THEY CAME IN SHIPS
by Mahadai Das
From across the seas, they came.
Britain colonising India, transporting her chains
from Chota Nagpur and the Ganges Plain.
Westwards came the Whitby,
The Hesperus,
the Island-bound Fatel Rozack.
Wooden missions of imperialist design.
Human victims of her Majesty’s victory.
They came in fleets.
They came in droves
like cattle
brown like cattle,
eyes limpid, like cattle.
Some came with dreams of milk-and-honey riches,
fleeing famine and death:
dancing girls,
Rajput soldiers, determined, tall,
escaping penalty of pride.
Stolen wives, afraid and despondent,
crossing black waters,
Brahmin, Chammar, alike,
hearts brimful of hope.
I saw them dying at streetcorners, alone, hungry
for a crumb of British bread,
and a healing hand’s mighty touch.
I recall my grandfather’s haunting gaze;
my eye sweeps over history
to my children, unborn
I recall the piracy of innocence,
light snuffed like a candle in their eyes.
I alone today am alive.
I remember logies, barrackrooms, ranges,
nigga-yards. My grandmother worked in the field.
Honourable mention.
Creole gang, child labour.
Second prize.
I recall Lallabhagie, Leonora’s strong children,
and Enmore, bitter, determined.
Remember one-third quota, coolie woman.
Was your blood spilled so I might reject my history –
forget tears among the paddy fields.
At the horizon’s edge, I hear
voices crying in the wind. Cuffy shouting:
‘Remember 1763!’ – John Smith – ‘If I am
a man of God, let me join with suffering.’
Akkarra – ‘I too had a vision.’
Des Voeux cried,
‘I wrote the queen a letter,
for the whimpering of coolies in logies
would not let me rest.’
The cry of coolies echoed round the land.
They came, in droves, at his office door
beseeching him to ease their yoke.
Crosby struck in rage against planters,
in vain. Stripped of rights, he heard
the cry of coolies continue.
Commissioners came,
capital spectacles in British frames
consulting managers about costs of immigration.
The commissioners left, fifty-dollar bounty remained.
Dreams of a cow and endless calves,
and endless reality in chains.
