Monday, June 5, 2017

JurisPrudence RIP Obituary: Walcott & Spoiler Return to take u down under

I have been asked to announce the following death.
Prudence Juris, also known in official documents that cites surnames first as JurisPudence of the Republic of Bananas and Bacchanal who was dethroned, debased and left scarvenging in wormwoods of the unhallowed halls of justice over the past years, was mauled by packs of dobbermen, rottweilers and pitbulls who have spent the most part of the last few decades trying to rape, disrobe, dishonor and dismember her and her kind, howling at the midnight moon:

I going to bit them young ladies, partner,
like a hot dog or a hamburger
and if you thin, don’t be in a fright
is only big fat women I going to bite.

On midnightly prowl in dark suits and darker glasses, the revenge squad which has declared fatwa on independent thinkers and institutions and have been engaged in censoring and stripping off dignity and tarring and feathering in the public square anyone who puts themselves up for national and community service are now gnashing at any and everything and everyone in sight. Although they say no one kicks a dead dog, these scarvengers, stopping at nothing, have been nurtured to strip off personal achievements and tarnish hard-earned reputations, so they continue to sniff and prowl around various offices and office holders edging them over already worm eaten and termite ridden structures pumped up by oversweetened and sweetheart contract deals unbroadcasted over closely monitored telecommunication lines.  Ay Ay, Spoiler boy,

I hope when I die, after burial,
To come back as an insect or animal.
I see these islands and I feel to bawl,
“area of darkness” with V. S.Nightfall

But it has been some time in coming – and afterall, PrudenceJuris aka JurisPrudence, along with her cohorts in the feeding frenzy of gorging and gorging out eyes and gold teeth stayed not only blind but deaf and dumb, too, to the plight of others, and the creeping darkness though warned that first they came for the Jews, they did not speak out because they were not Jews; then they came for the Socialists, and they did not speak out, because they were not Socialists, then they came for the Trade Unionists, the NGOs, the other peoples, and they did not speak out because them was not them, so now they come for he, she, it and all—and there is no one left to speak for them....
Too ailing to defend her honour, the blind old lady PrudenceJuris alias JurisPridence was found clinging to her tattered, once-courtly clothes, her parched tongue lounging for water in a dry and barren crop season. Ent Derek,

Is crab climbing crab-back, in a crab-quarrel,
and going round and round in the same barrel,
is sharks with shirt-jacs, sharks with well-pressed fins,
ripping we small-fry off with razor grins;
nothing ain’t change but colour and attire

JurisPrudence or PrudenceJuris succumbed to her wounds and gnashes last week at the already tottering Mountain of Hope National Unhealthy Facility after pounding on the unopened doors of the Little Children’s Hospice. It is believed she crawled through the sewerage-soaked sapotay soil of a nearby billion-dollar central cricket stadium and it was there she was found, face-down, drowning in her voluminous vomit while trying to lap water from a dripping gold-plated power hose while,

 all Frederick Street stinking like a closed drain,
Hell is a city much like Port of Spain,
what the rain rots, the sun ripens some more,
all in due process and within the law,
as, like a sailor on a spending spree,
we blow our oil-bloated economy
on projects from here to eternity…

The once-goodly lady was married to the minister of excessive spreeing. Together they spawned the daughter of unlimited roaming because she just following their example and she equally ensnared, though thinking she in charge and had broken free from the constricted corset holding her accountable for procurements and other deals with telecommunications centres inside the massive network of stores and storytellers. Little did she know,

that the good husband brings from the whorehouse,
the flea whose itch to make all Power wince
will crash a fĂȘte, even at his life’s expense.

JurisPrudence alias PrudenceJuris will be laid to rest in a secret ceremony of the cult of injustices whose members are the tightly wound circle of protected law lords of unreasonableness, unrighteousness, unfairness and illegitimacy.

…their dark glasses let you criticize
your own presumptuous image in their eyes.
Behind dark glasses is just hollow skull,
and black still poor, though black is beautiful.

The last known-case the old blind woman, PrudenceJuris alias JurisPrudence was called on to adjudicate was the assassination of her daughter the chief of prosecutors. For having ignored all the prophets who foretold that it would be her turn next if she didn’t hang on to she silk and mind she own business and deliver the verdicts as per directed and instructed, she was sentenced to five rounds of bullets pumped up close and personal into her brains while brokering on a midnight jaunt.

All those who promise free and just debate,
then blow up radicals to save the state,
who allow, in democracy’s defence,
a parliament of spiked heads on a fence,
all you go bawl out, “Spoils, things ain’t so bad.”
This ain’t the Dark Age, is just Trinidad,
is human nature, Spoiler, after all,
it ain’t big genocide, is just bohbohl

Although still waiting pronouncement from a licensed pathologist, given that the legitimate office holder was chased out of forensics just by the stench from the pileup of dead bodies and the corruption reeking from the city, an unlicensed marriage officer who was called to the task pronounced that there was no need for an autopsy given that  PrudenceJuris or JurisPrudence had illegitimacy stamped on her birth certificate because the marriage laws were obsolete and so did not qualify for State Forensic Services, much less a State Funeral, and should be left composed in her State of decomposition for the planned upcoming banquet of corbeaux and vultures.

