Naag Mountain

By Manisha Anjali

Naag Mountain is an imagined recovery of the little-known cultural inheritance of a displaced and exploited people. Historical figures, folk characters, and spirits are entwined in a narrative poem colored by the surrealism of dreams. A community whose ancestors from India were indentured by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company to labor on sugar plantations in Fiji receives their dreams as messages from their friends across the Tasman. A mysterious reel of film washes ashore Port Douglas, depicting harrowing violence under the indenture system. The historical actors walk out of the film and into the world of the living. The community walks into the projection. The naag, the thousand-mouthed snake, conjures a floating mountain,  lined with flowering trees, mists and dreams.