Ravi the Unknown Prince

by Rookmin Cassim

  Contents

  Leaving the West Coast

  The Wedding

  When I Met My Uncle

  Arriving at Sunset Palace

  Ruler of Manaos Kingdom

  Copyright

  A STORY ABOUT AN ORPHAN BOY WHO GREW UP IN POVERTY AND LATER DISCOVERED THAT HE WAS A PRINCE.

  HE MADE A SUCCESSFUL CAREER FOR HIMSELF, ALTHOUGH HIS JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE WAS A STRUGGLE AND A ROCKY ONE.

  MANY YEARS LATER HE MET WITH HIS AGEING WEALTHY UNCLE WHO WAS LOOKING FOR HIM FOR NINE LONG YEARS.

  HE REVEALED THE TRUTH ABOUT THEIR ANCESTORS AND ASKED RAVI FOR ONE FAVOUR.

  TO TAKE OVER HIS KINGDOM FOR A PIECE OF LAND WHICH RAVI HAD OWNED.

  HIS DYING WISH WAS TO BE BURIED NEXT TO HIS MOTHER IN THE FAMILY GRAVE YARD.

  RAVI GRANTED HIS UNCLE THAT WISH AND TOOK OVER THE KINGDOM OF MANAOS.

  A FICTITIOUS STORY SET IN AMERICA, ENGLAND AND SOUTH AMERICA, THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE, CHARACTERS, PLACES, AND EVENTS PORTRAIT IN THIS BOOK ARE ALL FICTIONS.

  I was ten years old when a plague took place in my village and wiped out my entire family, my parents and my two siblings.

  How and why I survived God only knows. I continued to live in my parent’s house on the West Coast of Berbice, a small fishing village by the sea.

  We owned the house and the two plots of land it stood on, and ten acres of field land on which my father would grow rice for his family to eat for the whole year.

  In the back yard, my mother had a small kitchen garden, where she grew vegetables and herbs. She kept chickens and ducks, which I continued to look after.

  As well as two rows of a dozen coconut trees, a couple of mango trees, banana plants, one lime tree, and many guava bushes.

  My father was a carpenter by trade; in his spare time he would make wood furniture, such as rocking chairs, tables and wardrobe for our community who would place orders.

  He would work on them before the rice season began and afterwards.

  I would sit and watched him work in the back yard, he was skilful at what he did; he could turn his hand to anything and it would look good.

  I missed them a great deal, especially my mother. I had to watch them die one after another and saw them laid to rest.

  Sometimes I wish I had gone with them, but my life was spared for some unknown reason.

  The entire village was almost completely wiped out, except for a handful of survivors of which I was one among them. I had to take care of myself and grow up quickly.

  The elders and people from the neighbouring villages were helpful to a certain point, but they did not interfere in one’s daily life and upbringing.

  My parents were Hindu and my great grand-parents arrived from India along with round 1.2 million indentured labourers, who were transported from India on work permits.

  They were placed into various European colonies in the West Indies, the Indian Ocean, South Africa, South America, Fiji Islands in the South Pacific and in other countries around the Northern and Southern hemisphere.

  On my great grand-father’s side, he and another brother left together; but some-how they got separated. He ended up in Berbice, and his brother went on to Surinam or Dutch-Guiana.

  My father, Arjuna had told me that his grand-father Mohana, told them that his brother Anan from Surinam went back to India after five years.

  He found out from other ship-loads of workers when they arrived at Bath Estate, where he used to live and work.

  Mohana had tried to return to India after his five-year contract had ended, only to be told that his papers were lost, which meant he could not return to his home-land in India.

  He was despondent and felt great regrets for not seeing his home-land again and the family he had left behind.

  He got married and settled down to a woman he later found out was from a royal house-hold in India.

  She would not tell anyone of her story why she left India, or whether she ran away; they had two sons and a daughter from that marriage.

  He was from the Brahman Caste and he read Sanskrit, and they both spoke Hindi.

  My parents worshipped many gods on a picture hanging on our wall. They said that the cow was sacred, and that was the reasons they did not eat its flesh.

  They followed the traditions of their ancestors which were handed down to them and to pass on to future generations that were yet to come.

  Freedom of Religion was practised by three faiths, in this vast country of South America, 86,000 sq miles, and which consists mainly of forests, savannahs, swamps, wild vegetation, rivers, and all kinds of wild and exotic animals.

  Christianity was introduced by missionaries from America and Britain, and was imposed mainly on the black slaves.

  Hinduism and Islam were brought over with the labourers from India. The Hindus built Temples; Muslims built Mosques and the Christians built Churches.

  The three main faiths united the people in their work places and in schools and they lived together in harmony.

  However they did not inter-marry as it was taboo for a Muslim man or woman to be married outside his or her religion and vice versa.

  Being alone was a very daunting experience. In the evening I would go down to the sea, which was a part of the Atlantic Ocean and was at the back of my home.