Corbeaux like cardinals line the La Basse
in ecumenical patience while you pass
the Beetham Highway – Guard corruption’s stench,
you bald, black justices of the High Bench —

Prior to her untimely demise, PrudenceJuris or JurisPrudence was seen in heated debate over the retention of the inalienable rights to retain the council privy only to the unJustices and declaring a loss of confidence in the committee of common jurors – ccj.
In her indefensible defense, JurisPrudence alias PrudenceJuris claimed to have spent her lifetime career, setting hearing after hearing to clear the backlog on her workload but all that fell on deaf ears, as each was dismissed case by case and she could not delay her ascension to heaven as decreed by the law lords and their chief of injustices because mounting the mountain of backlog cases just just too too high,

and, for a spineless thing, rumour can twist
into a style the local journalist -

as bland as a green coconut, his manner
routinely tart, his sources the Savannah
and all pretentions to a native art
reduced to giggles at the coconut cart,
where heads with reputations, in one slice,
are brought to earth, when they ain’t eating nice


Resisting compliance PrudenceJuris alias JurisPrudence was so prosecuted and persecuted and left to her fate to become the banquet of celebratory ascension to high office where corbeaux and carrions hover nearby awaiting her title to fall like manna from the worm infested hallowed heritage edifices encircling the wooden square of inJustices, the prudential Parliament, the illustrious churches earmarked for bulldozing, the old theatre and even older library crumbling, the beleaguered city hall, the tottering media houses straining from the challenge of freshly minted new media, the university of miseducation and the haunted nearby commercial establishments where once dwelled some renowned Jumbie Bird, ask Ismith. Ah wanna fall!






the gift of mockery with which I’m cursed
is just a insect biting Fame behind,
a vermin swimming in a glass of wine,
that, dipped out with a finger, bound to bite
its saving host, ungrateful parasite,
whose sting, between the cleft arse and its seat,
reminds Authority man is just meat.

Owing to the manner of her disgraceful fall from grace, a secret funeral service for the late JurisPrudence also known as PrudenceJuris will take place on the next date to be fixed if one can be found in the clogged prudential jusrisdictions calendars.
A full motorcade of justice delayed is justice denied is planned by those with postponed trials to complement the private, intransparent, opaque secret service under the Hallways of Justice where it is rumoured the bones of JurisPrudence otherwise known as PrudenceJuris will be interred, despite the clarion calls for a cremation so her ashes may be scattered to the wind and not be left for further pawing and preying by the pack of hounds, under full reclamation of rights of the free and the bold:

is the same voices that, in the slave ship,
smile at their brothers, “Boy, is just the whip,”
I free and easy, you see me have chain?
A little censorship can’t cause no pain,
a little graft can’t rot the human mind,
what sweet in goat-mouth sour in his behind.

The decision to keep the secret en-chambre hearings, hymnals and interment was made in the hope that the bones would not be discovered until a next Kris Kolumbus might return a few centuries hence. Then they would be rediscovered, unearthed, marked as and with a crucifixion and classified as indigeneous artefacts representative of the plague that swept through the region at the time, brought on by climate change over the nature of social justice. The historical annals would record, as has been prophesied by the shamans and shamers that she would then be given full traditional rites before being fed as historic artistry to the woodworms and termites gnawing at the museum of mummies and dummies:

The time could come, it can’t be very long,
when they will jail calypso for picong,
for first comes television, then the press,
all in the name of Civic Righteousness;
it has been done before, all Power has
made the sky shit and maggots of the stars.

JurisPrudence or PrudentJuris leaves to mourn the following in her family:
Her proginator, the chief of injustices, last seen on knees at the Cathedral of Holy and Immaculate TriPillar of society that comprises the legislator, the judiciary and the executive, beseeching the good lord for mercy that they not be disrobed and promising to make a greater effort to hold the daylight and midnight robbers of the Treasury at Bayshore Private Hospital as ordained;
Her Majesty the chief of magistry and her regal following of legal luminaries and loyal citizenry in similar circumstances begging for a job and pleading for mercy, mercy, mercy, lord! that they have done no wrong and their children starving and need medicines, as grounds on which they should not be stripped of office and title and clothing and honour and dignity.
The director of personal penances, frowning at puns and directing that one cannot direct anything or anyone when one is hogtied to the regime;
The speaker and presiding majesties of the houses of inequity near the wharf - so acronymed as the whore houses at roving higher-ups'' river front (WHARF) -  who swallowed their tongues a long time ago rather than defend their sister, JurisPrudence or PrudenceJuris, playing musical benches and trading one wig for the next messy mess of potage for feeding with the Treasury silver spoon;
The chief monster who laid down the laws of man and the fatwa of shah and decreed that no other dog bark.

