Jouvert highlights mystical triumphs of an Indian’s life

It might be tempting to dismiss Joy Mahabir’s Jouvert as an uneventful, even quaint piece of non-fiction work. But sometimes the most cryptic and provocative piece of art is rooted in simplicity. Jouvert  unmistakably falls into that rare category. Mahabir’s work is unobtrusive. The purity of prose makes Jouvert an easy to read but superbly crafted novel. The writer’s style is fluid and evocative: “Above us the sky was dark blue, and sharp golden lines of sunlight cut through the green bamboo onto the water. It was as if we were seated inside a vibrant painting. We sketched idly, more interested in our conversations about art and artists.” Story telling does not get much better than that.

However, the reader soon confronts the touchiest of areas—racism, racial identity and nationalism. Throw in tales of the occult and forbidden love, and Jouvert is an overwhelmingly successful literary work, not dissimilar to the artistic endeavours of the protagonist, Annaise. The publication chronicles the life of an Indian family in the village of St Stewart in San Fernando, formerly, Morne Solitude. It is circa 1970, and Annaise has her hopes on becoming an accomplished artist. The reader is taken to the Blue Gallery of her colonial house where her artwork and that of her father, a J’Ouvert designer, are usually on display. On the surface, these are signs of a functional family. And to a large extent, Annaise does enjoy an enviable stability. After all, how many families can boast of a summer house in Mayaro.

“I had been here many times but I had never seen the place look so welcoming, so effortlessly beautiful. The sea was blue-green and the wide curve of foam reached all the way up to the front of the house,” Annaise recalls. But behind the veneer of normalcy are the travails of Indian life—domestic violence and righteous indignation at being racially wronged. We read, “No one talks about what Indo-Caribbean women suffer. The wife beating, the incest, the rape...” And later, Annaise’s father, Larry, states: “With this government I don’t know if my children will have anything when they grow up. The government so racial, they hate Indians and they like to say ‘Indians have money.’ They want Indians to starve and they fooling poor black people too...”
As Annaise navigates life’s vicissitudes, she begins to blossom. The harrowing experience of losing her first love to the austerity of the sea pains but strengthens her. She sees the bigger picture as she defends her father, impugning her Canadian relatives returning for a land panchayat.

She is Presbyterian but rooted in her “Indianness.” At the same time she decries Indian fundamentalism. As she and her dougla boyfriend, Miguel, visit the Hindu Temple-in-the-Sea, she comments: “I started to feel uneasy again since there was a priest in white kurta and dhoti. I knew about the new fundamentalist Hindus in Trinidad and how they ranted and raved against interracial relationships. But the priest was a real Hindu and therefore open-minded. He didn’t seem to care that we were holding hands.” It is this sense of the esoteric that guides Annaise as she moves to New York and experiences art from the “diasporic” perspective.
It is the syncretic life of St Stewart, and the occultism of her friend, Black Maharajin, that shapes Annaise’s personality. Annaise is Indian and Christian but very much cosmopolitan—a paragon of hybrid cultural influences, brilliantly creative.

Annaise is pulled and absorbed by J’Ouvert—not only that period of early morning masquerading that ignites the senses at its most atavistic level, but as an artist, she gives credence to the esoteric aspect of event—the peculiar cosmic energy that percolates in wee hours of the morning. It reflects all of life—birth and death. It was during J’Ouvert that Annaise knew of her destiny as an artist; and it was that time too when her first love was wrested from her. It gave Annaise a perspicacious view of life, that uncanny ability to discern the disfunctionality of her Toronto family—how “inane and full of shit,” they were. It reshaped her Indian identity, not as a member of a tribe with all its insular attributes, but as a part of the human family striving for equanimity and justice.

Jouvert by Joy Mahabir
Author House 10/27/2006
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 1-800-839-8640
ISBN: 1-4259-3094-8(sc)

• Dr Glenville Ashby
New York foreign correspondent
The Guardian Media Group
glenvilleashby@gmail.com