  I would walk past the wild mangrove trees with its popped-up roots interwoven together to form a huge mass, and sit on a log of wood which was brought in from the sea and anchored itself at the edge of the white sandy beach which stretched for many miles along the coastline.

  No one knew where it had come from and what distance it had travelled to get to this place and to embed itself at this spot.

  Wild trees grew around it to form a shade. On that stretch of unspoilt beach I would sit and look at the swell of the ocean, and ponder at the creations that surrounded me.

  There were various plants and colourful birds; the sky above, the ocean with all kinds of fish, and a pair of manatee that roamed those waters. Where they came from was my question. Definitely not by chance.

  The aeroplanes that flew across the ocean on a daily basis were either going on to Surinam, Cuba, Brazil, or some other South American countries.

  They were taking cargos, while others were ferrying passengers to a holiday destination or on a business trip.

  As I sat back and rested my head on a tree trunk I would think of going to distant and far away places.

  Maybe one day when I could afford it I would like to travel the world and to meet different types of people and to speak different kinds of languages.

  As a country boy and a poor orphan I could only dream; I thought there was no harm in dreaming.

  Perhaps the adventure books I had been reading suddenly brought about those wild and imaginary ideas into my head.

  I would catch fishes, crabs and shrimps with my father’s net, which I would roasts on a wood burning stove to eat.

  During my fishing trip, I would swim with the pair of manatee or a sea cow, when they arrived at high tide at certain times of the year.

  They were friendly mammals; no one knows where they came from and where they went.

  Some days I would barter with a shoal of fishes, for a square meal of rice with meat and vegetables from an old Muslim woman who lived three doors away from me.

  School was free up to standard six, which I attended regularly with the remaining children who had survived that natural disaster, and those from the other villages.

  I wanted to make something of my life when I grew up. My teacher, Miss Price, taught us arithmetic and the English language from books made in England as we were under the British rule at that time.

  One day she said to me, “Ravi Latchman you are go
od with numbers, and I think you should pursue a career in this field.”

  I did not fully understand what she meant. I would give her a few fish each week just to borrow a text book and a few story books from her collection.

  Grace Price was a tall and elegant black woman. Her grand-parents and many others like them in the village were captured from Africa and brought over as slaves to work for their white masters.

  They built railways; dug canals and trenches, and grew crops of sugar- cane until slavery was abolished. Price was their master’s name, and they inherited it.

  So far none of my relatives from either side of my parents came to look for me.

  I knew my father was frequently visited by a man he called Bhai, [brother] and suddenly that visit stopped.

  Two years later, now aged 12, a Muslim family moved in three doors from me.

  The old woman, who used to live in that house, had left to move in with her granddaughter in the Corentyne area, another part of the county of Berbice.

  She once told me her grand-parents came from the West Bihar region in India.

  She would let me sleep in her house when my parents first died and I was frightened to be alone. She was warm and friendly and I called her grand-mother.

  I would give her fish, do her shopping, light her lamp, as there were no electricity in those days; bring her fire-wood, and she would gave me food in return.

  I learnt to speak Hindi with her, as she spoke no other languages, and she taught me to cook rice and other types of food.

  She told me that I should not be afraid, that the One who created me would always protect me.

  One day I brought her some fresh eggs and saw her prostrate on a mat she said belonged to her father.

  Afterwards I asked her who was she praying to; she told me her God, the One and only.

  I then asked her to tell me about her God. She said she did not know much, but I must put my trust in Him.

  I was sad when she left; it was as though, everything I had loved and cared for was leaving me behind.

  A family of nine had moved into her house. There were four girls and three boys with their parents.

  Their father drank rum and he was not kind to his children and their mother when he was drunk.

  One girl named Muna she was in the class below me. She was friendly, and would follow me home after school.

  Whenever she was being bullied because of the colour of her hair, I would stick up for her like a big brother would do. Her other siblings, would called me Ravi the orphan boy.

  Their mother was always looking for something to cook to feed all the hungry children.

  One day, one of my best laying hens went out and she never came back in the evening. I was so upset and I told Muna during our recess period.

  She said they ate it and my first reaction was to hit her until she explained that they had nothing to eat that evening.

  Her mother had to cook that fowl for nearly one hour to get it tender because it was so tough.

  “You stole from an orphan”, I said.

  “I did not steal your bird,” she replied, “my brother Shazam did. He crept next door to that empty waste-land and saw the fowl and caught it. We did not know that it belonged to you.”

  “Your religion told you not to steal, is that true?” I questioned.

  “True, but we do not practice our religion. You saw what my father is like, he got rid of his sister to move here,” she answered.

  “That old woman is your aunt?” I enquired.

  “Yes,” she replied, at least she was being honest.

  In the late sixties tuition fees at the Government Technical Institute were abolished and in January of that year a new Institute was set up in New Amsterdam.

  I got a place in that Institute and went there to study chemistry, biology and geography.

  Life was tough. When I ran out of money, I would sell the dried coconuts, and lime, and whatever the land produced.

