Trinidad and Tobago prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Wednesday got an emotional homecoming welcome at her forefathers’ ancestral village in Bihar and showered with the traditional love normally shown to a village girl returning home after a long time.
Bedecked with colourful festoons and painstakingly spruced up, Bhelupur village in Bihar’s western Buxar district witnessed a brief, tearful reunion in the cycles of migration in human history as the 60-year-old prime minister of the far-off Caribbean islands nation stepped on the soil from where her great grandfather, Ram Lakhan Mishra, had left in 1889 as a labourer.
The villagers, who had been preparing for over a month to receive Ms Bissessar, adoringly referred to her as “PM bitiya” (the Prime Minister daughter) and “gaaon ki beti” (daughter of the village) and received her with traditional Hindu ritual. They presented her a silk sari, vermilion, bangles and also some ornaments made of gold and silver. Ms Bissesser’s husband, Gregory Bissessar, was presented with a sacred thread, dhoti and shawl.
“It was a long dream to receive this village daughter, and it has now become real,” said Jagadish Mishra, Ms Bissessar’s uncle and Bhelupur villager, after the expatriate Prime Minister visited his house. He and his sister-in-law Janaki Devi urged Ms Bissessar to come again to the village. The Mishra family and several villagers were allotted special passes by the district administration to be with Ms Bissessar. The villagers had themselves paved a brick road to the village for Ms Bissessar’s arrival with little government help.