I STRETCH archival fragments by reading along the bias grain to eke out extinguished and invisible but no less historically important lives. |
In the mid-1990s I wanted to write on the experiences of the indentured in the journey over the Kala Pani. But I found it difficult to find historical evidence that would turn the numbers allocated to the indentured into real living human beings.
And so, I took the scattered records available and tried to build a story of one person’s journey. Historians later would call this style of writing critical fabulation. It was first brought into the public domain by US historian Saidiya Hartman and followed by writers like Marisa Fuentes that forms the epigram of this column.
My own writing resulted in a picture of the fictional indentured woman Ratunya Mochi, and it unfolded as she opened her eyes on the second day, still rocked with cholera and a disease of scabs on her arms and legs. She had no idea that where she lay was in Africa. She did not care.