In all them project, all them Five-Year Plan,
what happen to the Brotherhood of Man?
Around the time I dead it wasn’t so,
we sang the Commonwealth of caiso,
we was in chains, but chains made us unite,
now who have, good for them, and who blight, 

blight;my bread is bitterness, my wine is gall,
my chorus is the same: “I want to fall.”

The scarred, dismembered and disrobed JurisPrudence, or PrudenceJuris left in her last will a testament to the ills of clinging to public office and titles and robes and wigs. She also left all her mortal belongings to the hounds of hell like a mortal blood sacrifice to add to the bloody sacrifices of mothers and sisters and brothers and sugar daddies in the hope of appeasing said lords of the law from crying "Havoc! Let loose the dogs of war!" 
Oh judgement, thou has fled to brutish beast and men have lost their reason! For truth!
A codicil stated that anyone who can find the rats rotten under the erstwhile State, and nose the deeper decay of executive, legislature and judiciary, with eyes as cold as a dead macajuel, who have not sucked dry her breasts and poisoned her milk will be crowned by the laws of Karma and divine justice and inherit the unsanctified earth the Rotting Republic of Bananas and Bacchanalia.
Friends, relatives and neighbours at home and in the global diaspora, across the Caribbean and Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa, Europe are kindly asked to note these intimations.
On a note found fluttering nearby the Dear Lady Justice PrudenceJuris aka JurisPrudence scribbled that on her epitaph, the following be inscribed:

The bearded elders endured the decimation
of their tribe without uttering a syllable
of that language they had uttered as one nation
                             ….the gods were down at last
-                               Derek Walcott, Omeros

A close friend of PrudenceJuris/JurisPrudence said her last wish was that before they jail calypso for picong, that the nobly laureated Spoiler’s Return (see below) with the Spoiler’s kaiso refrain be recited as a Chorale of the still jammin orchestra from the still jamming Limers’ Republic of the chiefdoms of justices at her funeral:

I sit high on this bridge in Laventille,
watching that city where I left no will
but my own conscience and rum-eaten wit,
and limers passing see me where I sit,
ghost in brown gabardine, bones in a sack,
and bawl: “Ay, Spoiler, boy! When you come back?”
And those who bold don’t feel they out of place
to peel my limeskin back, and see a face
with eyes as cold as a dead macajuel,
and if they still can talk, I answer: “Hell.”
I have a room there where I keep a crown,
and Satan send me to check out this town.


Down there, that Hot Boy have a stereo
where, whole day, he does blast my caiso:
I beg him two weeks’ leave and he send me
back up, not as no bedbug or no flea,
but in this limeskin hat and floccy suit,
to sing what I did always sing: the truth.
Tell Desperadoes when you reach the hill,
I decompose, but I composing still:

(Refrain)
I going to bit them young ladies, partner,
like a hot dog or a hamburger
and if you thin, don’t be in a fright
is only big fat women I going to bite.

The shark, racing the shadow of the shark
across clear coral rocks, does make them dark —
that is my premonition of the scene
of what passing over this Caribbean.
Is crab climbing crab-back, in a crab-quarrel,
and going round and round in the same barrel,
is sharks with shirt-jacs, sharks with well-pressed fins,
ripping we small-fry off with razor grins;
nothing ain’t change but colour and attire,
so back me up, Old Brigade of Satire,
back me up, Martial, Juvenal, and Pope
(to hang theirself I giving plenty rope),
join Spoiler’ chorus, sing the song with me,
Lord Rochester, who praised the nimble-flea:
Were I, who to my cost already am,
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, Man,
A spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,

I hope when I die, after burial,
To come back as an insect or animal.
I see these islands and I feel to bawl,
“area of darkness” with V. S.Nightfall.

Lock off your tears, you casting pearls of grief
on a duck’s back, a waxen dasheen leaf,
the slime crab’s carapace is waterproof
and those with hearing aids turn off the truth,
and their dark glasses let you criticize
your own presumptuous image in their eyes.
Behind dark glasses is just hollow skull,
and black still poor, though black is beautiful.
So, crown and mitre me Bedbug the First —
the gift of mockery with which I’m cursed
is just an insect biting Fame behind,
a vermin swimming in a glass of wine,
that, dipped out with a finger, bound to bite
its saving host, ungrateful parasite,
whose sting, between the cleft arse and its seat,
reminds Authority man is just meat,
a moralist as mordant as the louse
that the good husband brings from the whorehouse,
the flea whose itch to make all Power wince
will crash a fĂȘte, even at his life’s expense,
and these pile up in lime pits by the heap,
daily, that our deliverers may sleep.
All those who promise free and just debate,
then blow up radicals to save the state,
who allow, in democracy’s defence,
a parliament of spiked heads on a fence,
all you go bawl out, “Spoils, things ain’t so bad.”
This ain’t the Dark Age, is just Trinidad,
is human nature, Spoiler, after all,
it ain’t big genocide, is just bohbohl;
safe and conservative, ‘fraid to take side,
they say that Rodney commit suicide,
is the same voices that, in the slave ship,
smile at their brothers, “Boy, is just the whip,”
I free and easy, you see me have chain?
A little censorship can’t cause no pain,
a little graft can’t rot the human mind,
what sweet in goat-mouth sour in his behind.


