Shitty People

Dhanpaul Narine

Description

Set in a poverty-stricken village in Guyana, this enchanting tale is a portrait of the life, fantasy and struggles of a village for survival. The narrative chronicles the dreams and drama of existence and becomes a biography of a community where the effects of race, politics and neglect, are ever present. But above the filth, floods and grime, Shitty People is a story of hope and optimism. floodspyShittyommon than differences.

Sujets

• Inspirational
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 09 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665577090
• Langue: English

Extrait

SHITTY PEOPLE
 
 
 
 
 
 
DHANPAUL NARINE
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2023 Dhanpaul Narine. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  01/05/2023
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7710-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7708-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-7709-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022922244
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Dedicated to my parents Awad and Chandra Narine
Julius Benjamin Nathoo, dispenser of wisdom
The children as peacemakers
Pandit Chunelall Narine, ambassador of peace
Ma, the knower of all things
Foreword
Dreams.
A broken dream is a dried-up river,
A pebble that cries for the wind,
Many will blush and thrive,
and take root and spring.
Rocks bloom into roses,
There is a celebration and
We look to the sky and laugh,
And dance in joy to the music.
 
But let’s not forget the struggle
of the pebble, that
sits lonely, praying for a droplet.
Then the deluge. It’s never-ending.
And Ma must hustle,
She must fight man and nature.
Her boy must go to school as
The landlord pulls away the roof.
 
There are more floods.
Grandpa hates politics.
Mr. Nathoo is the poet. He says,
“in Kanhai’s wrists flow artistry,
and Sobers flicks for a ribbon of runs.”
Michael and Seema, how I love thee!
Bulldozer howls, Ma bids adieu and
She leaves me color blind as
They laugh and call her shitty.
 
But what do they know?
She’s sand, sea, simplicity-and saintly.
Her love is from Him-most high!
The flower flies-the pebble
cries, but never dies.
The dream is alive!
Acknowledgements
Shitty People was years in the making. It crashed into my sleep and pulled at my heart. “You must write it down, tell people what life was like. Tell them about the sounds of the sea and the muck and the grime, and yes, all that shit in Stelling Road,” people would say. I pretended to forget and for years I ignored the urge to write. But I couldn’t let it go. Shitty People has consumed my soul. I am a product of the dreams of the elders, the accumulated experiences of the Indian, African, Chinese, Portuguese and the Amerindian, and the other colors that make up beautiful Guyana.
Each year, Melanie Lear from AuthorHouse would remind me that I have a story to tell. I thank her for the encouragement and for making the complicated simple. My family has been a great source of support, without which this book would not have been possible. I thank my former principal Mr. Julius Benjamin Nathoo, and his wife Celina, for their vision in setting up Saraswat High School. It was Mr. Nathoo, in particular, who helped to shape my thinking that allowed me to behold the power and beauty of the written word. He remains a fountain of wisdom. I was fortunate at the University of Guyana, to meet with erudite teachers, Basdeo Mangru, David Chanderbali, and Winston McGowan. Sister Noel Menezes drilled into us the importance of research methods, for which I am grateful.
I am baffled how an underachiever like me was able to attend, and graduate, from the London School of Economics. I thank my teachers at the LSE, David McKnight, Maurice Bloch, I.M. Lewis, Margaret Hardiman, James Midgley and Peter Levin. I have worked with some of the most wonderful educators in New York City that include Charlotte Bloomberg, Jeanette Fricault, and Robert Wojnarowski. I thank them for their guidance and mentorship. My brother Pandit Chunelall Narine is a distinguished ambassador of peace and we salute him.
Shitty People is a work of fiction. I am responsible for its content. There is also Ma, my guide, the knower of all things. She smiles, my cup is filled, and my humble soul is sated.
 
