a place called “Chinnidad”. He will only stay three days he decides, and with money in his pocket, he would return to his family.

His mother was rocking the baby to sleep when he left. He hears her sweet voice in his head singing, “Haray Murari…..”     

With the song in his head, he goes inside the ship to find people packed like animals; people from different castes and far flung villages. His heart is pounding in his chest. Hours go by; day turns to night, night to day,

On the third day, he hears someone singing from the Ramayan. Prabhu Sri Ram is mourning for his brother Lakshman, lying wounded in the battlefield.

“You gave up life in a palace to come to the forest with me – what happiness did you get.

“What will I say to Mother Sumitra and Mother Kaushalaya…

He sings with them …Chor ye Ayodha ka sook tumhara, yogi roop banaya. Jis bhaiye ka liya yu udh may praan ke baat banaaya….. Mata Kaushalya aur Sumitra jo koye baat hi hare, kaand mool asay haat mella ka, akayia paar paar ayee…….Utho Lakhan lall priya baiye.

Tears are falling from their eyes. And he pictures himself on the battlefield. Then he  hears the joyous shouts as Hanuman Ji is spotted coming with the tree of life – mol sajeevan….and he sings along... “Aye gayawo Hanumana Siya Pati RamchandraJi Ki Jai Saranam.

Out of darkness comes light. Hope springs within his heart.

And still the ship sails, days turning to weeks and the months roll on. Many are sick; almost daily fellow passengers are jumping overboard; the ordeal too hard to bear. He doesn’t want to think of the betrayal at the hands of evil men, the same ones who invaded his homeland.

Faith was sinking lower into his soul when one morning he raised his head in prayer to Shri Surujnarayan and listens to shouts.

The journey has come to an end after 103 days at sea.

He becomes one of 147,572 Indians registered on arrival in Trinidad. They send him to the south of the country.

He is cheated of his 12 cents a day labor; he gets instead 2 pounds of rice. 2 ditto of dhal, 2 ounces of salt, some oil and tamarind. They give him for the whole year 2 dhotis, 2 blankets, a shirt and a cap.

He cannot go back. They offer him a piece of land. He sits down to think but doesn’t want to remember. He will surely go mad. He surrenders to God and accepts a marriage proposal. She, like him, has worked the bonded labor where expectant mothers weed, cut cane and tote big bundles of cane often aborting and with no time to grieve, tore a piece of their orhnis and tie it tight beneath their abdomen to hold their wombs in place.

He cuts a bamboo and plants it on the river bank. It is his mandir where he offers jhal before the rising sun. He embraces Mother Earth and she rewards him with bumper harvests. India slowly recedes.

All around him are his brothers and sisters of the ship. The battle has begun. They have children, they must fight for the right to be Hindus and Muslims; to build houses, mandirs and mosques, to worship and celebrate, build schools and educate their children. They cleared the land, planted fruit trees, taught their children everything they knew and still sent them to schools, to colleges and universities.

Still barefooted and in soiled cotton clothes, he endured. They called him a Coolie. He told them he was a Bong coolie – they made him so He was proud of what he was able to accomplish out of the cruelty and humiliation he and his Jahaji bhai suffered.

As we stand here today, we have done our ancestors proud. We took the education; they took pains to give us. We moved out of agriculture, we fought for our freedom; we won equality, we have refined the traditions they handed to us. Most of all, we went back to Bharat Mata to search and find out roots; to fulfill the desires of the man who came. 

And like him, we hold on to the hands of God as we hear the voice singing, “Siya Rama mei sab jag jaani…karho pranayama Jodi jug paani…….”