So I sing with Attila, I sing with Commander,
what right in Guyana, right in Uganda.
The time could come, it can’t be very long,
when they will jail calypso for picong,
for first comes television, then the press,
all in the name of Civic Righteousness;
it has been done before, all Power has
made the sky shit and maggots of the stars,
over these Romans lying on their backs,
the hookers swaying their enormous sacks,
until all language stinks, and the truth lies,
a mass for maggots and a fĂȘte for flies;
and, for a spineless thing, rumour can twist
into a style the local journalist —
as bland as a green coconut, his manner
routinely tart, his sources the Savannah
and all pretentions to a native art
reduced to giggles at the coconut cart,
where heads with reputations, in one slice,
are brought to earth, when they ain’t eating nice;
and as for local Art, so it does go,
the audience have more talent than the show.

Is carnival, straight Carnival that’s all,
the beat is base, the melody bohbohl,
all Port of Spain is a twelve-thirty show,
some playing Kojak, some Fidel Castro,
some Rastamen, but, with or without locks,
to Spoiler is the same old khaki socks,
all Frederick Street stinking like a closed drain,
Hell is a city much like Port of Spain,
what the rain rots, the sun ripens some more,
all in due process and within the law,
as, like a sailor on a spending spree,
we blow our oil-bloated economy
on projects from here to eternity,
and Lord, the sunlit streets break Spoiler’s heart,
to have natural gas and not to give a fart,
to see them line up, pitch-oil tin in hand:
each independent, oil-forsaken island,
like jeering at some scrunter with the blues,
while you lend him some need-a-half-sole shoes,
some begging bold as brass, some coming meeker,
but from Jamaica to poor Dominica
we make them know they begging, every loan
we send them is like blood squeezed out of stone,
and giving gives us back the right to laugh,
that we couldn’t see we own black people starve,
and, more we give, more we congratulate
we-self on our own self-sufficient state.
In all them project, all them Five-Year Plan,
what happen to the Brotherhood of Man?
Around the time I dead it wasn’t so,
we sang the Commonwealth of caiso,
we was in chains, but chains made us unite,
now who have, good for them, and who blight, blight;
my bread is bitterness, my wine is gall,
my chorus is the same: “I want to fall.”


Oh, whell of industry, check out your cogs!
Between the knee-high trash and khaki dogs
Arnold’s Phoenician trader reach this far,
selling you half-dead batteries for your car;
the children of Tagore, in funeral shroud,
curry favour and chicken from the crowd;
as for the Creoles, check their house, and look,
you bust your brain before you find a book,
when Spoiler see all this, ain’t he must bawl,
“area of darkness,” with V. S. Nightfull?

Corbeaux like cardinals line the La Basse
in ecumenical patience while you pass
the Beetham Highway – Guard corruption’s stench,
you bald, black justices of the High Bench —
and beyond them the firelit mangrove swamps,
ibises practising for postage stamps,
Lord, let me take a taxi South again
and hear, drumming across Caroni Plain,
the tabla in the Indian half hour
when twilight fills the mud huts of the poor,
to hear the tattered flags of drying corn,
rattle a sky from which all the gods gone,
their bleached flags of distress waving to me
from shacks, adrift like rafts on a green sea,
“Things ain’t go change, they ain’t go change at all,”
to my old chorus: “Lord, I want to bawl.”

The poor still poor, whatever arse they catch.
Look south from Laventille, and you can watch
the torn brown patches of the Central Plain,
slowly restitched by needles of the rain,
and the frayed earth, crisscrossed like old bagasse,
spring to a cushiony quilt of emerald grass,
and who does sew and sow the patch the land?
The Indian. And whose villages turn sand?
The fishermen doomed to sticking the huge net
of the torn foam from Point to La Fillette.

One thing with hell, at least it organize
in soaring circles, when any man dies
he must pass through them first, that is his style,
Jesus was down here for a little while,
cadaverous Dante, big-guts Rabelais,
all of them wave to Spoiler on their way.
Catch us in Satan tent, next carnival:
Lord Rochester, Quevedo, Juvenal,
Maestro, Martial, Pope, Dryden, Swift, Lord Byron,
the lords of irony, the Duke of Iron,
hotly contending for the monarchy
in couplets or the old re-minor key,
all those who gave earth’s pompous carnival
fatique, and groaned “O God, I feel to fall!”
all those whose anger for the poor on earth,
made them weep with a laughter beyond mirth,
names wide as oceans when compared with mine
salted my songs, and gave me their high sign.
All you excuse me, Spoiler was in town;
you pass him straight, so now he gone back down.
Derek Walcott: The Spoiler’s Return.
(In memoriam)

