Raise the Lanterns High
by Lakshmi Persaud
Category: Fiction

On the eve of her arranged marriage, Vasti discovers that she is due to marry the rapist she saw in a sugar cane field years earlier. A horrific dilemma befalls her: she can either speak out, defy convention and bring the family name into disrepute or submit silently to her fate. Vasti collapses, and while unconscious, travels in a dream from her home in 1960s Trinidad back to 18th-century India. Here, King Paresh has just died in battle, and his three Queens are expected to perform suttee to climb on the pyre with his body and be burned alive. Their dilemma is a matter of life and death, but the social pressures are much the same as Vasti's. Will they make a bid for escape?