Love Over Death, That is the Hope

Love, life, everything must bow before death.
Image for representational purposes only. (File Photo)
Image for representational purposes only. (File Photo)

What is it that binds the greatest romances to tragedy—and that too, the greatest of tragedies, death? In one classical romance after another, whether it’s Romeo and Juliet or Shireen-Farhad, Sohni-Mahiwal,

Laila-Majnun, the lovers are separated (or united, interpret that how you will) in death. The dark angel, in the guise of disapproving parents, feuding families, jealous suitors and more, invariably comes between the two lovers, proving, time and again, that death is the ultimate arbiter. Love, life, everything must bow before death.

In her debut novel, When We Were Birds, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo upturns that trope and allows her lovers to embrace death in a way that’s utterly unique. For Yejide St Bernard and Emmanuel Darwin, death is not the ghoul waiting in the wings; instead, death is an intrinsic part of their lives.

Darwin, born and brought up a Rastafarian, is forced to give up at least part of his beliefs, along with his dreadlocks, when the only job he can get requires him to work with the dead—as a gravedigger at the sprawling cemetery in the city.

Yejide’s connection with death is even more intense, more intimate: the women of her family have, for generations, been tied in with death. The legend goes back a long way, and talks of how in the aftermath of a great storm, the green parrots of the island separated into two groups. One group remained as they were, bright-feathered and bright-voiced; the other shed those radiant plumes and donned black ones, their beaks broadening and sharpening, their voices hoarsening to caws.

They became the corbeaux, the symbol of death. Where the corbeaux and the St Bernard family’s women come together is fluid, left to the imagination—but this is obvious: that Yejide, like her mother and grandmother and many other female ancestors, can see death, can sense its nearness, can even communicate with the dead. Darwin and Yejide cross paths in the most unsettlingly magical of ways as if they were indeed destined for each other. As the momentum builds, the magic builds too, the St Bernard connection with the dead coming to the fore, even as Darwin struggles against the very real-world dangers he faces.

Lloyd Banwo manages to bring to life her native Trinidad vividly, even though she is careful to provide a disclaimer: that though the island of When We Were Birds is Trinidad, the geography and places in the book are fictitious.

But the sounds, the smells, the sights, the patois, are all there, and all come together to frame some fascinating characters. Darwin and Yejide, are both battling their own demons (not the least, their parents), as well as other people.

The gravediggers who are Darwin’s colleagues; the woman Shirley, who handles the administration of the cemetery, Yejide’s household, standing on the edge of another realm thanks to the women of Yejide’s line––all are real, three-dimensional, intriguing.

Magical, in a flesh-and-blood way: the magical realism Lloyd Banwo evokes with such aplomb is superbly balanced, never tipping into the extreme on either side.

This balance, in fact, is among the most laudable features of Lloyd Banwo’s writing. She balances real and mythical, dark and light, joy and sorrow, death and life, with skill. The result is a book that draws the reader into a compelling story, one that makes one root for Yejide and Darwin, and to hope that this is one-time death will not be able to triumph over love.

When We Were Birds

  • Author: Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
  • Publisher: Hamish Hamilton (an imprint of Penguin Random House UK)
  • Pages: 278
  • Price: Rs 699

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