A Multidisciplinary Research Journal - Devanga Arts College

parents instill into the ears of their children, “your future is not here. You have got to escape”.
The youngsters must engage themselves in learning. They “better learn” (27), for “they must
escape” by all means. The parents pathetically plead to the teachers, “Teach them well so they
become docta or lawya in England one day” (27), for they cannot allow their children suffer their
own “past, slavery and indentured labour, the bones buried not far away. “The cries of pain”
(30). These elders have withstood the agonizing experiences of the twice migrated diaspora;
first, a compelled migration as indentured labourers, and next, a voluntary transfer to a rich land.
They have learned the valuable lesson that voluntary shift is far more preferable than a forced
one. Their ignorant children, on the other hand, are too eager to work in the canefield when me
grow up….. yes; me, too want to work in canefield” (27), as bonded slaves.
In a migratory encounter when the diasporic individual is capable of networking with the
people of the new country his new-found sense of solidarity boozes his morale and guides him to
find a new home. As nothing hinders the onward march of this immigrant who good-
humouredly loses sight of the protruding edges, he is in the cultural construct of ‘Melting pot’.
A few individuals in Dabydeen’s Jogging in Havana subscribe to this style of living, whereas
for many other characters, the past and the present battle with each other, one forcing its identity
on the other. Here is a ‘Salad Bowl’, where the individual units retain their distinct identities
with no scope for amalgamation. Rightly does Jameela Begum assert, “Dabydeen offers no easy
solutions or conclusions. His works reflect an ambiguity, an ambivalence that distinguishes the
immigrant’s experiences and interaction with the adopted society” (Begum 66).
Works Cited
Begum, Jameela, Writers of the Indian Diaspora: Cyril Dabydeen.
New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2000.
Dabydeen, Cyril. Jogging in Havana. Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1992.
-------------- 2000. “India in Me: Reflections”. Writers of the India Diaspora: Cyril
Dabydeen. Jameela Begum. New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2000.
Mukherjee, Arun P. “The Poetry of Michael Ondaatje and Cyril Dabydeen: Two
Responses to Otherness.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 20:1 (1985):
49-67.