 Caption: Blind Lady JurisPrudence
The Justice by Alfredo Ceschiatti, an 11-foot sculpture depicting the blind Lady Justice seated before the Supremo Tribunal Federal/Supreme Federal Court in the Praça dos TrĂȘs Poderes/Three Powers Plaza designed by Lucio Costo and architect Oscar Neimeyer to represent the notion of the holy trinity of governance functioning harmoniously in the Executive as the Palacia do Planato/presidential office; the Legislative through the Congresso Nacional/National Congress and the Judiciary in the Supreme Federal Court in the city of Brasilia, Brasilia, a UNESCO World Heritage City. Laid out as a crucifix,  the city of Brasilia, devoted to art and architecture, was built within 41 months and opened in April 1960 as part of a campaign promise, ‘fifty years of progress in five’ by Brasilia’s President Juscelino Kubitschek.  
Photo ©KrisRampersad/KrisRampersadArchives2014
@krisramp, @lolleaves, Demokrissy: www.kris-rampersad.blogspot.com,

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Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
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Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Others: Demokrissy: Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 ...
Apr 07, 2013
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013
Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2. 
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's New ...
Oct 20, 2013
Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Carnivalising the Constitution People Power ...
Feb 26, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Envisioning outside-the-island-box ... - Demokrissy - Blogger
Feb 10, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Futuring the Post-2015 UNESCO Agenda
Apr 22, 2014
It is placing increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity, gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New Tools ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Cutting edge journalism
Jun 15, 2010
The Emperor's New Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email. About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/


 @BJP4India #BJP @Priyankachopra #PriyankaChopra#merkel @EmmanuelMacron #EmmanuelMcrona #JohnTrudeau @travelchannel @usatoday @BBCWorld @BBCWorldHaveYourSay @TEDtalks @TEDNews +britishcouncil@engageats.co.uk @britishmuseum, @britishcouncil, @britishlibrary, @Royal_Gov_UK, @justintrudeau, @helenclarkeUNDP, +Google for Nonprofits  @googleartsandculture, @econculture, @commonculture, @writersdigest, @nytimes, +PBS NewsHour +Breaking News +BBC News +news@news.ideastap.com +info@takingitglobal.org +Open Society Foundations @richardbranson, @billgates, @melaniegates, @gatesfoundation, +G Singh, @clintonfdn, @WJClibrary, @clintonglobal, @librarycongress @google, @googleresearch @yahoo, @yahoonews, @yahoomovies, @ABC, @CNN, @REUTERS, @ABC, +Kamla Persad-Bissessar , +Prakash Ramadhar+John van Tiggelen
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Saturday, June 3, 2017

My Date with Narendra Modi: Dat Merkel Affair Priyanka Chopra’s Baywatched legs Trumps Bucket & Dowry from the Diaspora

They say blood is thicker than water, and that’s the balm. Breathing deeply, looking to be distracted from the flurry and flight of prudence from jurisprudence and plummeting pillars of the body politic here across the kala pani, up looms the publicly blossoming promance (power romance) between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and German Chancellor Iron Lady, Angela Dorothea Merkel, sounding sirens of the recolonization of Europe and reconfiguration of the old into a New World Order.
The colour-coordinated his and hers suits, syncronised strides, long stares into each other’s eyes, relaxed garden walks and talks, tetes-a-tetes at the Iron Lady’s baroque castle retreat; the ‘made for each other’ Merkel-Modi hugs; the over shoulder winks to the European Union of a stronger India-Europe alliance are causing as many a conservative tongue to wag in consternation as the leg-flashing Bollywood princess Priyanka Chopra who takes time off to cover her Baywatched bikini body with (oh horror of horrors!) an above-knee length dress to greet her Prime Minister in Germany.
Like the knee-exposed Priyanka, challenging the image of conservative, cloistered Indian womanhood, Modi’s India with Gita-like prophesy is shedding its worn old body of deprivation, starvation, impoverishment and underdevelopment, for its new reincarnation as a potential world power.

