Poetry in themes of migration, exile, settlement and identity, the book takes the reader on a journey of Caribbean experience in their movements from place to place: India, Guyana and Canada. Naidu brings these experiences alive in themes of migration, exile, cultural identity, settlement and nostalgia.

Her poetry invokes the imagination of travelers making their journey across the Kala Pani (dark water); their struggles in their new place of settlement; movements that offer new insights in how memory plays a role in terms of endurance and survival.

The book can be used:

• as a study of Caribbean literature in secondary schools, colleges and universities

• as resource material to learn more about Indian culture and experience, both in the Caribbean region and through migration elsewhere.

• to enhance understanding of multicultural

Excerpts from the book:

Buckets

Quite early in the morning
we heard more than once,
words like leaves
leaping in the wind – Tamil, Telugu
Hindi and Urdu – other tongues too,
They come as music in the fields.

Then decades of separation increased.

We now yearn for a single moment
of that old friend in the field
who closed the distance between
our pain and fury with his sweet bhajans.

We search for him
near a narrow roadside;
There, a barrell full of rainwater –
To reclaim that body,
this miracle in buckets
showering my head with thunder –
This barrel, the only vessel
carrying my single desire
to return and discover
that shadow in the field,
his voice in the wind:

Ah who dah?¹
Ah me bhai, Darshan
____________________

1    Who is that?
It is me brother, Darshan.

The Banyan Leaf

As certain as spring
breaks open
the rose today
transparent as rain,
my wrestling heart
surrenders again
to the whole earth.

Sacrifice and bravery
shape this ancient path
as naked as raindrops
on my skin.

As strong roots cradle me now
I imagine leaves
of the Banyan tree*
dancing like a bed of stars
in my bosom.

____________________________

*A sacred tree, especially native to India, where it is venerated.
Its many aerial roots descent from the branches and deveop into additional trees.