 

 

 

Gods of the South-West

By Ariti Jankie

The back waters of the south western districts of Trinidad are opening up in more ways than one.
In recent years, the government has placed emphasis on road works and infrastructure in Penal, Barrackpore and Siparia; areas that had been completely neglected for decades.
With better roadways, more people are likely to discover a church in Siparia that draws worshippers of all religions. On Good Friday, Siparia takes on a new life when Hindus make the pilgrimage to seek miracles at the feet of Siparee Mai. She sits in the Roman Catholic Church on Church Street and after Good Friday returns to being the saint La Divina Pastora.
The legend of Siparee Mai began when an immigrant worker from India spotted her as a young girl on mornings. She grew with the day and by evening was an old woman. The area became sacred and a church was built on the site. Mother Siparee is believed to be the Goddess Durga and was first seen on the Friday before Easter.

La Divina Pastora

The church thrives with annual donations from the Hindu and Muslim communities.
A similar occurrence took place in the 1940s in Patiram, Penal when a labourer named Manickchand accidentally struck a stone with his cutlass. Instantly, milk oozed from the stone.
Manickchand was puzzled and did not want to tell anyone but that night he saw in a dream that the stone was a Shiva Lingam, that is, a representation of the God Shiva. He broke the news the next morning and scores of people from neighbouring villages converged on the site. A small thatched hut was built over the stone by Nancoo, the owner of the land.
The building was renovated and later extended with an adjoining hall made of aluminium roof, brick walls, and concrete floors. The temple is privately-owned and cared for by Ramlochan Nancoo and Sanicharie Nancoo (now deceased). The lingam symbolises the energy of the Shiva, the creator. It has never been removed from its original position since it was discovered in the 1940s, and is literally rooted in the earth from which it seems to grow by the natural accretion of mineral material. Devotees claim the lingam was a wishing stone that bestows anything that the pure-hearted devotee desires. 

Not one Sunday passes when scores do not visit Pattiram Trace Mandir nor any Hindu religious festivals fail to be celebrated there. Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar often made the trek to the stone lingam to worship, her ancestors being devout Hindus.
The 85-foot tall Hamuman murti in Waterloo. Central Trinidad, commands attention and attracts local and foreign tourists. Another is in the making at Rochard Road not far from here another farmer stumbled upon a stone shaped in the likeness of the elephant god Shri Ganesh, remover of obstacles.
On February 18 this year, 55-year-old Jagmohan Seepersad was cutting grass when his brushing cutlass hit a stone and a white substance flowed just like what happened more than 40 years before at Pattiram Trace. The farmer realised that it was milk coming out of the stone and continued clearing the area until he found the stone in the shape of an elephant with the markings of the ancient Hindu symbol, “Om” on the forehead.
Jagmohan dropped his cutlass, fell to the ground and began chanting the Sanskrit mantra “Om Shri Ganesh Aye Namah”.
He then hurried to his home, half a mile away to tell his wife, Leela Ramdeo.
Jagmohan’s daughter-in-law Sita said in an interview, “The whole family went to see the stone and became very emotional. We have been holding the hand of Shri Ganesh as we struggled over the years and this is a sign that Ganapatti is pleased with us.”
The family did not want to tell anyone but soon word got out and hundreds turned up to offer milk, water, flowers and fruits.

For days, traffic built up along Julien Branch Trace, Rochard Road, Penal as Hindus and non-Hindus visited the site.
Local contractors have since cleared the dirt-road that leads to the empty plot of land where the murti lies. The site is about 50 feet from the dirt road, and a quarter-mile from Rochard Main Road.
The family each year hosted extravagant nine-night yagnas and felt that God had come in answer to their prayer. For many years the family has been praying to Lord Ganesh, and has received countless small miracles.
“It is clear in my mind that this murti means that God is calling on his devotees to lean on him, and to reap the benefits of devotion to him,” said Sita.
Ganesh is easily identified with an elephant head and is known as Vinayaka worshipped as the remover of obstacles. He is also known as the patron of the Arts and Sciences and the god of intellect and wisdom.
Born in poverty, struggling to make ends meet, facing scorn and humiliation every day made believers of the people in the rural districts. They see God in everything and everywhere and the special sightings may be dismissed by others but to them, there is evidence that God is among them. Faith is all they have.

