What can you say about a holiday in which we celebrate a people's arrival to a new and distant land-even if the circumstances surrounding that arrival were horrific? Indian Arrival Day fascinates me because it puts a positive spin on an otherwise dark chapter in Caribbean history. It celebrates people arriving and making Trinidad and Tobago their home, rather than the horrible circumstances in which they came or lived as indentured servants. I don't want to compare indentureship to slavery, and I don't want to criticise a holiday like Emancipation Day.
This is not my intention. I merely want to celebrate the spirit of this holiday because it truly is a remarkable commemoration of a people's spirit of discovering and finding a new home. Historically speaking, we know and remember how a people filled with hope and dreams of a better life in a far-off land were duped into servitude so that they could work in West Indian sugar cane fields. The ability to put that terrible period into perspective and celebrate the fact that the East Indians came and stayed and contributed culturally speaking to the West Indies says a lot about a people's pride and fortitude.
And what would T&T be without Trinis who trace their roots to India? The food alone-fat, juicy dalpuri with split peas spilling out like the gold that Sir Walter Raleigh searched in vain for in the El Dorado of his dreams is enough to make us appreciate the contribution of those early East Indian immigrants.
I am here, living in Trinidad, because I came to live in central with my friend Pam, who later became my aunt through marriage.
I lived in a little, white board house on stilts in the middle of a cane field in Warrenville, sandwiched between Cunupia and Caroni, and I ate chataigne and curried mango, pumpkin and bhaji on a banana leaf when there were prayers and funerals and Divali, the Festival of Lights, and everyone in the neighbourhood-regardless of ethnicity-was invited to celebrate a Hindu holiday. I lived with Moi who woke up every morning to spin sada roti on the tawa and then stuff it with pumpkin and shrimp for me to eat before I went to work as a journalist. I have heard chirping crickets sing stories of those cane fields and their place in our history.
I lived in Warrenville at a time when people still donned their black boots and carried their cutlasses to go into those cane fields to chop cane. I have seen and heard those raging fires sweeping through cane fields, and I have woken up to the smell of brown sugar simmering in those fires. What always struck me the most when I lived in Warrenville was the generosity of spirit that I cannot begin to describe. Even the poorest of people cooked and shared their food with visitors.
There was always a warmth and pride that matched those surrounding cane fields, and I was always reminded that this village was carved out of a sugar cane field. Even to this day, when I want to renew my spirit, I go to Warrenville because I swear the smiles are brighter there. Many of the people I know are gone now. My aunt Pam makes roti in her own restaurant in Seattle. Moi, who was like a grandmother to me when I first came to Trinidad, died many years ago. I miss Moi's sister, Acka, who made her life as joyful as possible after her son was tragically killed and her husband died.
Acka, who only spoke Bhojpuri Hindi, donned her urni over her western-style dress and attended Hindu prayers all over Trinidad. I still remember Acka calling, "Oi," when she came back from prayers and then sitting in the hammock under the high board house to give us all the "scores." Warrenville, I always thought, was a mystical, magical place, a place I wanted to share with everyone in Sugar Cane Arrows, the drama series that I wrote. This was my home when I first came to Trinidad and it is the place where I feel my sense of roots. A sugar cane field, I discovered, felt a lot like the wheat fields where I grew up in Ohio.
In the evenings, when I sat on the steps of Pam's house, and watched the ibis fly home to the Caroni Swamp and the jumbo jets fly low enough on their descent to Piarco Airport for me to read the name of the airline, it never occurred to me to feel homesick. It never occurred to me to return to America because I felt like I was home in that cane field. Indian Arrival Day pays homage to a people arriving in T&T. It says we are glad we came and stayed.Yes, times were bad, life was unspeakably hard, but we have put that behind us. What is most important is that we arrived. And that's exactly how I have always felt. We should all be glad that we are here.
