…rituals
The nation “played” Holi yesterday. And boy, did they play??!! This is especially true of the big ones in Georgetown – who have now wrenched the festival from its moorings and transformed it into another show. The festival was brought by the Hindus among the Indian indentured labourers when they were hauled across the “black waters” to replace the African slaves on the Guiana sugar plantations. Unlike what they had done to the African slaves, the white planters allowed the Indians to maintain aspects of their culture; but it certainly wasn’t out of beneficence.
Practices like Holi offered an outlet for the oppressed indentureds – who were working for wages even the freed slaves had refused – to bring some spontaneity to their lives of drudgery. It brought reduction of the frustration with their working conditions, but, most of all, a reaffirmation of self: “I may be a cane-cutter, but I am SOMEBODY with my culture!! And that culture tells me how to survive my reality!”
What is the reality of those who played Holi at State House? Do they realise the suffering they’ve unleashed in the sugar belt? There, not a day goes by when the workers aren’t reminded about their powerlessness in the society. Is there anywhere else in the world – other than under a totalitarian regime like North Korea – where one-third of the workers in an industry would be summarily dismissed without any sort of blowback? Can you imagine what’d happen if 6000 public servants were fired in one fell swoop? After all, a case can be made that, based on productivity, there’s that much fat among the pencil pushers.
Yesterday, as your Eyewitness moved around the areas hit by the tsunami of unemployment, he could discern the strain in the eyes of those who were ostensibly “revellers”. They were merely going through the motions; and in that, they ironically missed the purpose of the ritual associated with Holi, which their fore-parents hadn’t. But we’ve done the same thing with Republic Day, haven’t we?
This is now “Mashramani” – supposedly “celebration after a hard day’s work”; but wasn’t connecting Mash to Republic Day meant we were connecting it to the hard work done by Cuffy in charting a way for removing oppressive rule? Sadly, “Mash” has become another “mash down” dominated by wine and wining!!
And that’s what has happened to Holi, which essentially means “celebrating after overthrowing a tyrant”!! That’s right!! Holi is supposed to remind its players that they shouldn’t accept any leader usurping powers that the people didn’t delegate to him. Remember the protests by the Indian immigrants?
Isn’t that what that kid Prahalad did when his father placed his boot on the necks of the people?
…and acknowledgement
On Holi Day, it was announced that India would foot the bill for building the base for the monument they constructed to honour the first Indians who landed here on May 5th 1838. Ain’t this a shame? It’s just another signal of the contempt in which that demographic is held by the government of this country. The initial agreement was that India would build the monument – conceived by Guyanese artistes – and Guyana would build the site and the foundation.
And what happened? After a year of the monument lying around somewhere, the Government awarded the contract for the base to some fly-by-night firm in Linden that obviously didn’t know their ass from their elbows. Why “obviously”? Well, who would enclose 100 tonnes of earthen filling with hollow blocks rather than solid cast?? For $42 million!! Even your Eyewitness, who failed physics, knows force is transmitted sideways as well as downwards!!
So it’s a crock for the Culture Minister to say the walls came crumbling down because of no soil tests!!
But it’s a greater crock that we can’t even build a foundation!!
…productivity
On Holi Day, India announced its 2018 growth rate confirmed IMF projections that it would surpass China as the world’s fastest growing economy!!
Now THAT’S something to celebrate, isn’t it?
