From Calcutta to Trinidad they went, the first wave of the Indian diaspora, little known and far from celebrated. This debut novel by linguist and writer Peggy Mohan illuminates for us the peculiar joys and travails of that first journey across the oceans, starting with the train ride from Faizabad to Calcutta, the journey by steamship down the Hooghly, the three-month long sea voyage around the stormy Cape and up the Atlantic to Port of Spain, where the weary travellers settle into life as indentured labourers on the sugar estates of Trinidad. The narrator, a young linguist researching the history and use of Bhojpuri in Trinidad, meets Deeda, a 110-year-old woman who came to the Caribbean on the same ship as her greatgreat grandmother. Deeda tells her two stories: one her own, about leaving her village with her child and sailing across the seas, and the other a fairy tale about a female monkey who leaves her mate behind and opts to become human. Mohan deftly gathers all these separate narratives of migration and transformation to craft an exquisitely told tale celebrating the triumph of the human will and imagination
- Paperback: 280 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins (December 1, 2007)
- Language: English
