Of play and longing: “Holi Songs of Demerara”
by gaiutra
Today is Holi, the springtime festival known in the Caribbean as Phagwah (after the Bhojpuri month of “Phagun”). I thought I’d take the opportunity to highlight a rare text: the only known literary work by an indentured servant in the Anglophone Caribbean. I found a frayed red copy, written in the Devanagari script and largely in the archaic dialect of 16th-century saint poets from the heartland of Ayodhya, in the Hindi pamphlets collection at the British Library. Published in 1916, Damra […]
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