Cargo of brutality

My grand parents came from India
Enduring months on a cold wooden ship sailing
With just their drums and danthals 
And little belongings and the cloths they're wearing

And we talk about their coming to Trinidad
With a mystical aura in our tone
Like if it was just vacation cruise 
That they were on an returning home

We was small and to naive to think about events
Like their experiences on the ship coming here
Today when try to imagine then actually being there
I know they must have been sick cold and fill with fear

My father parents and my grandmother parents 
Came from India as indenture workers on that long journey
And also my mother father came to Trinidad
During the war he was an Indian soldier in the British army

And he met my deformed born grandmother
And he fell madly in love with her 
Didn't care about her disability
Married her and had a daughter

But what many of us didn't realize then 
and even up to today many don't know it still
Is that the indentures workers philosophy was base on trickery and slavery
By the British and many workers didn't come of their own free will

The British sets up recruiting warehouses across India
And also pays Indians to trick their own unsuspecting people
education and schools at that time where for only the whites
So tricking the uneducated Indians were very simple

A mother would send her only son to the market
And the recruiter's will tell him " come help me and I will pay you lots of money
The innocent son would be tempted and go cause
he can take home money to help make is parents life's more easy

But once they gets him in the warehouse
They show him money and make him put an "X " on a contract
Then takes him away to a holding area
And to his family he can never go back

Then sometimes in other cases they would go to his family
And said your son is not coming home we want you to know
And then not wanting to lose their only child
They parent will also decided to join him to go

For every Indian indenture worker that they recruited
Not one was base on freedom and honesty
They were forced manipulated kidnapped by the British empire
In the hidden form of unjust slavery

On the ship for months life was hard and trying to make it easier 
they would play music drums dantals and be singing
Sometimes husband's brothers and fathers will mysteriously disappeared
So the British can have their ways with the women

If the wind and the sun and the Sky could of talk
What horrific tales it would have witness to tell
Little food water getting seasick going to an unknown place
Can you imagine yourself on the ship ? It would have been hell

Just some of the things our grandparent faced
Onboard the ships carrying cargos of brutality
And the inhumane injustice they endure
for months confined on the rough high seas

some indentured workers were tricked to signed a contracts 
to work abroad for a period of 5 years or more.
They were meant to receive wages,and land 
and, promise of a return passage once their contract was over.

slavery was abolish and the plantation owners
couldn't get the slaves to work again
for they was now free after so many years
and they all had only had hatred for the white men

but although the slaves didn't want to work again
they was a lot of animosity toward the Indians who arrived
so after the months of hardship on the seas
they was now had a very hard time to adjust to this new life

In reality, this seldom or never did happened
cause the conditions were harsh and their wages low
it was not enough for them to live and save 
so many never was in the position to leave and go

The indentured workers sought to escape poverty and famines 
that were a frequent occurrence under British occupancy
during the period of British colonial rule in India. 
they make sure the Indians lives with high levels of illiteracy

the Indian Indentureship to trinidad started in 1845
and did not come to an end until 1917.that year 
then the Indian indentured workers were permitted
to bring their families with them from India

and to keep the Indians from grouping to form any resentments
and it was not uncommon to place people from the same districts in India
on the same plantations or estate in Trinidad.and Tobago
just to keep an aura of mistrust amongst them in the atmosphere

at the end of the period the Trinidad Government in allocating the immigrants made efforts to separate the different religious communities.
The Muslims were settled generally on estates in the north 
while the Hindus were sent to the southern and central areas respectably

and The Christians intermingled within these. communities
completion of the five years of indenture, the Indians 
had a choice of remaining in the country with a 'gift' often acres of land 
or returning home. the majority decided to remain and take the free grant of land

in Trinidad between the years 1845 and 1917.
147,592 Indians’ names were registered as indentured workers 
and amongst those names was my grandfathers of "Ishmael.
and cause of him the name "Ishmael is spread wide and far

Fath Al Razak, was the 1st ship to Trinidad with East Indian Laborers 
a name that is permanent in the annals of Trinidad's history
the first ship to leave India for the promise of lies and deceptions
and carrying human cargoes carrying cargoes of brutality

today the British empire has no effect on the world
their flag no longer fly's in India and trinidad and Tobago
and the world now is mixture of races and cultures
in every countries where ever you may go

our ancestors has endure a very rough road for us 
that begins in the countries were they was born
they sacrifice their home land searching for a dream
a dream of a better life a dream that today still lives on