Asian Brown Flycatcher

One of the tiniest of birds, apart from sunbirds I have mentioned earlier in this blog, is actually a migratory. This little bird traverse all the way from Himalayas to Western Ghats, isn’t that incredible. It beats me every time I look at this bird, how do they do it?. Birds with large wing span do use thermals and that makes it relatively easier. Small birds with tiny wings flying thousands of kilometers is mind boggling, it is almost impossible. They are not really intimidated by human presence and indeed are quite confiding. But taking pictures was quite difficult, for its size and second they are quite active not as much as a sunbird though. They have a melodic song and are quite common in open woodlands.

David Dabydeen: Hear how a baai a taak like BBC !!

David Dabydeen, an Indo-Guyanese writer, editor, critic, poet, was born on a sugar estate in Berbice, Guyana in 1957 (“he grew up during a time when East Indian people could not attend school unless they had a Christian name. In fact, that era was popularly characterised by East Indian folks practicing both Hinduism and Christianity simultaneously. As such he would routinely attend church and go to the temple as well”). He was sent to England at the age of twelve. He won a scholarship to Cambridge University, completing his doctorate in 1982 (quite impressive!). During this time he came out with collections of poetry “Slave Songs”. He is the author of four novels, three collections of poetry and several works of non-fiction and criticism. I did go to British library to read any of his writings but unfortunately none available. All about him is through Net.

Dabydeen’s writing mainly focus on experiences of colonialism and migration. He makes particular use of Guyanese Creole, a dialect that blends African, French, Spanish, and Indian languages with English and contributes a great deal to the rhythms, rhymes, and emotional power of his work. The language itself is revealed as an area of dispute between colonial power and individuals themselves. He uses Creole in ways that reveal a fascination with and resistance to standard English, of assimilation and invisibility within white sociolinguistic norms. The way in which language is used to control and dominate is a central theme in many of Dabydeen's works. His writings explore the relationships between power and its consequences for race, gender, and empire, as also dilemma of diasporic writing.

The poem, "Coolie Mother," touches upon language and education as pertains to identity and cultural mixture. A mother tells her son that he must read books, that he "got to go to school in Georgetown", so he does not become a drunk cane worker

Coolie Mother

Jasmattie live in bruk-
Down hut big like Bata shoe-box,
Beat clothes, weed yard, chop wood, feed fowl
For this body and that body and every blasted body
Fetch water, all day water like if the
Whole slow-flowing Canje river God create
Just for she one bucket.

Till she foot bottom crack and she hand cut-up
And curse swarm from she mouth like red ants
And she cough blood on the ground but mash it in:
Because Jasmattie heart hard, she mind set hard.

To hustle save she one-one penny,
Because one-one dutty make dam cross the Canje
And she son Harrilal got to go school in Georgetown
Must wear clean starch pants, or they go laugh at he,
Strap leather on he foot, and he must read book,
Learn talk proper, take exam, go to England university,
Not turn out like he rum-sucker chamar dadee.

These lines from his poetic sequence Turner (1995) on J. M. W. Turner’s painting of 1840, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying), Typhoon Coming On (that depicts an actual scene from the archives of the British slave trade: the case of the Zhong of 1783, a slave ship whose cargo was so badly affected by an epidemic that Captain Collingwood used the opportunity of an on-coming storm to throw 122 sick men and women into the sea. The reasoning for this was a financial calculation: he could claim insurance for Africans lost at sea, but not for those dying of disease)

Stillborn from all the signs. First a woman sobs
Above the creak of timbers and the cleaving
Of the sea, sobs from the depths of true
Hurt and grief, as you will never hear
But from woman giving birth, belly
Blown and flapping loose and torn like sails,
Rough sailors’ hands jerking and tugging
At ropes of veins, to no avail. Blood vessels
Burst asunder, all below - deck are drowned.

I could manage to get only the above lines few lines from the Net. These few poems…

Two Cultures

‘Hear how a baai a taak
Like BBC!
Look how a baai a waak
Like white maan,
Caak-hat pun he head, wrist-watch pun he haan!
Yu dadee na Dabydeen, plant gyaden near Blackbush Pass?
He na cut wid sickle an dig wid faak?
He na sell maaket, plantain an caan?
An a who pickni yu rass?
Well me never see story like dis since me baan!

E bin Inglan two maaning, illegal,
Eye-up waan-two white hooman,
Bu is wha dem sweet watalily seed
Go want do wid hungrybelly Blackbush weed
Like yu, how yu teet yella like dhall
An yu tongue black like casrip!
Dem should a spit, vamit pun yu, beat yu rass wid whip!
Is lungara like yu spoil dem good white people country,
Choke an rab, bruk-an-enta, tief dem people prapaty!

So yu tink yu can come hey an play big-shat,
Fill we eye wid cigarette, iceapple an all dat?
Aweh po country people bu aweh ga pride:
Jess touch me gyal-pickni, me go buss yu back-side.’

Slave Song

Tie me haan up.
Juk out me eye.
Haal me teet out
So me na go bite.
Put chain rung me neck.
Lash me foot tight.
Set yu daag fo gyaad
Maan till nite –

Bu yu caan stap me cack floodin in de goldmine
Caan stap me cack splashin in de sunshine!

Whip me till me bleed
Till me beg.
Tell me how me hanimal
African orang-utan
Tell me how me cannibal
Fit fo slata fit fo hang.
Slice waan lip out
Waan ear an waan leg –

Bu yu caan stap me cack dippin in de honeypot
Drippin at de tip an happy as a hottentot!

Look how e’ya leap from bush to bush like a black crappau
Seeking out a watahole,
Blind by de sunflare, tongue like a dussbowl –
See how e’ya sip laang an full an slow!
Till e swell an heavy, stubban, chupit, full o sleep
Like camoudie swalla calf an stretch out in de grass, content,
Full o peace...
Hibiscus bloom, a cool breeze blow
An from a hill a wataflow
Canary singin saaf an low...

Is so when yu dun dream she pink tit,
Totempole she puss,
Leff yu teetmark like a tattoo in she troat!

She gi me taat
She gi me wife
So tear out me liver
Or stake me haat
Me still gat life!