"a writer of genuine poetic beauty" – Morning Star
A Profile Distilled from Commentaries and Critiques
By Seopaul Singh
As a writer of relatively obscure beginnings, Lakshmi Persaud was born in the small village of Pasea, formerly known as Streatham Lodge in Tunapuna, Trinidad. (On entering Trinidad at Piarco Airport, the visitor could take a taxi and be driven for less than half an hour through farmland towards the Eastern Main Road. In the approach to the villages, which flank the main Road leading to Port of Spain to the North and San Fernando to the South, the visitor would soon enter the district of Tunapuna. At the entry into the Eastern Main Road, on the other side is another district known as Tacariga. The residents for the most part are of Indian heritage, descendants of indenture servants. Farming occupies a significant section of the population, with sugar production still engaging many sons and daughters of indenture forefathers.)
Lakshmi Persaud received a well-grounded education, pursuing higher learning, and gaining a BA and Ph.D in Geography from Queens University in Belfast, Ireland. She embraced the teaching profession at Queens College, Guyana, St Augustine Girls High School in Trinidad and at Harrison College and St Michael's Girls School in Barbados. As an educator, the lure of literature must have gripped her strongly as she penned articles for many years, on Socio-Economic issues, for newspapers and magazine. She also read and recorded textbooks in Philosophy and Economics for post-graduate and undergraduates at the Royal National Institute of the Blind. She received a boost to her writing career when the BBC World Service broadcast her short story, See saw Margery Daw.
Lakshmi Persaud’s publishing career commenced in 1990 with her first novel Butterfly in the Wind. This novel drew praise from The Sunday Times as "A tremendous celebration of life" and from The Observer for writing of "a natural world with empathy and warmth." In 1993, the lure of literature again brought in another special release by Lakshmi Persaud entitled Sastra. Professor Kenneth Ramchand of UWI noted that to enter the world of her second novel "Is like walking at night knowing that there is no danger in the crowd, no evil in the air. And feeling that you are a part of something very abstract and very physically there." Professor Mervyn Morris also praised the "assurance with which Sastras registers inner turbulence." Sastra also received kudos from India Weekly with, "There is poetry in this tale. Its delicate shadings of generational relationships give its characters strength and durability."
Her memories of Guyana's turbulent sixties through the eighties no doubt impacted on her literary pursuit immensely. Out of that experience was born Lakshmi Persaud's third novel For the Love of My Name in 2000. In this release (reviewed in the Guyana Journal also, November 2003), Lakshmi Persaud excelled in satirizing Guyana (in the fictitious Island of Maya), with the fiasco of the Burnham dictatorship. This novelist deftly encapsulate the condition of prevailing dictatorships, exposing the inner workings of the minds of maniacs among men who grab control of nation states and imposed their own brand of governance. Those who lived through the experience would immediately see and empathize with the victims through their own struggles with the autocrat, mirrored in the characters in the novel.
In her most recent release, Lakshmi Persaud gives us another masterful piece of poetic and philosophical weave Raise the Lanterns High. The work drew the following comments from Publishing News, "Centering around a fascinating emotional dilemma, this book is sprinkled with exquisite nuggets of description and alarming insights into human nature." The BBC Asian Network chipped in with favorable comments such as, "Tradition and Culture mixed with intrigues make this an exciting novel to read." The Memsahib Magazine described the novel as "Hypnotic and lyrical, this mesmerizing tale brings to mind Amy Tan at her best;" while the Zee TV noted "Absorbing and challenging from the start."
About Raise the Lanterns High Professor Frank Birbalsingh of York University, Canada, made these comments, "Myths of old India and realities of the contemporary Caribbean, seamlessly interwoven into a tableau of the ordinary lives of Indo-Caribbean girls and women. A fast moving narrative that both informs and delights. Lakshmi Persaud deploys formidable narrative skill and a penchant for moral conflict between men and women."
