Carriers of the light for the common good

FLUTTER OF FLAMES

- YOGAN NAIDOO

IT IS A celebration that sets the subcontinent ablaze with a million points of light. This is Diwali, the great festival of lights, a sublime testament to the triumph of radiance over obscurity, of good over the profoundest evil.

Imagine, if you will, the scene in its quintessential, unadulterated glory: the smoky, fragrant dusk alive with the flutter of flames from countless diyas, each tiny earthen lamp a defiant sun against the encroaching night. They line the edges of homes, spill from windowsills, and float like constellations upon sacred rivers, their warm, honeyed glow painting the world in hues of gold and saffron.

And yet, in the autumn of 1860, as this pageantry of light and life reached its crescendo across the dusty plains of Bihar and other states, a starkly different reality was unfolding for 342 souls. For them, the lamps had dimmed. The fireworks were a memory. The laughter had died in their throats, replaced by the monotonous, groaning heartbeat of a steam engine. They were aboard the SS Truro, a vessel of iron and ambition, carving a solitary path across the implacable darkness of the Indian Ocean.

The first shock was not of the landscape, though its unfamiliar greens and sharp light were an assault on senses accustomed to the soft, golden haze of the Gangetic plain.

The primary shock was commodification. They were herded from the heaving deck into a world of forms and numbers, their identities, once woven from caste, lineage and village, stripped away and replaced with a cold, sequential digit in a ledger. This was the ritual of registration, a profane ceremony where the complex symbolism of their names was mangled by indifferent clerks.