Women
Looking at this category over the years, sadly it has not been a singular narrative of the strong Caribbean matriarch, a prototype supported by the UN with T&T high on UN’s list for equality between genders.
Despite feminism, despite access to education, where they continue to do better than men, despite the Domestic Violence Act, the experience of women in T&T continues to be difficult.
As a journalist my view is unfortunately of our women as victims of a male brutality. Some 40- 50 women are murdered each year, usually after being raped, or chopped, or set afire, despite their reporting of domestic abuse.
Women, mothers, and grandmothers also continue to be the primary carers of children and the elderly and have not had had the recognition and support in these areas that would allow them to stand as equals in society.
Click here to view video series on domestic violence.
My grandmother Shahnur Jehan Begum born in Hyderabad in 1914 in the Savanur family was a brilliant pianist who won a scholarship to study music in Vienna in the 1930s. She was married off young into the Bhopal family and she never fulfilled her dreams to become a concert pianist. She was born into privilage but filled with regret at her unfullfilled potential . I never forget what she reminded repeately that the only treasure worth having for a woman was the knowledge she gained, that it was vital for a woman to be educated.
Born in Aligarh, India, my Mathur grandmother,Kamla was the daughter of a policeman. She had five boys and a girl. She did not have access to education or the vote and died before I was born but she raised five foward thinking men to be feminists and to give their daugthers the same if not more opportunites than the men in the family. My father is one of her boys and even when he couldnt afford it, he ensured his girls education took priority even over his sons.
My grandfather's mother Shaharyar Dulhan Begum Sahiba with her two sons. My grandfather (bottom – Said uz zaffar Khan and granduncle Rashid uz Zafar Khan). She had four sons and one daughter – three of her children died in her lifetime. She was a strong woman, a disciplinarian. My mother remembers her as kind but my grandmother as an austere religious woman, who ran her household of four families in one compound with great strictness. Daily she would send my grandmother, her daughter-in-law, herself clothes and accessories which she was to wear. Naturally, my grandmother rebelled and at that time literally had the luxury to go off riding into the Bhopal woods to escape interference. It was a different time, and women's rebellions ended up being self-destructive and often led nowhere.
My mother, the daughter of two erstwhile Muslim homes of the Raj - Bhopal and Savanur, spent her childhood in Savanur in South India with her grandparents where she was privately tutored. Her hand in Arabic was so precise and artistic that scholars often came to examine it. She attended Sacred Hearts Girls High School in Bangalore ( my sister and I also went there) and was a boarder at St Marys College in Lahore, Pakistan. She met my dashing Hindu father when they were both learning to play the piano in Bangalore from an old English teacher, and her life changed forever, as she accompanied him to his army postings around India, and eventually across the world to Trinidad. My mother, a Sufi, exudes the grace of someone willing to give up everything material for love.
Me as a baby in Bombay with my mother, my grandmother, and my great grand mother Khaliq un-nisa Begum Sahiba - of Savanur. My great grandmother rode, fenced, played the piano, shot tigers, and was the first Indian woman to study abroad. But her studies were cut short when she turned 16. She like my mother, grand mother valued books and over everything.
In a sari. To quote the Trinidadian writer VS Naipaul " But I cannot really explain the mystery of ... inheritance. Most of us know the parents or grandparents we come from. But we go back and back, forever; we go back all of us to the very beginning; in our blood and bone and brain we carry the memories of thousands of beings ... We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited." I am the sum of my the women who came before me. All my women ancestors had a desire to engage with the world, and to change it. My great great grandmother, Sultan Jehan Begum of Bhopal ( story below) was the last in line of four women who ruled Bhopal for over a century, building schools, universities, and infrastrucre. All my women ancestorys had an innate sense of justice. Its this that i carry in my work, and that I wish for the women of this world.
My daughter Anika Mathur Mohammed has always been a free spirit who has followed her own path. She is the amalgam of all the women who came before her, and in a way brings redemption to us all with her strong sense of justice, independent spirit, and belief that she is in this world to change it for the better. She has some of all our traits and also a new path that is entirely her own.