LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Poetry Presentation, 2003

Presenter: Robert Buffum
Respondant: Greg Johnson
Recorder: Dendy Farrar
June 10, 2003

“The Saddu of Couva”

By Darek Walcott 

Presenter Notes and History of East Indians in St. Lucia:

“With the abolition of slavery in 1838 inevitably ahead of them, planters everywhere in the West Indies frantically began to look for another source of cheap labor, reliable labor to work their estates. They found this in Southeast Asia. Between 1845 and 1917, hundreds of thousands of indentured workers sailed India to the Caribbean. Most went to Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica-but some six thousand set foot on shore in St. Lucia. The labor contracts under which East Indians worked varied, but as a rule they were bound to work on a designated estate for five years in return for a wage, housing, clothing, food and medical care. After five years, they could choose between owning ten acres of land or ten pounds sterling or they could, after a further five or ten years of ‘industrial residence’ get a free passage back to India. The records show that about half of all indentured laborers went back to India after finishing their contracts. Dozens, perhaps hundreds more would have liked to return, but became economic hostages after the Immigration Fund ran dry, leaving no money for return passages. Indentured laborers in St. Lucia probably came from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in northern India. They were rural people-agricultural laborers and small farmers-of fairly low caste, although not usually the poorest people in their homeland. Many owned farms, cattle, and property in India and came out to the Caribbean with a purpose: to save money and return home for a better future. At the end of the day, creolisation has created it all: the process whereby peoples and cultures from an “Old World” are transposed to a “New World” where they proceed to recreate and reproduce themselves, shaping a culture and society that is neither a continuation of its old, constituting parts, nor something unrecognizably new” (Harmeson 1-3).

Couva is located in the south of Caroni County in central Trinidad. It is one of the oldest sugar villages. It is sugar that brought Couva to prominence.

“The original Ramayana was a 24,000 couplet-long epic poem attributed to the Sanskrit poet Valmiki. Oral versions of Rama’s story circulated for centuries, and the epic was probably written down sometime around the start of the Common Era”(Pai 1)

“Hanuman was a leader of the monkey tribe allied with Rama against Ravana. Hanuman has many magical powers because his father was the god of the wind” (Pai 2).

“Ramlochan Thakur (1754-1807) became the leader of the Tagore house. He was a great lover of music and extended liberal patronage to the professional performers of those days. It is known from many authentic contemporary accounts that Ramlochan used to arrange for musical performances on a grand scale at regular intervals and extended liberal invitation to members of the Calcutta elite” (Goswami 4).

Discussion of the Poem:

-In the very first line, we read of a brass gong sounding throughout Couva. According to Harmsen, a brass gong is sounded to assemble the village elders for a traditional meeting of their people (2).

-Then a soul is pictured flying over the sugar cane fields in a new freedom from the land of the conquerors of the past.  The British conquered Couva in 1797.

-Carolyn Richard writes in a former class that there is a lot of noise taking place in the second half of the first verse. I see it differently in that noise and loud music were often used to bring about a transcendental state of oneness with the divine in Eastern religious observance.

-Walcott refers to the fireflies as making every dusk Divali. Divali is known in the Hindu tradition as the festival of lights, which celebrated with lots of music being performed during that traditional time.

-Throughout the rest of the poem we have a picture of the elder becoming alienated by his own culture. The younger generation is leaving the old traditions behind to follow the ways of western culture.

-The last verse refers to the scene of his own cremation under the Hindu tradition. He is suggesting that his soul is now free from all pains of the earthly life that he has left behind.

Question posed by reader: “What does the cremation scene at the end of the poem symbolize?

Greg: Walcott wrote this poem for an older man in the twilight of his life in which he laments the loss of India, his first home. He remembers the rituals of home, but in old age he is realistic in that he knows that he cannot return. The young ones are living in a new reality. They are respectful of the elders, but they won’t repeat history, they will make their own way to the future. His life has been burned away, cremated, he can only rise up into sweet death. Implications of mischief are present-maby we were duped as a people, but what we hope for now dignity wise is most important.

Dr. White: Creation and death are standard images in the Indian background. What is the significance of women at a cremation in the Hindu tradition?

Krisann: Many times women will throw themselves at the funeral pyre to “die” with those they love.

Robert: Hindus worship fire because it both destroys and creates.

Dr. White: Bengal is an artistic center-it is really like another culture altogether.

Dr. White: It really is amazing how colonialism runs in so many different directions. First we are talking about India and its culture, now we see Indians living in the Caribbean. Also in Africa are located many Hindus, Ghandi worked in South Africa before coming to India. There are even Indian writers in the Caribbean. One is V.S. Naipaul, a Nobel Prize winning novelist. He wrote A House for Mr. Biswas, which is set in Trinidad about an Indian family. Another novel is A Bend in the River, which transpires in Africa.

Works Cited

Gaswami, Karunamaya. “Evolution of Bengali Music” The Independent. 28 December 2002  http://www.Independent-Bangladesh.com/news/dec/28/28122002ft.htm.

Harmsen, Jolien. “The East Indian Legacy in St. Lucia” St. Lucia National Trust  1999

            http://slucia.com/visions/indian,html.

Pai, Anant. “Introduction to the Ramayana” India Book House Limited.  2000  <http://www.askasia.org/adult_free_zone/virtual_gallery/exhibitions/index2.htm>.