Kamla, in reality the author herself, is a young Hindu girl growing up in an Indian community in Trinidad. The few black people in the village live nearby, as do the white overseer and his wife. Kamla observes the differing cultures and social norms, both within her own East Indian community and in the wider West Indian setting. In addition, she often refers to her own ‘inner voice’ which questions the traditional Hindu wisdom passed down through her family. This is an evocative account of a girl coming to womanhood through a diversity of influences which she nevertheless always relates back to her own Hindu upbringing. She is ill at ease with Western dancing and its physical contact with a partner, and is concerned by her feelings towards a young male colleague when she has accepted with equanimity that her marriage will, in due course, be arranged by her family. And yet her family believe that their daughter should be educated, and Kamla flies off alone to a university place in Belfast. How I would like to know about her life there, and how she came to settle in London, where Lakshmi Persaud now lives.
