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Meri Ma


As on my father's side, I knew no one on my mother's side. I knew not the love or care or feelings of grand-parents. I just knew I was supposed to have grand-parents, like everybody else.

Did my mother have brothers and sisters or was she the only child for my Nanie? Who was my Nanie and what about my Nanaa? What life style did they have?

Now, today, here I only wish I had hugged my mother and get her to talk some, about her parents. Even my sisters and brother .. all older than I .. never talked about them or if they did, I do not recall.

There's a faint recollection that my mother was born at sea ... while my Nanie was coming from India aboard one of the sail ships to serve as an indentured immigrant. And then, somehow I think I was told that she was born at Lavantee (Bonne Aventure) Estate.

Anyway, my memories indicate my mother grew up at Bonne Aventure. She was married at six but stayed with her mother, according to a traditional custom brought from India. In India itself, it had become the common practice, especially among the middle and poorer classes. Then, the Arabs had already invaded India and the Hindus felt that by marrying out their girls early, they could deter the Muslims from raping and/or abducting them to either sell as slaves or use them as concubines.

She was married to Gajadhar ... son of an indentured immigrant ... but that marriage was never meant to be. Eventually, Gajadhar married the daughter of another indentured immigrant, who had already served his contract and now owned a small cocoa estate on Caratal Road.

Subsequently, just when and how is not known, she was the wife of Gayadeen Singh with whom she had my five sisters and brother. Gayadeen Singh died in 1914, shortly after World War I began and just six days after my last sister, Rookmin, known as Toowarie (the sad one), was born.

During my early school years at Bonne Aventure, however, I did get to learn some about Nanie from Naw Thackoor (a traditional type barber) who lived north-west of Bonne Aventure Canadian Mission School in a small village, dotted with, carrat covered mud huts on mounds of red-clay soil.

There lived several other old people along a foot track that led from Caratal Road to the Bonne Aventure Main Road, in front the Estate Manager's Mansion. This track also led to the school and the Head Master's (Daniel P. Kalloo) house.

Naw Thackoor who came on the same boat with Gayadeen Singh (a youngster then) recalled that Nanie was a very popular as a sort of a "mystic lady" who helped people with cures including scorpion stings. It was from her, my mother learnt to "jharay" scorpion sting.

When and how my Nanie died or did she return to India, I don't know, even though I feel Naw or my mother would have told me ... if I pressed to know.

Nanie, I learnt was a Kali worshipper. To this day, there are groups in Trinidad, particularly in County Caroni, who worship Kali but one is always warned that "Kali worship is no joke thing." My mother maintained the Kali pooja, every few years, for several years until I she became too ill to continue. She said then that she had appeased Kali Mataa and asked for her forgiveness. Kali Mataa, she said would always protect me, even though the pooja was no longer mandatory.

Although I recall my mother with her long sleeved jumpers, ashes black clothes and face, with dripping sweat, an old hat covering her bandaged head and gilpin (cutlass) in hand, I knew then as now, she was not well. Ma suffered from one ailment to another and most of her latter life, her arms and legs were swollen. Her pains at times seemed unbearable and then, there was hardly a known ointment, including pitch-oil and salt, that she did not rub to keep down the pain and burning.

Like my father, her quiet moments were spent with the cheelum (clay cone shaped pipe) ... filled with raw tobacco, cut fine and mixed with sugar. This she carried with her in the cane-fields and garden but never anywhere else.


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