Pa placed me on his shoulders and walked through flood, mud and slush along Clarke Road, Penal to show me where I was born. We went off the road and across a ravine in the cocoa field. Some where there he pointed out the place where I was born.

I was about five or six years then. I never went back to the spot, but Clarke Road, Penal was the only place where I met and spoke to people who could tell of the early years of my father, in Trinidad. He was closest to the Seepersad family and although no blood relations, they are the only family on my father's side, I know.

Born in Uttra Pradesh, India in 1878. Arrived in Trinidad November 1917, just a year before World War I ended. Died in April 1938.

One other person, Satanand Maharaj in Gasparillo seemed to have known him in India. Both of them behaved like brothers. It was Satanand who said that my father was married in India and had two children before he left home. He lso said that my father had first gone to Guyana and returned home to India, but there he was considered an outsider. It was on this second trip that Satanand joined him and they came to Trinidad.

Satanand Maharaj did mention quite a few things which I had noted in a notebook, but I have no idea what became of that book. What Satanand said was that my grand parents were wealthy and had a large family. My father in playing sword fight with a cousin, accidently wounded him, and in fear ran away from home.

Why my father could not read nor write, any language? Satanand said that in wealthy families it did not matter and although my father, like himself were of the Brahmin caste they did not serve as "pandits".

The impression I have is that my father did not serve his 5 years indentureship. He had wounded a white "overseer" who, he claimed had threatened to strike him with a horse whip. I don't recall whether he was jailed or what really, next.

I understand too, that he had met my mother two years before I was born. That places their meeting in 1921, which was four years after his arrival in 1917.

It would seem that he was 47 years of age when he arrived in Trinidad and that he was 53 and my mother, 41 when I was born in 1923.