They called us shitty people. The label stuck. We didn’t care and pretended not to hear. And with good reason. Angry storms belted the logies with floods that sent us scurrying for cover. We looked for anything to bail the grime and shit from the mud floors while we got ready for the next flood. They said we couldn’t read, and they were right. We lived in a world without books. We wrote nothing. The mailman never gave us letters. We lived in the shadows, off the grid. We didn’t exist on the map, but it didn’t bother us. This was my world, my piece of heaven. I couldn’t care less about their adjectives. I had Ma and Grandpa, Mother Hackett, Mother Adela, and a host of others to shower me with love in the shit and filth that was Sookoo Yard. I was happy. I was lucky. I found pure love in the howling winds, the pelting rains, and the grime that stained our feet.
Our rite of passage was tied to the whims of Sookoo. He was the landlord. He rented the shacks, or logies, that were stitched together from tins and straws and pieces of discarded wood. These makeshift dwellings hung precariously next to little streams. Everything was dumped into the stagnant water. The rains came regularly. The streams rose and belched and deposited the floating shit and grime into our logies. We looked to the sky and laughed.
Some said this was no way to live. It was brutish and nasty. That it stripped us of our dignity and that we would get diseases and die. It did not concern me one bit. I loved my logie. It was great to play in the rancid water and catch the baby snakes and scorpions in our mud kitchen. There was an overpowering stench when the logie dried, but this was a small token to pay for love. The outsiders covered their noses, avoided Sookoo Yard, and called us shitty people. But it was our logie. We paid the rent, and Ma and Grandpa sheltered me from the world.
My story began with Jimmy, this kid from Stelling Road. He threw me in a ditch, dropped his pants, and pissed all over me. Some of the pee landed on my lips, but before I could spit it out, he punched me in the face and ran off. Jimmy lived in a spanking-new house that was painted white. He saw me on Grandpa’s shoulders and went livid with rage. A rich kid was jealous of his shitty mate.
It was my first day at school. I was the first to venture from Sookoo Yard to learn to read. The old man wanted me to make a splash, an unforgettable entry into academia. I surveyed my world from Grandpa’s shoulders. It looked daunting and without order. Everything jostled in small spaces to find their way in the cacophony that was civilization. We reached Vergenoegen Government School, Jimmy and a small crowd gathered. The ladies smiled and clapped. This boy had promise, they said. He was the first from the logie to go to school. He would be a special addition to education. But those who knew me shook their heads.
“We don’t know about that,” they said. “That boy is too chul chul. He can’t stay still for anything. You should see him in Sookoo Yard, running about the place like he has a bee in his pants.”
I ignored them. This was my morning, a perfect morning. The sun and the crowd aligned to produce a new pupil. It was a universe that was filled with excitement and wonderful new things. I was deposited into the waiting arms of Miss Smith, a tall and motherly figure who must have seen many like me. She smiled and made me feel so at home that I forgot to wave Grandpa goodbye.
Miss Smith took me to a bench in the “play class,” and as the name suggested, we played. We did it all day. We flung marbles across the room and made paper planes. We flew them with the sound of car engines from our throats. But the most popular were the toy guns. We fashioned paper into little pistols and spent most of the time making the rat-a-tat sound that came from a machine gun. Miss Smith did something else. Each morning had its routine. We began by making paper hats. These, she said, we should wear at all times.
“You will be in serious trouble if you let it come off your head,” she said sternly. Miss Smith was nice and polite. We didn’t want to offend her, so one hand was always placed on our heads while we played. We needed to protect the hats at all costs, she reminded us. My bench mate was Jimmy. He was an expert in turning paper into different shapes. His hats were fashionable, and they fitted my head perfectly. When Jimmy needed help with the planes, I was there to carve out wings and tails from the broad colored sheets.
I walked home to our logie in Stelling Road. There were times when Grandpa would wait for me at dismissal. I treasured those moments because we got to walk home together. I would relate all the things we did in school, and the lemon-flavored candy that he gave me was an added treat.
I had no idea that this attention was causing jealousy. I noticed that whenever Grandpa came, Jimmy would go into a shell and not speak to me or help make my hat. One morning, I told him ahead of time that my grandpa would pick me up that day. Jimmy said nothing, and we played marbles and flew planes. The following afternoon, Jimmy flew into