As they say, blue blood is thicker than water, thicker too than German bier. I am patient, if anything. It’s but a pint in a sea of samskara. It is left to be seen how far will go this promance with the woman who had belched out in a fit of frustration at the challenges of globalisation that ‘Multikulti is dead’ while we rum-guzzlers on this side of the diaspora in Canada, the Americas, the Caribbean, take up the collective chant - ‘long live Multiculturalism!’
The Western world might have missed it, as it did my date - no surprise there - with BBC lenses fascinatingly focused on the furor over Priyanka Chopra’s legs rather than the shenanigans of the German FĂŒhrer and India’s Pradhaan Mantri, but no sooner has Modi kissed his Merkel abschied/farewell, he is holding hands in another garden walk, in syncronised strides, with Russian Prem'yer-Ministr Vladimir Putin, doing an about turn of his motorcade and Primer Ministro of Spain Mariano Rajoy to walk casually into crowds of cheering desi fans in Madrid, and ensnaring France’s youthful and handsome leadership makeover in Premier Ministre Emmanuel Macron in a passionate embrace pour sauver le monde/to save the world from climate change.
While journalist Megyn Kelly from Trump’s NBC is still trying to remove foot from mouth having stood in her shoes and wondered aloud if the man with the world’s largest social media following is on Twitter, the ‘eat your heart out Trump-USA,’ and ‘take that Brexit’ chants escalate into a crescendo. Modi, meanwhile, is poised, arms outstretched for the passing of the baton from what used to be the world’s greatest power centre, now on the rocks of a titanic sinking in the tides of melting ice caps and climate change. With Modi’s coming, India, it seems, has arrived, even as ‘persons of Indian origin’ in these parts celebrate the near 200 years of their own departure, migration and arrivals to the distance shores across in the Americas.
The world may watch in awe, or in horror, at the changing discourse and turning of the tables to courses in a menu of curried counter-terrorism, spiced with dashes of global security, smart technologies, science, clean energy, served up between sips of German bier, French wine, Spanish sangria and Russian vodka, through promises of resource sharing in health, education, global development, international cooperation, trade, investment and India’s surprise pop out in all its IT splendor with a ‘Hello World’!  
India’s seemingly surprise emergence bedecked in brand new sari and adornments, tantalizingly teasing with its show of underbelly of self-empowerment through smart tech and social media savvy while conventional media grasps in dying breaths and bewildered clutches of disbelief at its emergence from branded impoverishments, buffoonery, deprivation and underdevelopment. Leading the twitterati is Modi - Tweeter Premiere.
They seem to have missed the matikor of preparation and prayers that preceded this coming out party on the world’s dance floor which sees India’s Modi curtsying and greeting and patting and pecking and nodding and kissing and hugging as he extends invitations to shardi, not as a demure bride, but dangling a dowry that would dazzle any suitor. Western world leaders from Merkel to Macron, Putin to Rajoy, hear the conch shells and drums heralding India call to line up to partake in the kitcheri of this shardi/marriage banquet of global power mongers.
The emerging New World Order, like Modi’s India, may seem pretty new, but it has had a long gestation, in peace, under the radar of the frenzied paparazzi chasing the glitterati and still recovering from a dazed stupor of having so misread the signs to Donald Trump’s electoral victory, just as it disdainfully dismissed the bugles of the New World Information Order.
There begins my journey of mixed intentions, not unlike Modi’s: the pursuit of truths, mine journalistic rather than political truths, enroute to rediscover, not unlike Columbus, the ancient world, unearth some roots, unravel the mysteries of the complex tapestry of ‘multikulti’, that see me on one then another and anticipating a third passage to India that twists and turns and meanders through my date with Narendra Damodardas Modi.
From my repose on my nondescript island enclave across the kala pani, looking on at the unfolding pantomime, and dissolution of jurisprudence and its associated disassociated and disembodied body politic, I muse on the made in India moment.
Before Modi’s swachh bharat/clean up India movement, before India’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas magnanimously flinging its doors open to its diaspora of PIO’s/persons of Indian origin and NRI’s – non-resident Indians, it was laying the groundworks in for this global debut through its membership in the Non Alignment Movement – states, some 120 of them, which did not see themselves as aligned with nor against any of the then major western power blocs, largely designated into ignominy in their third world status, and developing world classifications.
It is ironic that Donald Trump, raving about the biases and prejudices of mainstream media, the grip of the ‘swamp’, would turn his chops on the United Nations and the programmes of its agencies, when the goals of sustainable development, many evolved from the vision, principles and recommendations of the Non-Aligned movement, are, not unlike his own declared platform promises of revisionary approaches to economics, finance and certainly, information handling.

While my ancestry as a person of Indian origin might have been my initial point of confluence, it was, rather, as journalist, grasping at the principles and precepts of non-alignment for developing journalistic objectivity - not just a New World Order, but too, a New World Information and Communication Order that present passages to India, Canada and North America, Indonesia and the East, Britain, and Europe and my date and private tete-a-tete with Narendra Modi. Stay tuned.
Next: Sneak Preview: “I try to suppress the giggle. Narendra Modi strides across the room, arms outstretched …”: My Date With Narendra Modi II: The Prodigal; The Fox, the Well and holes in the bucket of violent extremism; Sustainable Development, preparation of the New World Order and the shaping the New World Information Order – from Non Alignment to UNESCO.



Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent sustainable development educator and journalist. Email lolleaves@gmail.com
Related Links:

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Murder She Wrote: Death Written in Stone in Dana Seetahal Assassination
Creating Centres of Peace in Trinidad and Tobago
The Price of Independence:#DanaSeetahalAssassination
Conceive. Achieve. Believe
Demokrissy: Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's ...
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice. Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform, Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party - a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won! That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Others: Demokrissy: Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 ...
Apr 07, 2013
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013
Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2. 
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Wave a flag for a party rag...Choosing the Emperor's New ...
Oct 20, 2013
Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Carnivalising the Constitution People Power ...
Feb 26, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Envisioning outside-the-island-box ... - Demokrissy - Blogger
Feb 10, 2014
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Futuring the Post-2015 UNESCO Agenda
Apr 22, 2014
It is placing increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity, gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New Tools ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Cutting edge journalism
Jun 15, 2010
The Emperor's New Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email. About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/


