searingedrock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
searingedrock) wrote2011-07-13 10:43 am
searingedrock) wrote2011-07-13 10:43 am
(no subject)
I bought a case for my phone from one of the booths in the mall and the boy was Indian. He asked me where I was from and they always look confused when I say Trinidad. I told him I was half Indian and half Chinese to try to simplify and he instantly became friendlier; he said he wouldn't charge me to use my debit card for the transaction even though it was below the £10 limit "because I was Indian". I felt slightly sick.
My family comes from the country, from here and from far away. The Caribs are a native tribe and died of many diseases when the Europeans came. The rest were enslaved and died slowly, or threw themselves into the ocean. Some intermarried and the tribes living deep in the interior remained. My grandfather is part Carib, part Venezuelan, part Portuguese. The East Indians came here for indentured labour to work the sugar cane fields. They were given land at the end of their indenture and many stayed. My father is Chinese, his family came to Tobago and started a business there but moved over to Trinidad. My mother and father were born here, and my mother's parents were born here.
Damian said when his grandfather arrived here from China, they docked at the port of San Fernando in the south and parted with a friend he had made on the boat. He went off with one shopkeeper on his donkey cart, and his friend went another way. They never saw each other again. My Indian great-grandmother lost her husband on the journey to the West Indies and met another man who took care of her and her two sons. Even our family name, Doodnath, is not our real name; it is my great-great-grandfather's first name. Many East Indians couldn't speak English and couldn't understand how to fill out the forms when they landed here. Many put new names, rich names like Singh, Maharaj and Mahabir. There is absolutely no way I can ever trace my family in India, and they wouldn't acknowledge me if I did. Same for the Chinese.
We are country folk deep down; we need to be near the sea and smell salt in the air and dig down into the dirt of a wide warm garden with insects and animals and fruit and come in from the sun to drink cold water, spilling into runnels down chin and neck. There are birds there that cry in a way only we know, the sky is a particular shade of blue, grass a fiery green, sounds closer to the ear, pressed down by the sun.
My family comes from the country, from here and from far away. The Caribs are a native tribe and died of many diseases when the Europeans came. The rest were enslaved and died slowly, or threw themselves into the ocean. Some intermarried and the tribes living deep in the interior remained. My grandfather is part Carib, part Venezuelan, part Portuguese. The East Indians came here for indentured labour to work the sugar cane fields. They were given land at the end of their indenture and many stayed. My father is Chinese, his family came to Tobago and started a business there but moved over to Trinidad. My mother and father were born here, and my mother's parents were born here.
Damian said when his grandfather arrived here from China, they docked at the port of San Fernando in the south and parted with a friend he had made on the boat. He went off with one shopkeeper on his donkey cart, and his friend went another way. They never saw each other again. My Indian great-grandmother lost her husband on the journey to the West Indies and met another man who took care of her and her two sons. Even our family name, Doodnath, is not our real name; it is my great-great-grandfather's first name. Many East Indians couldn't speak English and couldn't understand how to fill out the forms when they landed here. Many put new names, rich names like Singh, Maharaj and Mahabir. There is absolutely no way I can ever trace my family in India, and they wouldn't acknowledge me if I did. Same for the Chinese.
We are country folk deep down; we need to be near the sea and smell salt in the air and dig down into the dirt of a wide warm garden with insects and animals and fruit and come in from the sun to drink cold water, spilling into runnels down chin and neck. There are birds there that cry in a way only we know, the sky is a particular shade of blue, grass a fiery green, sounds closer to the ear, pressed down by the sun.