The Curse of Bêti

The Curse of Bêti completes the tableau with the third part of a trilogy (1. ’When the Stars Shine’ & 2. ’Taming of a Brew’), set in the picturesque island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean amidst transitions in the island’s colonial powers.

Swathed in history when the French brought the first African slaves and the British who took over the island with the intake of indentured workers from India. Bêti of the fourth generation revisits her native island in the quest of her departed Mother’s wish - that of finding who her own mother was. The latter has had no picture of what her grandmother looked like.

Bêti, through arduous research discovers many hidden secrets about her maternal family roots bringing out a hard truth which shatters her understanding of the historical past of the so-called paradise island.

Here, cultures clash, traditions baffled, the colour of the skin matters, faith is in supernatural beliefs brought by the tribal African slaves and the indentured Indian labourers as they forge a way of life. Tragedies hit those who are at the mercy of loving life, and hope is buried deep in lore and taboos. Bêti has resolved to uncover the mystery of her mother’s parentage and sets her heart on a homecoming, but what is the secret of the family curse and of the dreams that plague her?

’When the Stars Shine’ is Sita Seecharrun Harris first novel and is inspired by evocative memories of her childhood spent on her native island with her mother. A recollection of the underbelly of China Town, Port Louis she paints her vivid memories of growing up there with people who marked her existence with colours.

’Taming of a Brew’ her second novel is based upon the colonial past of her native island where a new breed of multicultural human pathos has been rigged through centuries of passive silence. Based against the backdrop of tea cultivation in Mauritius, which is a lesser known crop, her narration again brings together historical fiction with fact.

She also illustrated both books.

Her recent novel ’The Curse of Bêti’ closes the trilogy with colonial masters, slaves and indentured workers from Africa and India and sugar as the elements in the main backdrop, she challenges cultural and generational differences and identities of the island’s colonialism, amidst a new style of blending fact with fiction.