 @BJP4India #BJP @Priyankachopra #PriyankaChopra#merkel @EmmanuelMacron #EmmanuelMcrona #JohnTrudeau @travelchannel @usatoday @BBCWorld @BBCWorldHaveYourSay @TEDtalks @TEDNews +britishcouncil@engageats.co.uk @britishmuseum, @britishcouncil, @britishlibrary, @Royal_Gov_UK, @justintrudeau, @helenclarkeUNDP, +Google for Nonprofits  @googleartsandculture, @econculture, @commonculture, @writersdigest, @nytimes, +PBS NewsHour +Breaking News +BBC News +news@news.ideastap.com +info@takingitglobal.org +Open Society Foundations @richardbranson, @billgates, @melaniegates, @gatesfoundation, +G Singh, @clintonfdn, @WJClibrary, @clintonglobal, @librarycongress @google, @googleresearch @yahoo, @yahoonews, @yahoomovies, @ABC, @CNN, @REUTERS, @ABC, +Kamla Persad-Bissessar , +Prakash Ramadhar+John van Tiggelen
@FoxNews, @UKinCaribbean, @WBCaribbean, @TheEconomist, @wef, @economictimes, @business, @businessinsider, @wsjbusiness, @wsj womenshealth, @wsjmag, @people, @fortunemagazine, @ellemagazine, @oprah, @O_magazine,  @OWNTV, @oprahbooklist, @voguemagazine, @twitterwomen, @womenintheworld, @UN_Women, @womenatforbes, @womensmediacentre @womensenews,




Monday, May 29, 2017

Of Diasporas Migrations Arrivals




Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad and Tobago: Having a sense of where we came from
Published on May 31, 2014

By Marcia Braveboy
Caribbean News Now Senior Correspondent
marcia@caribbeannewsnow.com
Twitter: @mbraveboy

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- Indian Arrival Day is being celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago on 30th May. On the eve of the occasion we are summoned once again by our foreparents to contemplate this burning sense of our past that engulfs our thinking with sparkles of thoughts about who we are and where we really came from.

This gentle meliorism by a conscious people whose gaze is set only on progress, must through active aspirations wonder into the deep and beyond the stars to find answers of a sometimes forgotten past, to reconnect the links for future generations.

The flames of 200 years ago by our ancestors and predecessors refuse to go out under a people it still challenges to define their purpose on this journey to a better Trinidad and Tobago.

Writer, author, journalist Kris Rampersad says that, more than a people defining themselves, there must be a better understanding of who we are and not allow political allegiances to mark out lines of segregation among our peoples and for the removal of denominational and ethnic inhibitors to national development and to see the dream of a people becoming one come true.

“We as a country and a region are losing so much of understanding ourselves when we define and confine ourselves through all kinds of narrow allegiances, and that is not to downplay the value of identity to all of us.”

Rampersad is a Caribbean woman. What that means is that she takes a keen interest not just in Trinidad and Tobago but also in our regional neighbours and the importance of that interconnection to each other as a Caribbean people. She sits on the UNESCO executive board in Paris representing Trinidad and Tobago and has been working across the Caribbean to build resilient communities through heritage and culture; developing policies, infrastructure and institutions while at the same time involved in journalism and new media as an independent media operator.

But first, she is a Trinidad and Tobagonian national, passionately wanting us to celebrate our people-hood. She has just issued a call for artistes to produce nonviolent content in their music and to work and she is working towards producing music and songs for the soundtrack to a biography film she is working on to highlight the life and times of assassinated Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal. Rampersad hopes to use this brand to help music producers define spaces for non-violence with their art.

“The dimensions of crime, for instance, in our societies cuts across ethic identities; to address those problems we have to be able to look beyond those lines.”

Many Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been pulling at the skirt tail of governments to abolish the various celebrations and establish just one national holiday and call it “Arrival Day”, the thinking is that we all came, and it will be a true representation of the rainbow country that is Trinidad and Tobago. Kris Rampersad has a different view:

“Do we need one arrival day? If an arrival day is important to people they should have their day - separately or together - I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. I celebrate all of them: how could we not?

“I like to think of migration – departures and arrivals – the process that brought us here as an evolutionary flow – as only one stopping point in a long history of such migratory movements into antiquity. In a long view of history beyond the recent colonial past, implies that we can look ahead too with a longer view - and there might come a time when we as a nation would agree that we do not need many arrival days but one, to mark our national presence. I am sure the people associated with the rare 7,000-year-old skeleton discovered on our soil – a people we seem to have no curiosity about – would have celebrated an arrival of sorts at some point in time. Our coming here was one frame of migrations and from my research, when the truth is known, the story of ‘Banwari’ is likely to upset and overturn a whole lot of long held theories of migration, etc. Societies evolve. People come into contact with each other and change the space they occupy. The ancient history is replete with recounts of those – the Shrutis, the Vedas, the oral stories of the African and Chinese folk tales.”

