Dreams,-- obscure, entrapping, form the very core of all the three stories...
MARIGOLD
Chetram has become a part of the Fijian history of diaspora Indians. A hundred years move into a flux, and become one with his being. The entrapment that he has created for himself has no way out. Life becomes a 'mela', an obscurity of memory. Death is the only smell. Marigolds, with their colour and fragrance are only but dreams. Confusion looms large, as the images form the same waning meaninglessness of Steinbeck's 'Chrysanthemums'. The bursting forth of the tension, the emotions, the rain, would never come to Salinas Valley. In Subramani's story, however, even the garden could never arrive. Rain comes, but only to wash away dreams. Chetram meets his 'other'-- the one wearing the hippie blouse, and the attempt of breaking out is violent-- physical, accompanied by smell of urine, sweat, vomit, gorging food, alcohol. The red, fiery clouds accumulate. The lull is yet to be broken.
BLOSSOM
She made a living out of her hysterical, feverish dreams. The dreams again form a movement that breaks the linearity of history. Blossom loses her Canadian and Trinidadian identities through her violent dreams. She identifies, and 'becomes' that 'Africa', that Stuart Hall indicates to be the only sharing attribute of the Black Atlantic diaspora. An 'Africa' re-gained, re-identified, through imagination. An Africa that is Oya herself. Languages are formed, and placed into history. Dances become the language of freedom-- "Freeness" itself. The colonial limitations of the English language are broken. "We shall overcome" gets a more soulful rendition-- a rendition in a violent seeking of identity and freedom, defeating "Suffering" of the "Black people", destroying whites-- an identity of anger, of violent negritude.
CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
Life becomes an irony-- a morbid laughter, in the story by Austin Clarke. Time has lost its meaning, as the confused clock sits in anticipation, ready to serve 'alarms' in George's bored existence. He has left his ancestral lands, his roots, in search of of his colonial dreams, which have failed him. Eight years, and yet, George is too black to wear brown. As he breaks out into a sardonic laughter on his own life, he tries to carry on a losing existential battle, one shared with the many Italians, Greeks, Portuguese in Canada. Even the white Pat has "cold sores" in Canada. That Canada can never suit George. Food, physicality, materialism, existence itself-- become a glaring farce. George is very troubled in his psychotic dreams of chains and machines. He still carries on his cynical laughter, even as he ends his life. "Decreptitude" wins. However, Sisyphus had this same mocking laughter, as he defeated pity.
-DHRITIMAN GANGULY,
PG-I
MARIGOLD
Chetram has become a part of the Fijian history of diaspora Indians. A hundred years move into a flux, and become one with his being. The entrapment that he has created for himself has no way out. Life becomes a 'mela', an obscurity of memory. Death is the only smell. Marigolds, with their colour and fragrance are only but dreams. Confusion looms large, as the images form the same waning meaninglessness of Steinbeck's 'Chrysanthemums'. The bursting forth of the tension, the emotions, the rain, would never come to Salinas Valley. In Subramani's story, however, even the garden could never arrive. Rain comes, but only to wash away dreams. Chetram meets his 'other'-- the one wearing the hippie blouse, and the attempt of breaking out is violent-- physical, accompanied by smell of urine, sweat, vomit, gorging food, alcohol. The red, fiery clouds accumulate. The lull is yet to be broken.
BLOSSOM
She made a living out of her hysterical, feverish dreams. The dreams again form a movement that breaks the linearity of history. Blossom loses her Canadian and Trinidadian identities through her violent dreams. She identifies, and 'becomes' that 'Africa', that Stuart Hall indicates to be the only sharing attribute of the Black Atlantic diaspora. An 'Africa' re-gained, re-identified, through imagination. An Africa that is Oya herself. Languages are formed, and placed into history. Dances become the language of freedom-- "Freeness" itself. The colonial limitations of the English language are broken. "We shall overcome" gets a more soulful rendition-- a rendition in a violent seeking of identity and freedom, defeating "Suffering" of the "Black people", destroying whites-- an identity of anger, of violent negritude.
CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
Life becomes an irony-- a morbid laughter, in the story by Austin Clarke. Time has lost its meaning, as the confused clock sits in anticipation, ready to serve 'alarms' in George's bored existence. He has left his ancestral lands, his roots, in search of of his colonial dreams, which have failed him. Eight years, and yet, George is too black to wear brown. As he breaks out into a sardonic laughter on his own life, he tries to carry on a losing existential battle, one shared with the many Italians, Greeks, Portuguese in Canada. Even the white Pat has "cold sores" in Canada. That Canada can never suit George. Food, physicality, materialism, existence itself-- become a glaring farce. George is very troubled in his psychotic dreams of chains and machines. He still carries on his cynical laughter, even as he ends his life. "Decreptitude" wins. However, Sisyphus had this same mocking laughter, as he defeated pity.
-DHRITIMAN GANGULY,
PG-I
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