  It helped me to finance myself and to pay my fare for the ferry crossing to the school in New Amsterdam.

  In my class, there were children from all back-grounds; some whose parents were well-off in Government jobs, others rich rice-producing farmers, but they were going there just for the fun of it.

  For me, I was determined to make something of myself and held on to that determination with patience and perseverance, and to make good progress at the outcome.

  Three years later, now 18 years old, I met a man named Ismael at the ferry crossing in New Amsterdam.

  He came up to me and asked if I was Arjuna’s son Ravi. I answered, “Yes uncle.” He told me he knew my father and grand-father, and that they were remarkable people.

  I thought, what’s that got to do with me? They were dead and gone and I was alive and a struggling orphan.

  He asked me what I was doing, and I told him that I was looking for work now that I had completed my Ordinary Level Examinations.

  But the jobs were all in the capital Georgetown, and that I did not know any-one out there.

  He told me that he and his family were immigrating to America in the next six months and asked whether I would like to come with them, before another calamity struck our coast line.

  There was a beautiful light complexioned short and plump woman looking on as we spoke.

  He told me that she was his wife and that they had two children a boy and a girl but he did not introduce me to the woman.

  I made an instant decision and did not pause for a second thought, and that decision changed my whole life.

  I told the man who I called uncle out of respect, that I would like to join them, and take the opportunity to go to America with them.

  We planned to meet up again at his house in Cotton Tree village, to discuss the issue further.

  Cotton tree is a place where there were once a lot of cotton farms where the slaves planted and cultivated the cotton wool.

  When the pods are fully opened the white wool emerges, and after under going certain processes, the fibre is spun into yarn and turned into fabric or textile.

  I went home that evening wondering whether I should trust that man. I had survived two natural disasters; the first one was when I was around six years old.

  We had the tail-end of a tsunami which took place somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

  I clearly remembered my mother picked up my little brother Rohan and held on to my arm tightly and said, “Run Ravi.”

  We ran inland with other villagers, but the water kept coming behind us sweeping everything in its path.

  My mother had noticed that the sea went out at first and then she heard this noise from upstairs.

  She said when she looked out she saw in the distance, a huge wave coming towards the seashore.

  Our wooden house which was built on concrete stilts and foundation enabled it to remain standing.

  But everything else was washed away; the sea flooded over the road and beyond.

  It was the rice season, and many people were out in the fields harvesting their crops for that year.

  Those who lived near by the sea-coast like we did; found that when they returned home, there was no house to go into. It was all swept away, and they had lost everything.

  It struck at 2.30pm in the afternoon, with only one noise, as if to say I am on my way.

  The workers in the fields came running, I saw my father running towards us and he hugged the three of us. My mother was shaken up, and he sat down consoling her.

  I had survived that disaster and the plague of Malaria. Now this uncle was telling me, “Get out and don’t wait for another. Next time I might not be that lucky.”

  I went to see Miss Price, my school teacher, to ask her advice on what I was planning to do.

  She was like a second mother to me. I would always take some vegetable or fruits from my garden for her whenever I visited her and would never venture into her yard or house.

  I would meet her at school or at her front gate to return any of
the books that I had borrowed from her.

  That day, I took with me a couple of dried coconuts I picked from the back garden. When I called at her front gate, she came out and I told her I wanted to talk to her in private on an important matter.

  She opened the gate and let me into a downstairs room where there was one large sofa, and one single, and a table and four chairs.

  At the far corner was a wood burning stove, like all the other villagers, we were backwards in coming forward in this sleepy village.

  It was as though time stood still for most of us villagers, without any progress to show for it.

  We had no electricity, running water was from a stand-pipe on the road, the road itself was nothing to talk about, and when-ever it rained the buses would get stuck in the mud.

  It would take a tractor without the passengers to drag it out from the mud, we were not moving forward at all.

  The Government were given funds from abroad to make improvements in the country but no one knows what happened to that money.

  They lived a life of luxury, where-as the ordinary working class men and women were left to struggle through life.

  No doubt people were moving away for a better tomorrow, eight years on, no government minister came forward to visit those who had survived our village tragedy.

  All that they did for us was send two men wearing masks to spray every-where with some sort of chemical substances and disinfectant and renamed the village.

  Miss Price told me to sit down as she poured out three glasses of lemonade from a jug with ice floating on the top.

  It was always hot and humid in that tropical region. As we were not far from the equator it got very hot in the dry seasons with little or no wind during the day-light hours.

  Shortly afterwards, a tall light complexion black man about fifty years old using a walking stick, appeared in the doorway.

  She helped him into the single padded chair with pillows on two sides, then she said, “Ronald, this is Ravi one of my students. Ravi, meet my husband Ronald.”

  I leaned forward and shook the man’s hand. He asked me how I was, and he told me that he was a Police Inspector at Wellington Police Station.

  He was involved in a car accident a few months ago and was now recovering at home after leaving hospital.