Sat Ma­haraj

"The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy has its amaz­ing mo­ments: Ma­haraj is an of­ten fun­ny, sharply ob­ser­vant styl­ist"-Cal­gary Her­ald. "To those long-es­tab­lished metaphors of im­mi­gra­tion iden­ti­ty, the patch­work quilt and the melt­ing pot, we have now to add the com­ic book...Sharply ob­served and en­ter­tain­ing....[A] rich ex­plo­ration of the im­mi­grant psy­cho-dra­ma of at­trac­tion and re­pul­sion, wel­come and para­noia, per­cep­tion and mis­un­der­stand­ing"-Toron­to Star.

"An ex­hil­a­rat­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence....Ma­haraj su­perbly ar­tic­u­lates the long­ing for home, on the one hand, and the dream of suc­cess in Cana-da on the oth­er"-The Globe and Mail. Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj is the au­thor of three pre­vi­ous nov­els. A Per­fect Pledge was a fi­nal­ist for the Re­gion­al Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers' Prize for Best Book and the Rogers Writ­ers' Trust Fic­tion Prize.

The La­ga­hoo's Ap­pren­tice was a Globe and Mail and Toron­to Star no­table book of the year. His Homer in Flight was nom­i­nat­ed for the Chap­ters/Books in Cana­da First Nov­el Award. The Book of Ifs and Buts and The In­ter­lop­er were nom­i­nat­ed for a Re­gion­al Com­mon­wealth Prize for Best First Book.

Ma­haraj's lat­est pub­li­ca­tion is The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy, pub­lished in Cana­da by Vin­tage Cana­da, a di­vi­sion of Ran­dom House of Cana­da Ltd, Toron­to, in 2011. Ma­haraj, called Robin by his youth­ful friends of Table­land in south-west Trinidad, re­ceived his ear­ly ed­u­ca­tion at the Robert Vil­lage Hin­du School which is owned and man­aged by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Ed­u­ca­tion Board.

Robin's fa­ther is a well-known ed­u­ca­tor and com­mu­ni­ty work­er and the name Chan­drieka Ma­haraj is a re­spect­ed name in the scat­tered dis­tricts of Table­land. The en­tire Ma­haraj fam­i­ly is al­so an­chored in the re­li­gious and cul­tur­al lives of the com­mu­ni­ties and the one Hin­du tem­ple of the Na­pari­ma/Ma­yaro Road has been ful­ly sup­port­ed and fi­nanced by the Ma­haraj fam­i­ly.

Robin's pa­ter­nal un­cle (ka­ka) was the re­cent­ly de­ceased Prof Har­ry Ma­haraj, a well-known psy­chi­a­trist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with a pri­vate prac­tice in the Ch­agua­nas area. Oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly are in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly high­ly en­dowed in their own right and Robin was for­tu­nate to have emerged from such a fam­i­ly back­ground.

His lat­est nov­el is set in the Ma­yaro dis­trict, which is not too far from Robin's own vil­lage in Table­land. He us­es many lo­cal names and Trinida­di­an ex­pres­sions even in his open­ing chap­ter, which he de­scribes as "The Nowhereian." He writes:

"When my moth­er died four months af­ter my six­teenth birth­day, I felt I had al­ready re­ceived glimpses of all that would fol­low. Like if I was once again sit­ting on a dusty, sil­very as­ter­oid and could see through lanes of swirling space dust and dark, puffed-up clouds, right through the samaan tree in our front yard where the shad­ows of our Ma­yaro neigh­bours cast a crooked pick­et fence on the cof­fin.

"I could even make out Un­cle Boysie still look­ing fun­ny in his black suit, star­ing again at the road as if in this re­play my fa­ther would sud­den­ly ap­pear in a big puff of sul­phurous smoke. But my fa­ther was not Night­crawler the tele­porter, and I was not Doc­tor Man­hat­tan who could see in­to the fu­ture.

"Yet, un­til that morn­ing in June when her life passed away and Un­cle Boysie held my hand and pulled me out of the house-as if it was sud­den­ly a dan­ger­ous place-I al­ways ex­pect­ed my moth­er to re­cov­er. I say this even though she had been sick for the last four months with her wavy hair falling out so that in­stead of look­ing pret­ti­er than all the Ma­yaro wom-en, she be­gan to re­sem­ble the caged mon­key in­side Light­house rumshop.

"I held on to this faith even when she re­turned from the clin­ic in Rio Claro walk­ing so tired­ly that I had to sup­port her in­to the house; when a few of the neigh­bours be­gan whis­per­ing non­sense about obeah and mal­jeaux; when we both moved in with Un­cle Boysie and he be­gan to treat me more kind­ly than any time be­fore.

"I think my moth­er was re­spon­si­ble for these thoughts be­cause three weeks be­fore she died, we re­turned to our house on Church Street, just a quar­ter mile from the beach. I was re­lieved and felt that every­thing would soon get back to nor­mal. She would stop vom­it­ing and be­come stronger and the kitchen would once more smell of shad­ow-beni, ripe plan­tain and cas­sa­va pone. And the drip­ping sink would sound like far­away cym­bals for the high-pitched Bol­ly­wood songs she was al­ways hum­ming.

"I was con­vinced of her re­cov­ery when, dur­ing those three weeks, she be­gan dress­ing up in fan­cy clothes I had nev­er seen be­fore. Each af­ter­noon when I re­turned from the Ma­yaro Com- posite School, I saw her in a new and un­fa­mil­iar dress. They looked ex­pen­sive, with sash­es, em­broi­dered col­lars, and frilly hems. She ap­peared paler too, though whether this was from the pow­der on her face or from her sick­ness I could not say."

Ma­haraj will be spe­cial­ly ho­n­oured by the Ma­ha Sab­ha on May 25 at this year's An­nu­al In­di­an Ar­rival Din­ner at the Crowne Plaza.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha