Her Story and His Story 2

In 2000, Janet Naidu was on the shortlist of the Guyana Prize for Literature in the category of poetry. Her first collection, ‘Winged Heart’ (1999), earned her that distinction. Since then she has produced two other collections of poems namely ‘Rainwater’ and ‘Sacred Silence’. But her engagement in the literary arts goes further back than 1999. Her interest in writing was influenced by Rajkumari Singh whose home in Lamaha Street, Georgetown, was a cultural centre where people engaged in various art forms met for discussion on their work and for encouragement. Some of those artists included Henry Moottoo, Gora Singh, Mahadai Das, and Rooplall Monar. Naidu’s engagement with the arts started in the early 1970s and stayed with her blossoming as she migrated to Canada in the late 1970s.
Naidu has produced other genres of writing including the short story, essay and biography. Her biographical writing focused in elderly Guyanese. One of those elderly persons was her mother. Recently, she informed me of the passing of her mother causing me to revisit that biography which is a wide-ranging document focusing on her mother and also covering the movement of people of Indian origin from their ancestral home in India to multiple diasporas via Guyana and North America. The title of that biography is ‘Rivers and Green Fields Forever: The Golden Palm of Chelema Naidu’.
Chelema Naidu was born on September 12,, 1922, at Herstelling Plantation, East Bank Demerara, British Guiana. She was the second child of ten children, born to an indentured labourer who crossed the kala pani in 1915 from India to British Guiana (now Guyana). Chelema’s father, Murugan, was born in Mattura in Tamil Nadu; he came on the steamship S.S. Ganges as an indentured labourer. Chelema’s mother, Gangaram, was born at Herstelling. Murugan and Gangaram were married in 1940, the union producing four boys and five girls.
Chelema was the eldest of her siblings. She did not get a chance to go to school as schooling for young girls in that period was frowned upon, so her formative days were taken up with cutting grass and rearing of cattle while her parents went off to work in the backdam. Later, at age fourteen, Chelema worked on the sugar estate for three years; first, on the Young Weeding Gang as a ‘manure thrower’ – fertilising young cane plants – and then as ‘young weeder’ – cutting grass. It was a daunting task for a young girl to be fetching buckets of manure weighting thirty-five pounds, jumping drains, in heat or rain, going at it all day, from sun up to sun down. But she kept at it for the experience was seen as an apprenticeship to marriage. Arranged marriages and child marriages were a norm.
On March 1940, Chelema and Chinsammy Naidu were married in a Madras ceremony running through the day, ending before midnight. The union produced eight children. This generation of parenthood ensured that their offsprings were privileged with an education.
In 1986, Chelema migrated to Canada to be closer to her children. Here, she mourned her inability to read and write but she made up for that shortcoming in sharing her love with her children and grandchildren. Chelema died in 2014.
This is how the biography ended: ‘Floral lifelines are etched in her palm, telling stories of her caring nature, like the river flowing out to the wide ocean. Every now and then, trails of treasures are found in her footsteps…Etching of sacrifice and survival are often revealed in reflections of her compassion, humanity and generosity…’
This biography, ‘Rivers and Green Fields Forever: The Golden Palm of Chelema Naidu’ and the story of Chelema Baidu now form part of our living history.

What’s happening:
* Now available two new books by Basdeo Mangru, ‘Colonial Emigration from the Bengal Presidency’ and ‘Kanpur to Kolkata: Labour recruitment for the sugar colonies’.

(Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)

(By Petamber Persaud)