6 Times Sunday Magazine
guyanatimesgy.com
NOVEMBER 9, 2014
Times Feature
The Shaping of Guyanese Literature Dead Poet Society One
A tribute to Mahadai Das By Petamber Persaud
D
uring rehearsals for ‘Expressions 3’ – a new forum for poetry, produced by Gem MadooNascimento – a number of poems written by writers who have passed, came alive in the performances. One such poet was Mahadai Das, a promising writer cut down in the prime of her life. Death could not silence her, a voice exploring debilitating ethnic and gender issues, a voice coming to grips with identities – Guyanese consciousness and Indian sensibility, but more importantly, a voice of anticipation and hope. A Leaf in his Ear: Selected Poems was published posthumously to celebrate a remarkable life, a project started with the poetess, before her death, discussing same with the Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press and in cooperation of one of the writer’s sisters. A Leaf in his Ear: Selected Poems remains effectively Mahadai Das for she left instructions on what the book must portray, a map of her struggles, her shortcomings and her triumphs, of her use of literature to lobby the cause of the marginalised, the subjugated and the disempowered.
Poet Mahadai Das
Das’ life was one of crises. Crises she transformed into challenges. Challenges of which some were pyrrhic victories. Born in Eccles, East Bank of Demerara, Guyana, in 1954, Mahadai Das left her footprints in Uitvlugt, West Coast Demerara, lived for a number of years in the USA and died on 3 April 2003 in Barbados, where her mortal remains were laid to rest. In 1972, she became part of the Messenger Group with Janet Naidu, Rooplall Monar and others. Later that same year, Das took part in the Caribbean Festival of Arts, Carifesta, held in Guyana.
In October of 1973, she was crowned queen of Maha Sabha Dewali Jalsa. During that same period, Das performed her poem in vernacular ‘Chile is who yuh foolin’ at the Theatre Guild as the Messenger Group staged a three-day celebration of the Coolie Art Forms. Between 1973 and 1975, she was a significant part of the Guyana National Service, serving in its Cultural Division, burning with patriotic fervour and idealistic revolutionary imagination. This showed up in her first collection of poems, I Want to be a Poetess of my People (1976). This collection also traced her
roots from indenture to independence and included her most performed poem ‘They Came In Ships’. Das’ second book of poems, My Finer Steal Will Grow (1982), is a better crafted work than her first. In 1988, she published her most accomplished collection, Bones, confirming her individuality and her place as a top crafter of verse. Her poems could be found in local journals like Kykoveral, and Kaie. While at Columbia University, she published in student magazines like Common Ground and Black Heights. Of great significance also is that her poems have found their way onto the syllabi of Caribbean, North American and European universities. That alone speaks volumes of the quality, content and import of her writing. Mahadai Das was educated at Bishops’ High School in Georgetown before moving on to the University of Guyana and then the University of the West Indies. She gained a BA in Philosophy at Columbia University and a MA in the same subject at the University of Chicago. While awaiting her PhD candidature, she underwent open-heart surgery from which she never fully recov-
Das's book of poetry
ered, truncating her academic career in 1987. A career that was fraught with so many obstacles, battles that she overcame only to lose the war. Undaunted, still resolute, she cried out for attention, “I mourn unflowered words, unborn children, inside me…absent water can has never lent itself to flowers.” So when ‘Millicent’ (so fondly called by her relatives
and friends) became unwell, many of her colleagues rallied to her assistance. Mahadai Das dyed her name in the country’s literary heritage because she was in that first ripple of women writers of Indian ancestry staking a claim to the word ‘Guyanese’. Responses to this author: telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com