Marigolds

The three short stories can actually be seen as the three ways that emigrants adopt to cope with their new Home. While Subramani’s Chetram resorts to a fretful resignation, Clarke’s protagonist unable to fit in commits suicide and Dionne Brande’s Blossoms resorts to a “positive regression”.

Subramani’s Marigolds seems to be a parody of Wordsworth’s Daffodils as here the marigolds with their bright yellow colour stand as a telling contrast to Chetram’s colourless, tired, squalid existence. The physicality found in Lamming’s The Emigrants crops up here again displayed by Chetram. Lamming writes: “we were all going to wait to see what would happen”, here Chetram has nothing to look forward to. We see he beats his wife at the end for almost no reason but here Chetram doesn’t beat his wife to feel “that he has arrived”, the reason why Una kills Queenie in The Emigrants,but rather to break out of the cycle of monotony. Here is a man unable to cope with his surrounding and can only say “

Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm….“

Shafia Parveen 

PGI