Referring to her most recent novel, this writer found "Mirrored images became a constant source of revelation of a strange reality beyond her (the heroine's) individual purview of what was real. This graduated into a complex fixation with her Grandmother's mirror, a heirloom which was the treasured possession of a former Queen who fled the fiery death of suttee on the king's pyre of a northern Kingdom in India. The epic story which, embraced the mysteries surrounding that mirror and how they affected the psyche of our heroine," and provided a major focus of the novel
"She [the writer] romanticized the self-sustaining nature of the Indian culture of tolerance and longsuffering, which survived the historical onslaughts of diverse conquerors, who would deign to implant their own systems of beliefs and practices. Through it all she gave insights into the basis for the philosophy, which taught how to accept the unacceptable by drawing upon the strengths of one's forebears. Their virtues set the pace for, and clearly demonstrated to their posterity that, any unacceptable burden placed upon them, could be borne triumphantly… She laid bare the system, which bred such societal phenomena as ancestral worship, male supremacy, caste, suttee, matched marriages and a host of traditions not easily explained away with the stroke of a writer's pen."
With four major novels to her credit Lakshmi Persaud is undoubtedly a star in her own right. She may well be today's foremost female novelist from the Caribbean, hailing from the country which gave us quite a few literary heavy weights including Nobel Laureate Sir V.S. Naipaul. Lakshmi Persaud is married to a Guyanese economist, Professor Bishnodat Persaud, and now lives with her husband and three children in London, England.
For more information, visit the novelist’s website: http://www.lakshmipersaud.com/
Raise The Lanterns High
A Novel by Lakshmi Persaud.
Black Amber Publication. 2004.
Reviewed by Seopaul Singh
About The Title
In the fourth chapter of her novel the author clued the reader into the true meaning of Lanterns, the metaphor she used for ideals. The occasion brought together two families to “match” their son and daughter (Karran Walli and Vashti Nadir) for marriage. In the course of that meeting, a dialogue ensued between Sukesh Walli, the prospective bridegroom's father, and Vasti, the prospective bride. The dialogue focused on the ideal relationship between husbands and wives. A covert prompting from her sister, Pushpa, drew Vashti's snap response to Sukesh Walli's view on ideals. Vashti noted, "…they [ideals] are our lanterns in the dark: we need to raise them high on the roads engineered by men." This is the key thought pervading the philosophy of the liberated heroine who was rationally seeking to challenge their traditions in a male dominated world. This challenge provided the central theme of the novel.
The Novel
Raise The Laterns High is another masterful creation released by this versatile Caribbean novelist, Lakshmi Persaud, now living in London. Set in the Island of Trinidad, the story unfolds with the heroine Vashti Nadir, a student of St. Ursula's Convent, recounting her chance encounter with a traumatic rape scene of a young student, amidst the sheaves of cane in a field in Tunapuna. The only clue to the rapist, seen through the lens of her binocular, was the specially crafted ring on his hand, which pressed against the young girl's mouth to keep her quiet. The trauma of that moment gripped her, and was only put to rest temporarily in the pages of her diary; but for how long? The author made Vashti Nadir recount another memory of her childhood, which formed an integral part of the main plot of the novel.
It was her memory of a wardrobe with a mirrored door, which seemed to convey to her more than what the reflections showed. Vashti recalled, "So taken was I with these mirrored images, that there were times when I wondered whether I too was in truth an apparition, a mirrored reflection of an inexplicable reality in the vastness beyond." Mirrored images became a constant source of revelation of a strange reality beyond her individual purview of what was real. This graduated into a complex fixation with her grandmother's mirror, a heirloom which was the treasured possession of a former Queen who fled the fiery death of suttee on the king's pyre of a northern Kingdom in India. The epic story, which embraced the mysteries surrounding that mirror and how they affected the psyche of our heroine, provided a major focus of the novel.
After high school, Vashti pursued higher education in England before returning home. On her return, her family wasted no time with taking the next step in her life – marriage. This was pursued in the traditional way of matchmaking. Although the traditions and practices, long upheld as sacred, were slowly being challenged by the more sophisticated women of the day, their relevance soon took preeminence over personal feelings and modern thinking.
Reluctantly, without the guidance of a father, Vashti conceded to her mother, Devi, and uncle, Kash's, wish to be matched for marriage to the son of another well-to-do family, the Walli's. Everything went as anticipated with the visit, for the families' concurrence on the marriage of Vashti Nadir and Karan Walli. Marriage was a family affair, and the individuals were expected to submit themselves to the wishes of the entire family, involved in every phase of the union that would seal the fate of two people. As was their custom, jewelry was ordered, and, Mr. Singh, the famed craft-man of the district, was contracted to do the honors.
