À l’heure du tout à l’image et du buzz sans suite, «l’express» souhaite faire découvrir la plume de poètes, de chanteurs, d’écrivains et de tous ceux qui jettent leur âme sur le papier, et qui mettent en mots des réflexions profondes.

I stand at the back of the exam room as the students are finishing their paper

Voices from outside jostle into a tunnel of memory

A wave of despair washes through me:

That things should have changed yet ever remained the same

The sound and place open a tunnel to the past

Visions of hope dashing against the walls of hopelessness

The young man eager to make his mark

In the new city by the city

Turning into a frustrated middle aged clerical

Struggling to make ends meet,

Still not having understood how he

Changed from the svelt hopeful youth

To the thick-waisted, uncomprehending bureaucrat

Another young mischievous youth who used to walk the streets

Of the city, and like the proverbial street urchin

Street-smart, resourceful

Knowing everybody, as he helped

And provided for himself and his family,

With a lot of fun in between the hard physical labour

He spent a month in prison for a theft he did not commit

None but his family believed him

He was thrashed, humiliated

When he came out the spark was gone

He became a ghost and joined the host of invisible hands which line the streets

Across the road his cousin borrowed to pay his passage to the UK

Escaped conversion, found a job as nurse-student and created a life

Which showed him he mattered in the world

He dreamt of changing his world

But came back to be engulfed in the throes of postcolonial racism and bureaucracy

And the worse was that this racism came from the locals

Who had learnt the ropes of status and prestige

From the departed colonials

This is the blue sky that is sold to tourist

Sky, sea and sun

This is the beauty we wake up to, taking for granted our place under the sun

Until we learn that our space is the littlest, in the most obscure corner

Of the nation, when everyone else who matters

Has cut off their share of the cake

And the crumbs fall into obscurity

Invisible but to the parsimonious

The tourist brochures speak of leisure and luxury

But to many these lands are vistas of despair

Of self-perpetuating powerlessness

At the open-air café a French woman is discussing business with a local partner

I assume they are equals

And reflect on the arrogance of power which comes with unconscious privilege

Before my order comes they get up

And I see a thin well-dressed French woman, wearing trendy slacks

And an open thin vest over a black top

Her business partner has a bulging stomach and too tight trousers

From a badly cut material

Of course, there are so many stereotypes in what I see

But these bodies exist across a wide divide

Between a world of privilege and one where the stunted

Growth of mind and selves can be read in the clumsiness

The ostentatious unease of boorish manners

Unsure voices, tentative attempts to mark the world with meaning.

That is all we can do

Tentative attempts to mark the world with meaning

As the larger patterns escapes us.

Why were we born on this

Small island in the middle of a vast ocean

Far away from the more populous lands

A small piece of rock, which would have been confined to oblivion had it not been

For the colonial wars between France and Britain to control the sea route to India.

I feel such lassitude at the burden of history

And its lies and half meanings.

An independent state was created

Towards the middle of the twentieth century

Purported to be a state which rose from the ashes of colonial exploitation

Offering its citizens the dream of equality.

I have anguished for long at this word

Trying to find words to express how hollow this concept ever was

Against the practical reality of the divided land.

When some hoarded vast domains for agriculture and leisure

Others were only allowed the steep rocky cliffs of hillsides to build and cultivate

Across this spectrum came in a world of bureaucrats

Who played on the privilege of colour, race and religion

To make their pre-eminence felt

Secure in the knowledge that they had the backing

Of the invisible, powerful landowners

They were the middlemen

In charge of banks and the media

Ever servile to the idea of prestige which privileged a European understanding of culture.

Graceful manners and elegant rituals were learnt

These passed on as codes down the families

Codes of behaviour, expectations and prejudice

Closing in as webs of power over the generations

Smaller circles of power within the larger, invisible

Yet more powerful circles of power

Who silently moved in to take charge of everything

As the new conglomerates of the day.

In their invisibility

They now decide how we eat, what we wear

How memories are remembered

What legends and leisure matter

They can make or unmake through

Their middlemen

Write off debts with a sleight of hand or

Condemn others to disgrace

All with just a wave, or the absence of it

Like a cone, the silent power holds all the control at the top

Allowing their young to play the game of democracy

Until they learn that silence will hide the injustice on which their current prestige is built

Better than any attempt to explain, justify,

Or disculpate individuals from historical responsibility

Because, I guess it is too uncomfortable to have to question the strings of historical

Inequality and injustice which lie behind every decision you make

About where to live and what to eat

Which school to choose for your kids, how to spend your holidays

Or even what clothes to wear, what car to drive.

The web of control grows stronger by the day,

Silencing any attempt to reveal how it is structured through inequality

Silently, unconsciously, everyone knows that in order to survive

They will have to abide

Learn amnesia and selective blindness

And who dares think outside the web of control is left to rediscover

Intergenerational knowledge in one lifetime

Condemned to hover on the periphery

Near the ever-growing abyss

Against this structure of reality some have tried using historical or traditional subaltern privilege, created under colonial dominance

In order to create their own web of meaning

Networks of relationship

And structures of mutual support

Adding yet another layer to the pyramid

In turn, becoming new controllers in their own world of alterity

While the brainwashing and Othering

Continues through silence, language, culture and borrowed concepts

Bio

Nandini Bhautoo

She has been teaching Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Mauritius for more than three decades. She has also actively mentored young writers. She says that for her, poetry is a means to confront the personal and collective unconscious to which everyday life often anaesthetises us. This poem was written when she returned to the country after a three-year hiatus.