Chanting Denied Shores : Komagata Maru' Tales

Chanting Denied Shores: Komagata Maru’ Narrative
Tariq Malik

978-1-897411-16-2

5.25” x 8.375” / 168pp

Forthcoming, Spring 2010

$17.95

The boys of summer 1914 are at it again.

With Vancouver’s waterfront ringing to the verses of ‘White Canada Forever’, hundreds of Punjabi East Indians have quietly sailed into the harbour clamouring for their right as equal subjects of the British Empire to relocate in Canada, their chartered ship 'Komagata Maru' now rusting at anchor inside the Burrard Inlet. The hopeful would-be-immigrants find the city distracted by exuberant Victoria Day celebrations, not to mention Buffalo Bill’s final visit and circus billed as 'The Best Show On Earth'.

While an immigration inspector seizes upon the ship's arrival on his watch as an opportunity to redress personal frustrations and regain lost stature, an East Indian mill worker watches from the shore in rising frustration as the allegedly rogue ship’s passengers are denied entry. A gifted undercover agent whose intricate web of informants has infiltrated the Pacific coast warns that the ship’s passengers are a part of an emerging and sinister insurgency to free India from its occupying British rulers; and his seven year old daughter watches a favorite uncle worship the first crocuses and revel in the return of seasonal salmon by swimming with them in a shallow stream.

These are some of the threads that are woven into the narrative of a disillusioned passenger of the 'Komagata Maru' who is ostensibly here to take up the Canadian offer of ‘Free Land’ in the Last Best West. Stranded in Vancouver’s harbor, he wonders what had been the original compulsion that brought him here: the promotional posters distributed by the village money-lender, the brief arc of a two-tailed comet pointing east, or the stirrings of a naive poetic and political awareness?