Spotting Purvanchal of 1800s in the Caribbean
It is 2022. I am in the queue at the immigration section in Mumbai airport, holding my passport with a crisp boarding-pass neatly tucked in it. Even though I have made many such trips, the act of playing it cool stays like a muscle memory. I have a fellow traveller who got his passport made especially for this trip. So, he is a bit nervous. Two counters are vacant, and we occupy these. The immigration officer looks like a strict 1990s dad about to check your report card. I throw in a bit of English to assure the officer I haven't sold my ancestral land to fund this trip and never return. The drama is at the other counter. Cricketer Nicholas Pooran, on being asked if he wishes to some day return to his ancestral land to search for his roots, didn't seem very interested. (AFP)
'So, where are you traveling?' the officer asks my friend, even though the boarding pass mentions the destination.
'Sir, West Indies'
'What? There is no country like that'
My friend panics. I pitch in, 'Sir, Trinidad & Tobago, that's where we are going'. I say this with a broad smile. The immigration officer isn't amused. I sound like a trafficker.
'Sir, we are going to cover the India vs West Indies series. Check the letter of invitation from the West Indian cricket board,' I build our case further.
The familiar palm-tree-on-an-island logo of West Indies on the letterhead finally assuages him. After sufficient inquiry, he stamps the passport. The mechanical sound of the stamp is the sound of success.
The year is 1845. The imperial world has just abolished slavery, so there is a huge shortage of workers at the sugarcane plantations. All the tropical islands in the Commonwealth need more hands, including Trinidad & Tobago. So, the colonisers dangle a work agreement to people in British India, especially the Purvanchal region. 'Agreement' gets colloquialised into girmit and the people who sign it are now girmitiyas – mostly outcasts, widowers, landless, and, in general, with not much to lose. After a basic health check, they are bundled into a ship at the Calcutta port. After a 90-day journey via the Cape of Good Hope, they land at Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital.
A British clerk asks their names. A guy named Shravan answers in a Maghai accent, 'Sarwan'. The clerk promptly records the phonetic spelling in English. Shravan's descendants bear the mis-spelled last name for generations, one of them being the cricketer Ramnaresh Sarwan. That's how a Shiv Narayan becomes Sivnarine, a Devi Prasad is a Davy Persaud, and so on. There are no last names. They left caste behind in India. The labourers tried to create a caste system in Trinidad, but due to the sheer shortage of women and a lot of inter-marriage, it died out pretty soon. Their religion, music and cuisine did not. And that's how I could have chhole bhature outside the Brian Charles Lara Cricket stadium in Port of Spain. They call it 'double' because, back in the day, they served two bhaturas with chana sandwiched in the middle.
I was in Port of Spain with influencers and journalists from India to cover the India versus West Indies cricket series, staying at the same hotel as the players. Such proximity is always fun. At one point, I helped Arshdeep Singh pick the right ingredients for his omelette at the breakfast buffet. And even searched for the right dal tadka with Hardik Pandya. But these are trivial pursuits one can even chance upon in a hotel in Mumbai; hence, being a purvanchali, I was fascinated more by the history of this unique place.
For me, it felt like finding the Uttar Pradesh/Bihar of the 1800s preserved in the West Indies. Thankfully, the locals emigrated before the invention of gutka, hence the roads and walls are spotlessly clean. Imagine the Bihar of the 19th century, sans the caste system, paan masala, poor civic sense, but all the amazing food, the music, the sweet dialect, and devotion to their gods.
Everyone's great-grandfather was an indentured labourer, everyone started from scratch, with no systemic inequalities, no caste privilege. One can only dream of such utopia. I asked the cricketer Nicholas Pooran if he wishes to some day return to his ancestral land, to search for his roots. He didn't seem very interested. I don't blame him.
Notably, the African-Americans celebrate the Day of Emancipation, the day when they were freed from slavery, but the Indo-Carribeans celebrate the Day of Arrival, the day they landed in the country.
I asked a bunch of people in a queue at the stadium entrance, who looked of Indian-origin, with a bit of sarcasm, 'So, which team do you support?' They looked at me with some distaste and revealed the maroon jersey. This is the place their grandparents were born, who spoke Creole, not Bhojpuri. For them, I was the village cousin. They were curious to know more about me, but that's about it. They aren't coming back to investigate their roots. That ship, as they say, has sailed.
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal.
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