While Indian Arrival Day places the Indian community on the radar on such an occasion, the celebration of that day, like Emancipation Day, symbolizes the amalgam that is a ‘Trini’ (as they say in local parlance); a productive and talented people, as Rampersad describes the people of Trinidad and Tobago. It seems, however, that as citizens too much has been relinquished through old systems. While the British gave this twin island its independence, the people held on firmly to the institutions left behind by that British system, Rampersad declared.

“As a counter to the erosion of identity the colonial system imposed on us, self-governance following independence sought to repair the damage with such national days. But the challenge of governance is really minimising the sense of threat to identity that has been ingrained in so much of our operations and many of our governance institutions have been unable to meet that challenge.

“Because of our recent history and the striping of self esteem and identity of post slavery and indentureship part of the post independence process of regaining self was establishing these national days of recognising the presence of various groups, but as our society evolves; as we strengthen our national fabric and if our governance system can assure each group of its self identification – there is so much insecurity in our system you see – that would become less relevant….”

The author and journalist sees Trinidad and Tobago as a country that is full of talent and flowing over; a country that is replete with individuals who have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps – generations building on the struggles of the previous one – like the now assassinated senior counsel Dana Seetahal and others like her who fully occupied their own spaces, doing what they do best, when all the frames and structures and institutions mitigate against that -- that is what Carnival and Phagwa and Baptist Liberation Day represent, Rampersad believes.

In spite of its avalanche of talent and skills flowing in this twin island Republic, the islands remain underdeveloped. Kris does not like that.

“We may feel now that we need to celebrate days like those, but my concern is that we -- as a society – by trying to define ourselves by those parameters we are also narrowing our vision of ourselves in silos rather than the collective strengths that we are. The insecurity that makes celebrations necessary forces the kind of chest thumping in trumpeting such national days – to, beyond colonial pains and hurts to trumpet the glorious ancient civilisations that are behind us. But it is also a divisive championing, that delimits us celebrating all the mother cultures that contribute to our national being.”

What about those who define us by our ethnic and cultural antecedents?

“We are also that,” Rampersad agrees, citing that we all came from somewhere. “We also came from somewhere, from a mother, and from a motherland – India, Africa, China, Europe – they are all our cultures as Trinis; and then there is that other space you can lay claim to based on ethnic origins; in fact, I think that is the process of evolution I attempted to trace in my first book, and maybe too in much of my journalism – on the one hand it was about how fiction influenced journalism Finding a Place; on the other it was how we evolved from one culture into another, to make us the people that we are – Trinis....”

The multiethnic as well as multi religious society that Trinidad and Tobago is makes it equally a beautiful and complex society. The fight for space in every sphere, especially economic, political spheres creates antagonism primarily between the African and Indian groups.

“Our jostle for space here, represented in the so many different celebrations, is depriving us of the opportunity to fully explore and appreciate the larger sense of self. To do so, we need to level the playing field and create an environment that is more secure for people’s self-identification before we can start thinking of relinquishing those isolated symbols of identification,” Rampersad explains.

She thinks governments can turn the wheel of understanding in all the right directions once they exercise the will to do so.

“The governance processes through since Independence has been challenged to do so and hence so often seems to be going in the opposite direction to creating the kind of society we envision ourselves as – ‘rainbow country’, multicultural, diverse, ‘every creed and race finds an equal place’, et al.”

A scholar in her own right and of East Indian descent, Dr Kris Rampersad sees herself simply as a Trinidad and Tobago national and a reflection of all Trinidad and Tobago nationals of different creed and races.

“For example, I am the sum total of being born and nurtured in Trinidad and Tobago but also of all the people I have encountered, all the places I have visited and lived in and all the experiences I have. Every travel, every encounter, and every experience changes and alters us in some way. I feel blessed to have been given such opportunities to meet, work play and share ideas with so many different people. I feel somewhat that I never return to Trinidad the same person I was when I left on some meeting or the other having been enriched by those experience.

“It is an ancient wisdom, to embrace life as a journey, a series of journeys; a continuous process of departures and arrivals. The arrival of Indians and each other group, including the ‘Banwari’ people more than 7,000 years earlier, here ought to be seen in that context, as a universal experience and not as the be all and end all struggle it becomes in a political context; in a context of a society built on insecurities and pitching one group or ne ethnicity against the other, each vying for national space when equitable policies and approaches could address all that,” she said.

Dr Kris Rampersad has authored three books: “Finding a Place”, which traces development of a literary sensibility among Indians who migrated with their own languages and cultures, through writings in newspapers, education and production of a Naipaul: acclaimed lord of the English Language.

Her second book: “Through the Political Glass Ceiling” looks at the race to prime ministership by Trinidad and Tobago's first female holder of that office – Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar -- and explores the sociocultural and political situation that gave rise to first woman prime minister in the context of the 2010 general elections.

In her third book: “LiTTscapes” (Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago) Rampersad features more than 100 works by more than 50 writers through visualising their fiction in landscapes, cultures photos and more. Look her up on Facebook to see the photos and to journey through her other works.




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