For Renée Sarojini Saklikar, wife of NDP leader Adrian Dix, the loss of a provincial election in May was far from being the worst thing that could happen to her family. In 1985, at age 23, she learned her aunt and uncle had been murdered aboard Air India Flight 182. It was the worst mass murder in Canadian history. Relatives from B.C. flew to the tiny community of Ahista, located on the coast of Ireland, between Durrus and Kilcrohane, on the Sheep's Head peninsula, where they threw wreaths into the sea. Bodies of only half of the 329 victims were recovered. Renée Sarojini Saklikar's children of air India (Nightwood $18.95) is the literary equivalent of tossing wreaths into the sea. After a 20-year investigation culminated in a high-profile trial that ended with the accused being acquitted, she has blended elegiac sequences that explore private loss and public trauma. The Air India tragedy continues to get short shrift in the public imagination given that most Canadians feel more strongly about the 9/11 attacks that killed New Yorkers. Meanwhile the County Cork Council has purchased that wreath-tossing site on the Sheep's Head peninsula and built a memorial garden-with a sundial that marks the exact minute of the tragedy. Irish locals and Indo-Canadian relatives gather there, annually, in June, to commemorate the dead. Blending poetry and prose, Saklikar has made her own monument around which readers can gather, searching for dignity and meaning. Inconspicuously erected, children of Air India is a Canadian literary sundial.
978-0-88971-287-4