At Mr. Singh Jewelry store, Vashti was about to be jolted by a shocking reality for which she was least prepared. Mr. Singh, who was polishing up the Walli's jewelry brought for their pre-nuptial touch-up, unwittingly left them exposed to Vashti. There a spellbinding picture jogged her memory knocking all the zest she had displayed for a blissful occasion. She spotted that specially crafted ring which was worn by the rapist in the cane field of Tunapuna. To her utter dismay, and unbeknownst to all, Vashti was matched by her family (and agreed) to marry to a rapist.
How would she react to such a bizarre revelation, after her word was given, was not as easy as the preliminaries of the matchmaking. All her most cherished inner feelings rejected the prospects of marrying the rapist, Karan. Immediately, all the tradition and family concerns weighed down her soul. This crescendo of complex and repulsive memories impacted Vashti's conscious and rational self to the limits. Her instincts were immediately tapped for direction as to what she should do. And this presented the intrigue of the main plot of the novel.
There in her withdrawn and pensive mood, exploring the id – the more instinctive regions of the mind – she searched for answers. As a result, Vashti became desperately ill. In her illness she delved deep into the past, of a civilization which spawned debasing customs and practices that have supplanted the rights and dignity of womanhood with false honor, without losing their impact upon the Indian traditions. Her condition deteriorated with excursions into the more complex ancient regions of the mind the libido. She encountered subliminal and transcendental experiences of women in different cultures, who faced situations of total humiliation, dictated by the whims of men.
Through Vashti, the author stirred the reader to look beyond the surface of things to find the truth, which fashioned their prevailing reality. She made her heroine regress into prolonged limbo, and travel beyond the confines of her room. In her state of actual psychosis, possibly prompted by the heirloom 'Suttee Queen's' mirror, she visited and shared the legend of the epic experience of three queens who were set to break the hold of the ancient traditions of submission, with the bizarre practice of suttee.
The account of the death and funeral procession of the beloved warrior King Paresh, the expected demise of his three devoted and beautiful queens through suttee, took the reader into another dimension of life far away in the Kingdom of Jyotika in Northern India. She deftly exposed the sway held by the 'infallible' priesthood over both Royalty and the simple people; and the shallow basis for practices which defy reason and logic. This became the focus of the major sub-plot of the novel and is supplemented by other lesser plots of intrigues involving the practices of the priesthood, and the more enlightened philosophy of the Queen from Southern Kingdom who was against suttee.
In making her three Queens scheme to overthrow the practice of suttee, Lakshmi Persaud skillfully marshaled the resolve of womanhood to stand up against unjust practices and fight to the end. She made them advance arguments which were both philosophical and rational on the presumed efficacy of suttee, challenging and winning even the Royal priest. Her novel, therefore, engaged a plot and subplots which alternated between the ancient practices and current trends, showing how the latter was impacted by the former.
She romanticized the self-sustaining nature of the Indian culture of tolerance and longsuffering, which survived the historical onslaughts of diverse conquerors who would deign to implant their own systems of beliefs and practices. Through it all she gave insights into the basis for the philosophy, which taught how to accept the unacceptable by drawing upon the strengths of one's forebears. Their virtues set the pace for, and clearly demonstrated to their posterity that, any unacceptable burden placed upon them, could be borne triumphantly.
To better understand the psyche of sadly misunderstood, simple and seeming subservient Indian personage, the author explored the bases for the wisdom, meekness and loyalty which so proscribed the attitudes of the triumphant people of the Indus Valley civilization. She laid bare the system, which bred such societal phenomena as ancestral worship, male supremacy, caste, suttee, matched marriages and a host of traditions not easily explained away with the stroke of a writer's pen. And while caste, a much decried Indian system of social stratification, has come under much condemnation, its pervasiveness and entrenched functions, the division of labor, had literally overrun every culture before and after the industrial revolution of medieval and modern times.
After passing through all the rigors of her nightmarish trance, journeying deep into the uncharted regions of the libido, Vashti emerged purified; a fortified person ready to take on the challenge of an unacceptable marriage and give it her best shot. She would draw from the strengths of the three queens in Jyotika as she entered into holy wedlock with Karan Walli. In the final analysis, the tradition, with a longstanding practice of matchmaking and marriage, is a family affair in which all members play a major role in seeing that failure is not an option. Though anathema to the modern mind, this aspect of the Indian culture has its virtues for the obedient child. Do we ever wonder why such marriages last?
The Book is a must read for all those who still do not understand the root and impact of the complex systems of customs and practices in the Indian culture.
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