The Coming of Lights

THE COMING of lights to Esperanza in 1964, a predominantly Hindu village, did not coincide with the Hindu festival of lights, Divali. A small historical detail becomes secondary to artistic purpose in Ramsamooj Gosine’s book The Coming of Lights. Yet, the sense of place and time in the book - Gosine’s first novel - and the sociology on which the book is based, remain as faithful to history as it is to fiction. Gosine’s realistic depiction of the life and landscape of Esperanza Village and Gran Couva, which he calls Ferozbad in his book, make it an important contribution to the growing body of Indo-Caribbean literature. Gosine, born in 1946, has managed to capture the spirit of enterprise, struggle and triumph of an Indian community in Central Trinidad in the period of his growing up towards Independence.

Recalled Graphically
The canefields of Esperanza; the details of a farmer’s preoccupation; the layout of the sugar estate with its factory and the river to which the young boys escaped, are recalled graphically. The life is one that is familiar to Gosine. His grandfather and father were both cane farmers, their life revolving around agriculture, the seasons. In fact, Gosine, who teaches at Couva Junior Secondary School, confessed to Newsday in an interview, that the story, if not the plot of the book has some obvious parallels to his own life. To him, education was the light, breaking through the web of life in agriculture in which he could have been caught, and which he felt he had to escape. His boy-hero, Balwant, is heard confiding the same sentiment to his cousin Savitri in the book:

‘My father and mother always tell me this. They say, since we doh have money, we must have education. Have education. That will carry you a long way. Education, boy. Education. That will make you into a man.’ (Pg. 156)

As the story goes, Balwant’s parents die in an accident in the canefields, in which he himself is left crippled. He is taken in by the proverbial wicked aunt, an uncle whose sense of emasculation drives him to drink, and a sensitive cousin, Savitri, and is transposed to a fictional cocoa village Ferozbad - really the scenic area we know as Gran Couva.

A boy-hero, an idyllic childhood, a wicked aunt, and the hero’s victorious emergence as an independent young man, are the stuff fairytales are made of. Gosine said his book is meant for youngsters, but beyond story and plot, the book promises much more. There is evidence to suggest that Gosine was also thinking of the emerging national Indian spirit when he created his boy-hero Balwant, who seems representative of that spirit. Its struggle to find its own path is allegorically suggested in Balwant’s struggle to escape a tyrannical aunt and a stifling society represented by the community of Ferozbad with its elements of corruption.

Gosine has published stories in the Trinidad and Tobago Review, Bim, The New Voices, Toronto South Asian Review, The Caribbean Writer and in anthologies Sunshine and Shadow, Steel Nocturne and Caribbean Legends and Folk Tales.