Settling Down

Rambishoon and his Jahajees’ names and numbers – the latter bestowed on entering the Allanshaw at Calcutta – were registered by an overseer at the office adjoining the factory, after which they were taken to the logies, where they were allocated accommodations according to their familial status.
Being a bachelor, he was to share a 15’ x 10’ room with three other bachelors, which was not a problem since they were all “Jahajis”, or shipmates who had gotten familiar with each other during their three months at sea, whenerethey slept together in the front of the ship. He had been allowed to keep the plate, cup, and clothes given on the ship, and when they were marched over to another building to collect their “rations”, he collected his allotment of rice in the pot he was given, while separately knotting his dhall and spices in the ends of his loose shirt, and collecting his oil in his cup.
He would receive these items weekly for three months, with the cost deducted weekly from his meagre wages. He also collected the tool he would be using daily for almost every conceivable task in the years ahead – a cutlass, along with a file.
It was usual for new arrivals to be “seasoned” by performing less skilful tasks on the plantation, during which they would become accustomed to the new regimen and familiarity with British Guiana’s sugar cane demands. Rambishoon was placed in a large gang that performed a number of non-cane-cutting tasks, headed by a white overseer, who most frequently was Scottish or some local-born (Creole) whites or Mulattoes. One section – generally composed of women or weaker men – weeded around the roots of the sugarcane and was run by a female Sirdar, or “Sadarin”, under the command of the overseer. Rambishoon was assigned to the “relieving” section.
He and his Jahajis were warned to be up early to prepare their food since the overseers would be around by 05:00h to ensure their gangs were ready for the backdam. This was not a problem for Rambishoon, since this was his routine back in Ishmailpur, where he worked alongside his father and his brothers in their rice fields and vegetable gardens. When the overseer arrived on his mule, with his drivers yelling in front of the logies, he enquired brusquely from his “drivers” as to the whereabouts of some who were missing. Rambishoon passed his first muster.
Led by the overseer on his mule, the gang was marched down the “middle walk” or dam that divided De Willem from Zeeburg on the east and stretched miles to the conservancy behind the backdam. Rambishoon marvelled at the clear brown water flowing in the canals – “punt trenches”, he learned – on both sides of the middle walk and the rows of sugarcane that stood in the fields divided by cross canals. While some sugar cane was grown in his district of Jehanabad, there was none of this expanse or order. A mile in, his driver stopped at a field where the cane had been “cut” by the cane-cutting gang and fetched to the punts on the “punt trench”, which were hauled by bullocks and mules to the factory for “grinding”. At this time, the fields were not “burnt” before reaping.
Rambishoon and the “relieving” gang entered the field by paddling across the punt trench and hauled themselves up the raised “parapet” that surrounded the four sides of the field. He saw the field divided into “beds” about 30 feet wide that ran parallel to the parapet and the punt trench, with cane planted in precise rows about five feet apart.
The cane cutters had severed the cane stalks about a foot off the ground, lopped off the tops of the green leaves – called “trash” – and thrown these into the space one row away called the “trash bank”. The bare, thick stalks of cane had been dropped in the immediate space between the two rows – called an “open” – and had been picked up in bundles by a gang of “loaders” who followed the cutters and fetched them on their heads to the punts waiting in the punt trench.
Rambishoon and the other relievers collected all the trash, banded it into bundles, and placed it on the trash bank, from where it would later be loaded onto punts to be sent as fodder for the plantation’s mules, oxen, and cows. This was before the age of mechanisation.