When I consider how a devotee somewhere in the Middle East felt obliged to cut off his hand for mistakenly raising it against a religious icon; and how a young dalit—untouchable—PhD student somewhere in India was seemingly forced to commit suicide because he was expelled from the university under some pretext due no doubt to social pressures he had to endure because of his social status, I wonder.
I ponder on how families in the Middle East are forced to uproot themselves from their homes with all the comforts just like ours in sweet T&T, trek over land and sea to find a better life to be treated with such scorn by those who see them all as jihadists; and how a country like Syria once like us, free from fear of invasion, has become the political football of powers with their hegemonic agendas leaving maimed and dead children in their wake after their “intervention”, I wonder.
I wonder how the “innocents” in Paris simply sought to indulge their love for music but met their deaths instead; how the suicide bomber, looking pretty, pretty but intent on striking at the dreams of a young mother a child in crowded bus or train somewhere in that Land of Death and Suffering...
When I think on these things, I say let our people in this great land of peace and joy continue to dance and sing, jump and wine for Carnival, for it’s the moment in time we all live for amidst the “humdrum” of this life.
Forgetting the challenges for a while and in gay abandon, letting it seep into our souls, as we drink of that eternal elixir of what is our kind of happiness in this part of the world, which for the people in the Middle East is an impossible dream.
For that moment will soon disappear as does the rainbow in the sky or the rose after its first bloom. But as much as after such disappearance there remains in us an aesthetic sense, born out of the power, beauty and wonder of such natural happenings, so too would it be for the reveller. For whether you dance or sing, play bois or wine to the infectious rhythm of the steelband, that is your moment of the unforgettable, defying all logic and self-righteousness.
And there will be much of the latter as there always is, but for those wrapped in their conventionality, unable to appreciate this therapeutic dimension to Carnival, with no disrespect, let them turn off their TVs or go to the beach or to Miami on a holiday and in doing so, not begrudge the reveller. For in true democratic style, to each his own, and your moment in time on the beach or in Miami is no different from theirs.
And if it’s the crime that is worrying, crime is usually down at this time as the criminal too, wants his moment in time away from the guns and the blood.
Suffice it to say that on Ash Wednesday the streets will be empty and all the beautiful people and the costumes and the infectious beat of the steel band will be just a memory but one the stuff of what dreams are made of, the mark of a great country and a great people, even as others suffer in the wintry cold of Calais, dreaming a dream that will never come true.
Dr Errol Benjamin
I ponder on how families in the Middle East are forced to uproot themselves from their homes with all the comforts just like ours in sweet T&T, trek over land and sea to find a better life to be treated with such scorn by those who see them all as jihadists; and how a country like Syria once like us, free from fear of invasion, has become the political football of powers with their hegemonic agendas leaving maimed and dead children in their wake after their “intervention”, I wonder.
I wonder how the “innocents” in Paris simply sought to indulge their love for music but met their deaths instead; how the suicide bomber, looking pretty, pretty but intent on striking at the dreams of a young mother a child in crowded bus or train somewhere in that Land of Death and Suffering...
When I think on these things, I say let our people in this great land of peace and joy continue to dance and sing, jump and wine for Carnival, for it’s the moment in time we all live for amidst the “humdrum” of this life.
Forgetting the challenges for a while and in gay abandon, letting it seep into our souls, as we drink of that eternal elixir of what is our kind of happiness in this part of the world, which for the people in the Middle East is an impossible dream.
For that moment will soon disappear as does the rainbow in the sky or the rose after its first bloom. But as much as after such disappearance there remains in us an aesthetic sense, born out of the power, beauty and wonder of such natural happenings, so too would it be for the reveller. For whether you dance or sing, play bois or wine to the infectious rhythm of the steelband, that is your moment of the unforgettable, defying all logic and self-righteousness.
And there will be much of the latter as there always is, but for those wrapped in their conventionality, unable to appreciate this therapeutic dimension to Carnival, with no disrespect, let them turn off their TVs or go to the beach or to Miami on a holiday and in doing so, not begrudge the reveller. For in true democratic style, to each his own, and your moment in time on the beach or in Miami is no different from theirs.
And if it’s the crime that is worrying, crime is usually down at this time as the criminal too, wants his moment in time away from the guns and the blood.
Suffice it to say that on Ash Wednesday the streets will be empty and all the beautiful people and the costumes and the infectious beat of the steel band will be just a memory but one the stuff of what dreams are made of, the mark of a great country and a great people, even as others suffer in the wintry cold of Calais, dreaming a dream that will never come true.
Dr Errol Benjamin