Dear editor,

AS we observe Pitri Paksh, the period of paying tribute to the ancestors, I pay homage to Cheddi Jagan’s mother, Bachaoni. Not much attention was focused on the contribution of hardworking women like Jagan’s mother in the plantations, and the important role they played in raising children while labouring in the fields. She played a significant role in community development.

I was raised in Ankerville, Port Mourant, just three short streets from where the Jagan’s lived; Bachaoni with Cheddi, and the other siblings and their father, Jagan, who had only one name, which was very common among Indians in India, and places where they were taken as indentured slaves. I used to play bumper-ball cricket right near their home; and behind their yard was a large playground for hard-ball cricket. It was at this ground that I scored my hundred in youth cricket, and decimated an opponent with fast bowling. This was also the ground where famous cricketers during the post- indentureship period played before moving on to the Ankerville and Port Mourant Cricket Grounds, and others nearby. From the ground behind the Jagans, which had no stand or pavilion or stand-pipes, one can see all the fruit trees in the family compound: Genip, mango, sugar apple, sapodilla and cherry, among others. The old lady was generous in sharing fruits; she also grew lots of vegetables or ‘greens’. The family would allow players to pass through the yard as a short-cut to the ground. Later, the ground was abandoned and used for rice cultivation. I believe sugar workers now occupy the ground, carving out house-lots as squatters.

I remember the Jagans’ home and the old lady well, because I used to visit occasionally, delivering groceries from my aunt’s store. I was happy to go, because you get a ‘lil frek’ (tip), and she allows you to pick fruits. In those days, if you get a cent or a ‘gil’, you could buy a lot of sweets and or a buns. She had a habit of “ouchaying” (giving blessings to religious people and Brahmins). As a Kurmi, an agricultural caste, she had enormous respect for higher- caste Brahmins and Kshatriyas. Several had their foreheads or feet touched by her for blessings, as was the custom in those days.
The old lady was never called by name; ‘Aunty Bachaoni’ was inappropriate. I never heard anyone call her as such. Older women were called ‘aji’, ‘nanni’ or ‘mai’. Jagan’s mother was ‘aji’ or ‘nanni’ among the youths, and ‘mai’, or ‘mousie’, or ‘poa’ or ‘didi’ among the older folks. Cheddi and brothers Derek and Oudit, and my father were around the same age, and they knew each other well, as they grew up on nearby ‘logies’ on the estate. Cheddi’s father and my ‘aja’ knew each other well, and they socialised in Hindi. Oudit and my father worked at the ‘back-dam’ together like kin. So, referring to Bachaoni as ‘aji’ was most appropriate. She would call the younger ones like us ‘beta’ (son), or ‘beti’ (daughter).

Bachaoni would visit Aunty Bethlyn’s shop near The Cresh in Ankerville beside the main road; it was my job to deliver the ‘goods’. Bachaoni liked to visit with Aunty Bethlyn, my father’s first cousin, because she spoke Bhojpuri, in which Bachaoni was very fluent. It gave her an opportunity to socialise in her ‘Mother Tongue’. Bachaoni was born in Uttar Pradesh, India, and came to Guyana with her mother when she was not even two years old, surviving that treacherous three-month journey aboard the ship in rough seas. Oudit’s wife, Aunty Janey, also shopped at Bethlyn’s, and sometimes I would also deliver her ‘goods’. Janey and Oudit had three daughters: Rita, Doreen, and a younger one. Aunty Janey was from Belvedere, but had married into the Jagan family. It was a ‘match wedding’, as all marriages were at the time. Bachaoni, Janey, and the girls were very warm, kind, and friendly to visitors, and to me when I delivered ‘goods’.

Whenever I saw Bachaoni at home, she was always dressed in white; it could be because she was a widow, and in Hindu custom, widows don’t dress in very colourful clothing. She was also a very religious lady; people wore white when worshiping. She had a ‘kutiya’ (small temple for home-worshiping), and was very often seen offering prayers, clad in beautiful, spotless white and ‘orni’. She would also worship regularly at the Port Mourant Shivala Temple. Aunty Janey also patronised the temple. Bachaoni and her daughter-in-law never missed a major religious service at the Shivala.

When Bachaoni passed away in the early 1970s, it was a huge funeral; the largest, perhaps, on the Corentyne prior to Cheddi’s in 1997. There was bhajan singing and nightly wake ‘til the completion of the 13-day prayers. The tents were packed nightly. Oudit performed the rituals, and did the ‘shraad’ or ‘dead wuk’. Mourners came from afar. Many knew Bachaoni because she’d lived in Albion and Port Mourant, and came to pay last respects. Port Mourant people who’d moved to other locations on the Corentyne between the 1940s and 1960s, came for the funeral rites. Being Jagan’s mother also drew a crowd at the funeral. The old lady was well-known, especially in religious circles, as she patronised every Bhagwat and Ramayana in the area. I don’t think anyone from Ankerville and neighbouring ‘Bound Yard’ and ‘Free Yard’ missed that funeral. Forbes Burnham also came to the funeral, and referred to her as “maa”, an honour of respect. Burnham knew Bachaoni during the early days of the freedom struggle, when he and Cheddi were allies. For the one-year Shraad, when ‘Dhal’ was very scarce during the early 1970s, Burnham redirected dhal from Linden to Uncle Oudit’s home. The dahl was delivered by two of the PM’s civil servants, who’d made a special trip from ‘town’. The entire estate of Ankerville and neighbouring villages were invited to the ‘puja’; it was a community affair, with neighbours coming together to make preparation for the final one-year prayer service for the soul of Bachaoni Aji.

I do not know if Pitri Puja was performed for Bachaoni or Cheddi’s father. With Janey being a religious woman, she would have insisted that Oudit perform Pitri for them. But after Oudit’s passing, there was probably no one around to pay ancestral tribute to Bachaoni and her husband, as all her sons have passed on.

She was an amazing woman, who’d laboured perhaps even harder than her husband. She worked in the ‘backdam’, on the estates, planted a garden, and took care of her children, earning and saving to send Cheddi to Queen’s College and to the USA to become a doctor (dentist) to help the others, as was the custom.

Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram