In honour of Diwali
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.
It is one of the most spectacular religious festivals. Known as the Festival of Lights, it is sacred to the Hindu religion and is a particular time of worship for devotees of Hinduism. But it has a very wide popular outreach which serves as a vehicle to publicly broadcast the principles and beliefs of the religion. For example, the very attractive and magnificent spectacle of the lighting of diyas in households and other buildings, grand meelas, chowtals, music and dance, the creation of Rangoli, and the grand motorcade promoted by the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha in Georgetown and practiced in villages elsewhere. The motorcade has been severely curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was cancelled in 2020, and this year it will be substituted by the grand lighting of diyas at the Kitty roundabout in Georgetown.
The poems above are in honour of this religious, national, cultural, traditional and popular calendar festival.
“Sita and Jatayu” by Lilawattee Manoo-Rahming of Trinidad and Tobago, is worth revisiting because it is a remarkable poem in its own right, but one which draws closely and cleverly on the Hindu faith, its myth and belief in crafting post-colonial political positions related to indentureship and Caribbean society.
Diwali is an occasion for the worship of a major Hindu deity, Lakshmi, goddess of light, prosperity, power, wealth, fortune and beauty. The lighting of the houses is a symbolic way of inviting her into the homes, hearts and consciousness of the devotees.
But the lights are also related to the conquest of good over evil, enlightenment over darkness, which is manifested in the triumph of Lord Ram (Rama) over the demon king Rawan (Ravan; Rawana).