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| Guyana's president welcomed as hero in Indian village of his ancestors
THAKURAIN PURWA, India, Aug 24 (AFP) - Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo was accorded a hero's welcome Sunday as he visited the north Indian village his ancestors left generations ago, with farmers who have never seen electricity showering him with flowers and sweets. The 39-year-old South American leader had rose petals thrown at his feet as he made his first steps on the unpaved lanes of Thakurain Purwa, an anonymous village that just learned a lost son is a head of state. BizVantage – Beyond the news: when knowing counts. "Luck has smiled on us now that the president's roots have been traced here. Otherwise our village would have always remained an unnoticed and uncared for place," village chief Mohammed Ishaq told AFP. Jagdeo smiled broadly and spoke little as he toured his ancestral village, with Indian junior foreign minister Digvijay Singh serving as an interpreter for the president, who could manage only faltering Hindi. Thousands of villagers from a vast stretch of Uttar Pradesh state crowded into tiny Thakurain Purwa, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of the provincial capital Lucknow, for a glance at Jagdeo in his one-hour trip "home." "It's been an extremely emotional experience for me," Jagdeo told them. "I'm extremely proud of my roots." Of the 28 families in Thakurain Purwa, 24 claim some relation to the Guyanese president. But few have had the fortune of Jagdeo, the son of a railway worker who went on to earn a degree in economics and become one of the world's youngest heads of state. According to Rajan Singh, who describes himself as Jagdeo's "distant nephew, " the village found out only four days ago about the presidential visit from a team of state officials. Suddenly the ramshackle village untouched by concrete had a few bricks laid on its main road. And power poles -- set up in the 1980s but never put into operation -- were turned on for 12 hours in the village's first taste of electricity. Ishaq, the village chief, said only one young man in Thakurain Purwa had gone away for education, with the rest being illiterate. The closest health care center is five kilometers (three miles) away. As Jagdeo arrived under a canvas tent, rain began pouring down, an auspicious sign for the superstitious here. The president grinned as children wrapped garlands around his neck and pressed a red "tika" dot onto his forehead. As the guests were served sugary Indian sweets, a choir sang: "We welcome you to your ancestral land. We have been blessed by your steps today." Women in the village presented Jagdeo with four sari dresses for his female relatives and the village chief, a Muslim, gave him a copy of the Hindu holy text the Ramayana. One group of residents handed the leader of the distant country a petition asking that Indian officials provide funds for better farming facilities in the village -- and for the construction of a statue of Jagdeo. "I shall speak to the local authorities and see if they can help all of you out," the president assured them. Jagdeo arrived in India early Sunday and will travel the country for six days, on Monday holding talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and attending a state banquet hosted by President Abdul Kalam. Roughly half of Guyana's 750,000 people are ethnic Indians, descendants of indentured labourers brought by British colonial rulers after slavery ended there in 1838. Ram Dulari, a 90-year-old matriarch of Thakurain Purwa, said Jagdeo's family was believed to have left the village in around 1912 as cholera gripped the area and residents fled. She said the villagers will forever remember the presidential visit -- and were hoping for tangible benefits. "We are very small people," she said. "How can we ask him for anything? It all depends on his benevolence." str/sct/sdm India-Guyana
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