EPISODE 2 : A SNAKE IN JODHPURS

Another Saturday, another week-end to be spent in drudgery.

We had been told that the great leader and his cohort would be visiting the estate and preparations needed to be made. The place needed to be cleaned, the barracks tidied, the yard swept, and students had to be seen as busy doing their tasks.

Food and drink to be served to the leader and his cohort included peas and rice and coconut water laced with Guyana rum. The peas and rice would also be given to us for lunch. (Plain water to wash it down.)

Peas and rice needs coconut milk – lots of it if you are cooking for over 100 people. Coconut milk is derived from grated coconut. The sergeant asked the assembled students who among us knew how to grate coconuts. For a certainty, every Guyanese knows how to grate a coconut by hand. But no hand came up. So he asked the question again and he added that such persons would be exempt from cleaning the canals. I, with snakes in my mind’s eye, put up my hand. My hand and I lived to regret this impetuous act.

I was sent to the shed where a heap of coconut halves awaited me. I surveyed at the heap. Lord! There must be at least two hundred coconut halves.

With much trepidation, I sat down on the bench with the grater attached and went to work grating coconut. Fifty halves later, there was blood on my palms. I went to the barracks and got a piece of cotton from my bag and wrapped my hand and went back to my grater.

Very soon, I started cutting the work short. I grated a bit from each and threw it down as being finished and started on another. Two hours later, the cook came and collected the huge container of grated coconut to extract the milk. I was done. I never mentioned that the coconut had a drop of my blood in it.

While I had been thus employed, my friend had been busy with her tricks. She had been given the job of draining the water from the green coconuts into containers for the guests.

A special jug of this water was to be set aside for the leader with rum ( 25-year old) added.

Revenge is a sweet thing done on the sly. She drank a half the coconut water then added plain water and a huge amount of rum. She left the room before she could be discovered.

Well, dear reader, the leader came riding a horse all decked out in fawn jodhpurs, tall riding boots, wide-brimmed felt hat, whip in hand with his followers riding their horses behind him. I was reminded of the British estate managers whom he was attempting to imitate. The irony here should not be lost.

My eyes popped out when I saw two men running on foot after the horses. One had a bottle of rum in his hand, while the other carried the adulterated coconut water.

I didn’t know it then but many years later she confessed to me what she had done and we shared a good laugh over it.

Post Script:

During Guyana’s fight for freedom from colonial rule, Dr Jagan, who was the Prime Minister at the time, went on an official visit to India. He took B- with him as a part of the envoy.

Prime Minister of India, J.N. chaired the conference, and whatever he noticed between Dr J and B. prompted him to take Dr Jagan aside and tell him this in Hindi:

This, as happened, turned out to be true .

“You have brought the snake that will one day bite you.”