Jahajin - Softcover

Peggy Mohan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8172237146 ISBN 13: 9788172237141

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2007

Synopsis

From Calcutta to Trinidad they went, the first wave of the Indian diaspora, little known and far from celebrated. This debut novel by linguist and writer Peggy Mohan illuminates for us the peculiar joys and travails of that first journey across the oceans, starting with the train ride from Faizabad to Calcutta, the journey by steamship down the Hooghly, the three-month long sea voyage around the stormy Cape and up the Atlantic to Port of Spain, where the weary travellers settle into life as indentured labourers on the sugar estates of Trinidad. The narrator, a young linguist researching the history and use of Bhojpuri in Trinidad, meets Deeda, a 110-year-old woman who came to the Caribbean on the same ship as her greatgreat grandmother. Deeda tells her two stories: one her own, about leaving her village with her child and sailing across the seas, and the other a fairy tale about a female monkey who leaves her mate behind and opts to become human. Mohan deftly gathers all these separate narratives of migration and transformation to craft an exquisitely told tale celebrating the triumph of the human will and imagination

About this title

About the Author:

Peggy Mohan began life in Trinidad, West Indies, and her first career was as a linguist, specializing in Trinidad Bhojpuri. After moving to India she dabbled in linguistics, television programmes for children and cartoon animation. She now teaches music in Vasant Valley School, New Delhi. Jahajin is her first novel

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 8172237146
• ISBN 13: 9788172237141
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280