I too was an Indian

“Wow, The Sea is so beautiful”, I said as the ship set sail.

After many days, we reached an island.

I asked Baba which place it was. He placed me on his shoulder and said, “We are very close to our home. We will go back soon”.

There were around thousands of us.

We settled down on the island in tiny huts. I missed my village, my home, my old friends, and my grandparents. But every time I was assured, we will go back one day.

Days turned into Months, and Months into Years. As I grew up, I also started working in the sugarcane fields like my parents, older brothers and all the others who had come with us on the ship.

I soon found out, the red marks on my father’s back were the marks of the whip, which our supposed employer used on almost every individual working in his fields.

“Baba, let's go back”, I said crying one day, when our neighbor Bansi Chacha died due to severe beatings and starvation. My father hugged us, cried and said, “We have been trapped my son. This is no place close to our Homeland, India. This is some faraway island country near America. We all have been tricked and now none of us knows how we can return”.

It was 1862 when our ship full of poor and unaware indentured laborers harbored on the coast of the Caribbean. We lived in Trinidad all this while, assuming for a long time that we are somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, very near to our homes, close to our loved ones back there. As the harsh reality of our lives unfolded, many among us were killed, and many were tortured to death. Those who complied, survived; with bruises from the whips and skin burns from the sun. We all worked around 18 hours at a stretch, but we survived!

I got married here, started my family and somehow learned to live happily.

In around 1917, the Indenture System was abolished by Law, and we all got our so-called Independence.

But after having stayed in Trinidad for nearly 60 years, I had nothing left to turn back to in my Homeland, my country, India. Our living conditions improved substantially over the years, and we are now citizens of Trinidad. I could not go back, but every day I prayed for my India’s Independence. I often heard about my Nation’s fight against the British Empire and before I died, all I wanted to hear was about India’s Independence.

And finally, after almost 85 years of patience, I did. Today is 15th August 1947, and here I am listening to the news on our radio about how the events of India’s Independence unfolded. I wish I could have seen the British troops and officials leave my country and go back to their tyrant nation. But the news itself gives me peace. Now I am free to depart from this world.

By an unknown Caribbean Indian

Penned in August 1947.