R.R. Jaram's Blog
September 16, 2015
Exparanza - A Synopsis.
Set in Trinidad & Tobago in an historical period 1889-1970's, this totally fictitious story spanning three generations from the first arrival in the then Colony of a Hindu priest. The man would become, unavoidably afflicted by the social & economic conditions of the day, that he observes daily deleteriously affecting people in whichever direction he looks. Eventually, he determines that his life in this society, has come to be futile, unless of course, he could lend it to effect meaningful change to the existence of the people around him: to bring about the sort of transformation that will effectively deliver, what had he the language to term it, "economic relief and social justice," across the wider social fabric encompassing the entire working class population, in the Trinidad & Tobago of his day.
For a number of rationally valid reasons; language for him, being perhaps the paramount consideration, he determined that the place to work for the initiation of this change he seeks, would need be back in his own Country, India. Not Trinidad; his country after all, being effectively responsible for the enmasse shipment of his people to places like this Colony!
With undertones of Don Quixote de La Mancha, for those who knows the story, he would leave his wife and children, to journey back home, intent on overturning and reversing the ills inherent in the Indentureship system of Recruitment. A system, ‘invented’ as he saw it, as a means to solving a labour problem, brought about by the abolition of Slavery. The rectification in other words, of one wrong by the introduction of an equally horrendous one!
The story though, is not of the man but the devastated wife who, as quickly as a flash, realises that she with her four children; the eldest twelve; the youngest still full eight months away from birth, quite suddenly have become a single parent family! The account is of how, without any source of help whatsoever, she would overcome her difficulties and deprivations.
One of her very first acts will be of putting her mark to a promissory note, against which she has negotiated use of a piece of land: the next will be utilising the soil and largely valueless vegetative matter thereon, with which to draw around her children and herself a wall, and above their heads, a roof. The togetherness and love this would assure them, would lead to strength of purpose to face the roughest of storms.
A new man she realised both necessary and crucial for family leadership; she would propel her eight year old son Dayaram, to the forefront to exemplify this at every turn of every corner Rain or Shine; his job would be to survive and triumph over the very fears his father the Pundit, had baulked at.
For a number of rationally valid reasons; language for him, being perhaps the paramount consideration, he determined that the place to work for the initiation of this change he seeks, would need be back in his own Country, India. Not Trinidad; his country after all, being effectively responsible for the enmasse shipment of his people to places like this Colony!
With undertones of Don Quixote de La Mancha, for those who knows the story, he would leave his wife and children, to journey back home, intent on overturning and reversing the ills inherent in the Indentureship system of Recruitment. A system, ‘invented’ as he saw it, as a means to solving a labour problem, brought about by the abolition of Slavery. The rectification in other words, of one wrong by the introduction of an equally horrendous one!
The story though, is not of the man but the devastated wife who, as quickly as a flash, realises that she with her four children; the eldest twelve; the youngest still full eight months away from birth, quite suddenly have become a single parent family! The account is of how, without any source of help whatsoever, she would overcome her difficulties and deprivations.
One of her very first acts will be of putting her mark to a promissory note, against which she has negotiated use of a piece of land: the next will be utilising the soil and largely valueless vegetative matter thereon, with which to draw around her children and herself a wall, and above their heads, a roof. The togetherness and love this would assure them, would lead to strength of purpose to face the roughest of storms.
A new man she realised both necessary and crucial for family leadership; she would propel her eight year old son Dayaram, to the forefront to exemplify this at every turn of every corner Rain or Shine; his job would be to survive and triumph over the very fears his father the Pundit, had baulked at.
