How do we tell the truth about ourselves and others?

By Kimberly Wallace

Throughout her long career in the media, India-born Trinidadian journalist and broadcaster Ira Mathur has written hundreds of articles and columns. But it’s her debut book Love the Dark Days, which centres on a privileged but dysfunctional Indian family that will stay with readers long after they have turned the last page.

In the memoir which is set in Trinidad, St Lucia, England and India, Mathur grapples with childhood traumas, patriarchy, gender oppression and the colonial past.

Her honest writing stirs the reader to contemplate how the consequences of colonialism and familial wounds can cross generations and continents and impact lives.

Mathur and her family left India and migrated to Tobago when she was 11. As the years passed the gulf between her life in T&T and her past life in India widened and she struggled to find a sense of belonging.

“Up until the time I wrote the memoir I felt conflicted as to who I am and where I belonged,” the award-winning journalist told Her in an interview.

When people leave their homelands, even if they leave as children – as Mathur did- there are certain bits of their past that remain embedded in memory and form who they are.

Mathur recalls her childhood in India as an army officer’s daughter which involved moving from state to state every three years.

Among the memories of those years are the bright colours of southern India, the snow-capped mountains of Simla, the army battalions in Chandigarh, and her grandmother’s many stories of her mother’s family that went all the way back to the 16th century.

Those stories and the insight they afforded Mathur were essential in helping her come to terms with her family’s experiences and those of her own.

“She told me those stories because I think she expected me to be a repository for the stories and I felt like if I don’t tell them, they will be lost,” said Mathur. “I told the stories initially to remember but in telling them I was able to find myself and claim who I really am.”

Since its release in July 2022, Love the Dark Days has enjoyed critical acclaim and has been described as “a compelling book” and “a necessary read”.

When she was writing the memoir, Mathur’s aim was to make it not just about herself.

Perhaps one of the reasons it has done so well is that the subjects she addresses have found resonance among its readers whose own experiences mirror those of the author.

In the memoir which offers an insight into her upbringing, Mathur writes as honestly as she could of mothers and daughters and the damage that we unconsciously inflict upon each other.

“When we have inherited certain things, we unconsciously pass it on and this is a universal theme, especially so for those of us who have lived under colonial rule,” she explained.

“We started to unconsciously follow the blueprint of how the colonials did things; they were punishing when things went wrong, they were controlling, they had fake ideas of what it was to be important — these were all the unconscious biases that our grandmothers, great grandmothers and great great grandmothers picked up on.

“In India, the bias my great grandmother picked up was the whole idea of fair skin — that came from the British who were very disparaging of brown Indians.

“My mother remembers growing up at a time when she saw in some of the posh clubs in New Delhi signs such as ‘No dogs or Indians’.”

Unconsciously, that colonial bias infiltrated families which passed it on to one another and as a result many families, including Mathur’s, carried around trauma and hurt.

“It is vital for us to confront our brutal history,”” said Mathur.

“What happened to the native Amerindians as well as the slave trade and indentureship not only involved the killing but also the dehumanising and stripping of human beings.

“Some studies are saying trauma can be passed through DNA. Won’t that explain to some degree some of the violence we are seeing among some of our young men? How do we expect people to have stable lives when their entire background has been one of brutality? If this is not properly processed and there is no insight then it goes on from one generation to the next,” said the writer and journalist who is a strong proponent of reparations.

“If we want to stop the brutality at a national and personal level, we must all take a deep look at what happened to us – and that’s hard because it’s painful. But it’s like cauterising a wound and once you do that, healing does happen.”

Mathur hopes Love the Dark Days will encourage readers on a very personal level to look at their own lives and see what good and bit of light they can glean from the dark days and from relationships within the family circle that may have disappointed them.

There is a poignant moment in her memoir where she is urged by the late Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott to acknowledge the impact that colonialism had on her family and let the past go.

“If you stay in the past, you are as stagnant as pond water,” Walcott told Mathur.

Writing Love the Dark Days was in many ways a cathartic experience for Mathur; she is no longer haunted by the question of belonging and personal identity.

Mathur who is half-Hindu, half-Muslim doesn’t feel like she has a place in India anymore; T&T has given her family a home and a life.

Many are surprised at how unflinchingly raw the memoir is — but Mathur offers no apologies on that score. She believes it is really important to tell the truth.

“Once you start telling the truth to yourself about yourself and your life, and stop brushing over your own faults, you will face the world with courage, you will get closer to other people when you acknowledge you are vulnerable and others will see that they are not alone.

“And isn’t that what it means to be human – to make connections and to not feel alone? I hope that people would see that once they start telling the truth to themselves and to other people their lives would change as mine has,” said Mathur.

Love the Dark Days is available at RIK Services, Nigel R Khan, Paper Based Bookshop in Port of Spain, NEXGEN in Mayaro and on Amazon US, UK and India.