 

An anecdote

by Zorina Shah

One day in early February 2010 Father Michel de Verteuil surprised me.
Several years before he had collapsed in a bookstore in Toronto and remained in a coma for maybe three weeks. He suffered severe memory loss from a stroke, following a mass at Paramin later the same year.
On this day in February he remembered my first name. He remembered the name of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He remembered that Germaine Scott had given him a copy of Bhutto's autobiography. He remembered that Bhutto's marriage had been arranged but that she fell in love with her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, (he didn't remember that name) afterwards.
I had gone to his apartment at the priest's residence, top floor of Fatima College to tell him that I was going to Guyana for a few months.
"You will need something to read," he said as he plucked the book off the shelf. I tried to convince him that he should keep the book and read it especially as I had already taken the Anne Murray CD, a gift from the same Germaine Scott. He tried equally hard to convince me that he didn't need to read it again.
I sat at his computer, a trusty Mac G4 ibook, checking to make sure his email was working, his online newspapers were loading and that he would have no computer problems for those few months. After about 20 minutes of total silence (he was peeved) and out of nowhere he asked "What is Sura (something or the other)". The pronunciation of the second word had me stumped for a long, long time. Then he explained it. While Benazir was in prison she recited this prayer 49 times every night he told me. I checked every chapter where Bhutto was in prison and came across the reference. The prayer is very short and when translated into English says:

In The Name Of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful

Say: He, Allah, is One.

Allah is He on Whom all depend.

He begets not, nor is He begotten.

And none is like Him. Father had read the book.

2013 – The Year that was
Ariti Jankie shares her thoughts

A moment of truth flashes past me from the mirror with every bathroom call.
I must do something to help that woman. I’m so fond of her. Why doesn’t she pause to look into her eyes, to fix what’s broken?
If the truth be known, she fears loneliness for she has had a lot of it.
During Christmas of 2012, she was alone. Families celebrated all around. Husband gone, the children abroad, she desired a family and six months into 2013, she found her family. And she is happy but the loneliness is ever present.
There is another mirror as one year ends and another begins; the mirror of hope, a chance to start all over again.
And this woman, this year understands that loneliness is different from “alone-ness”. Loneliness is not having someone to share the things that matter most while alone-ness gives her an almost perfect life. She warms her coffee with the morning sun and music is her almost constant companion. She touches hands with hundreds like her in the social media with just the right amount of knowing you and rejoices knowing that she knows how to reach you.
This year, she migrated to Houston, Texas. It’s like one of her former home towns: New Delhi. The summer was scorching hot and I know yet what the winter is like. I came at the end of June and planted hot peppers (what’s it with Trinis and hot pepper?), bigan, bodi and caraille. The machan went up for the carailli and just as it was about to bear, the weather changed.  Bigan died up with all the flowers. The bodi was harvested.

Long time ago in Trinidad, almost every yard had a fine-flower on a hard tall flowers tree called MYRTLE. (Alyou remember?) Many colours of the Myrtle were all over the place here in Houston while other plants dried down. Now the Myrtle lost her leaves and the roses are all over….My first fall…at first the changing colour of the leaves from green to yellow was pretty but now I am impatient to plant back my garden.
Houston has history, culture………and I am just getting to know her.
I have been working on a collection of short stories which you will all enjoy, you can be sure of that because it is Trinidad and each one defines us, as a people.  I am calling it “WHISPERING HOPE” but the name might change.
A friend of mine is leaving Trinidad for India to spend a year and I want to document her journey right here. More on that at another time as I hope to keep on writing this blog. Is Ok if I write from here?

Lots of Love. 30/12/13.

Editor's Note: The plants in paragraph 6 are all vegetables grown in Trinidad. Carailli grows on a vine and the machan is a stand built for the vine to run.