Sugar beat

THIS novella was written over 50 years ago by the father of the celebrated novelist V S Naipul. It is the latter who has arranged this new, amended edition of a work first published commercially in 1976. A privately-published edition came out in 1943.

The story tells of a village of Indian immigrants in Trinidad and is a microcosm of the experience of the Indian community in this West Indian island during the first half of the 20th century.

Gurudeva is the son of a sugar-cane farmer who, by the village's standards, is well off. His house may have earth walls and floors like all the rest but his has a corrugated iron roof.

Gurudeva is forced into an arranged marriage at the age of 14 by his father and consequently has to leave school.

With only a rudimentary education and still emotionally immature, he does not take to being a husband. He constantly beats his wife, Ratni, and while his brothers toil in the fields, Gurudeva's father indulges him and lets him sit idly around the house.

He develops a passion for bamboo sticks or gatka, which are used for fighting and hopes to become a delinquent, a bad-John, and fight gatka gangs from other villages.

But when he is challenged by a member of a rival gang, he backs off. Instead he turns on an old man who is too drunk and feeble to defend himself. After a year in prison, Gurudeva emerges a teetotaler and devout Hindu but deep down remains a selfish, ignorant brute.

Naipul's dialogue is written in a patois which has a distinctive West Indian rhythm and lilt.

He describes a way of life that no longer exists, that is inward-looking, where time has stood still.

Although the villagers are Hindus and proud of their origins, the tremendous changes taking place in the sub-continent, with the struggle against colonialism, seem to have passed them by.

As V S Naipul explains in the foreword, the novella is semi-autobiographical. His father understood these people and in the best chapters, he reveals acute powers of observation. Sadly, apart from this work and a number of short stories, Seepersad Naipul wrote little else in the way of fiction. He died in 1953 and as he neared the end, became increasingly bitter about what might have been. His novella shows potential that was never realised.

The Adventures of Gurudeva by Seepersad Naipul Heinemann $170