Status Updates From Portrait of an Island on Fire

‘A thread keeping us sane in the howling dark—my grandmother—who’d cook octopus curry—papaya leaves—recipes passed down through generations—The timing surprised me—If the agreement was signed, we would become significantly wealthier, as a nation, because of that blood money. Blood rent that would end the cost-of-living crisis. I felt sick. I felt like an idiot most of the time—I couldn't fathom how many millions—’

‘—live reports—uncensored information—investigative reporting & interview segments—gave an unparalleled overview of what was happening, personal & political, since both were intertwined anyway. On & on it went—these stories of personal grief & institutional putrefaction—headlines one after the other—I remembered the most were—about women & children—about how we were being failed—following old generational tradition—’

‘Saramandi—my grandmother’s—name’s origins were unknown—Ariel, I chose after—Plath. Ariel—a vessel—conductor—until my death. White men who were not racist—garnered—religious level of adoration from non-white Mauritians. It took me time to learn that I should pay attention to the terrible things that happened to those I despised. Their misfortunes—symptomatic of—dreadful power helmed at the top—I could barely fathom.’

‘It took the worst ecological disaster in our history to bring us—together—all ethnicities, all social classes—Black waves bring animals to the—shore. Sticky—on the oil-slicked surface—Lana del Rey posts a filtered, cryptic picture of the spill—no caption. Disaster aesthetics. Her fans wonder if this is the cover art for her next single—Videos of—whales bobbing helpless—Hydrocarbons were found in the whales’ bodies.’

‘Around me I see once youthful women reduced to filaments of their selves by their early thirties, exhausted by the effort it takes to live here—They don’t want to come back if they can help it—a move back to Mauritius could make financial sense, given the costs of childcare abroad. But—more exorbitant,—intolerable, is the island’s rapacious misogyny—jobs they’ve been offered here are not something we can aspire to—’

‘—we know what it is to be defined in cost ratios—balance sheets—assigned some arbitrary notion of worth ascribed to our ‘productivity’. Yet when it comes to—‘standard of living’—we don’t hesitate to treat others the way our own ancestors were treated—as long as we don’t have to look—be reminded of what the heavily exploited body looks like. We’ve mythologised our ancestors—We live in ‘smart cities’—‘technology hub’’

‘—in Le Malaise Créole—Creoles experienced ‘both fragmentation & hybridisation, such that three hundred years later, Creoles are a people of mixed African, Indian, Chinese & European heritage.’ I think about who we are & where we’ve come from—I think about the kinds of machinations involved—The confidence of the sugar companies, who know they can just pay lawyers to defer the case until her money runs out for good.’

‘—He has bleached himself into oblivion—There are several common narratives of the taking—An illiterate widow signs acres of land to corrupt notaries, who promise that her progeny will be taken care of. Families are chased out of their homes—With time, these sugar companies consolidated—turned into conglomerates—They now dominate the private sector. Sugar—worth next to nothing now—& has to be monetised differently.’

‘Sometimes I wonder whether I hold the language as sacrosanct—language of the sublime—my sublime—that I won’t tamper with, won’t attempt. That may change. My son—borrows from—three languages to express himself—A fourth & fifth language—be budding—sings along to old Hindi & Mauritian Bhojpuri songs—I wonder if he’ll end up choosing one language over another. I hope he won’t feel like he has to. This is how it starts.’

‘I am back in the place I started. I’d seen my future as a straight line—to getting out of here. A line that turned out to be a loop—one of the best universities—chance at a better life—My dreams were banal, grandiose, formidably naïve—I had conformed to island-wide expectations—I learned the intricate ways in which language is linked to ethnicity—People often assume I can’t speak Kreol—single-language dominance—’