Living with Purpose

Chapter 1-Family Beginning, Early Days (1923 – 1943)

A man, as a general rule owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.— Alexander Graham Bell

As we trace Pt Sirju’s history, it is fitting to begin the story with his mother Chameli. As mothers are wont to do, she was arguably the most influential force that affected the course of his life. The chapter also describes other major influences in his early life.
Chameli, number 83875 on her Emigration Pass, landed on the shores of British Guiana on March 12, 1900 under terms of the Indentured Labour agreement carved by British rulers. She was 6 months old and accompanied by her parents.
The documents on indentured labourers describe abhorrent conditions on the boats that took them from their homeland to the colonies. Chameli’s parents and Chameli traveled from India to work in the sugar plantations of British Guiana. The boat that brought them suffered from massive overcrowding. The scarcity of food and fresh water combined with the long 3-month voyage resulted in many of the travelers dying from diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
What desperations would have driven parents to undertake such potentially dangerous trip with a little infant in tow? In what was surely an unmistakably massive upheaval from an already irksome life, what was the final straw that pushed them over the figurative edge, in agreeing to a seemingly perilous future? One can only guess that any sadness at leaving their homes, would have been outweighed by hopes and dreams of a strange promised land.
Many men and women survived the treacherous trip in the boats, but could not stomach the pain of isolation from the families left behind. Added to the harsh conditions under which they were forced to work and live in the new land, it is understandable that these few answered the siren call to return to the familiarity and dubious security of their homeland.
Chameli and her parents settled with the majority for whom there was no turning back; continuing on their journey, as turbulent and whimsical as the unbridled winds and currents serving destiny’s unrelenting lead, to a land of hope; and dreams of a better life. Having left their motherland with an intent to accumulate wealth and return in a state of financial success, a new perspective like the willful roots of a transplanted tree, took hold. The foreign land was their new home; and to leave what they were now building, would be akin to leaving their home again. Their prior “homeland” now seemed a distant memory; one where they may never again be able to fit in with her people.
Nostalgic, no doubt, they persisted, enduring the cruel realities of the grueling conditions they inherited in the sugar plantations. With an eye to first completing the terms of the Indentured Labour agreement with British masters, they looked ahead to the future with determination.
Chameli completed her indenture-ship term at Plantation Enmore on the East Coast of Demerara. According to records at the National Archives of Guyana, this was performed during her childhood years, although the nature of her tasks has not been ascertained. The material difficulties that she encountered thus far in her young life did not disappear with the end of indenture-ship. Records indicate that she was married at around age sixteen when she moved to Clonbrook Village on the East Coast of British Guiana to join her husband’s family. There she had three sons followed by a daughter in the order: Seecharan, Sirju, Hansraj, and Sukhia also known as Betty. Betty was 6 months old when her dad passed away at age 30 years, leaving Chameli at 29 years old to look after 4 children.
Throughout her life, Chameli demonstrated a fortitude, which included an ability to face challenges head on; and an acute sensibility with an eye for enterprise and upliftment. The extent to which the ability to endure, was a direct outcome of earlier hardships, or was the reason that she survived the hardships, must be left to pure conjecture.