From Chapter X - Guns of Muslimeen
Fortunately I have Winston
Dookeran’s home telephone number and give him a call immediately after my
arrival and tell him that since Prime Minister was still held at the Red House
I considered myself directly under his command to carry out whatever duties he
would wish to assign to me. He appreciates the support and assures me that he
would be in touch with me.
Next morning – Sunday, July 29 -
Minister Myers invites me to a Meeting at Trinidad Hilton where the government
has set up a Secretariat. He asks me to coordinate national and international
relief efforts and puts Justine Paul from his Ministry to be in charge of
storing and distributing the supplies. I suggest to him that according to the
NEMA plan retired Commodore Mervyn Williams (now representing Red Cross) should
have this responsibility. Myers says it is different type of emergency and
moves on to other subjects. Later Williams tells me that International Red
Cross does not like its supplies to be handled by the Government and we both
shrug our shoulders.
After the Meeting I visit Camp Ogden
and meet the regiment commander, Colonel Ralph Brown and the coast guard
commander Richard Kelshall and assure them that all NEMA’s resources can be
mobilized in furtherance of their plans. And when I express my desire to visit
the vicinity of the Red House, Kelshall says that I could go but there are a
lot of trigger-happy people around there and nobody even bothers to pick up the
dead bodies of several people who have been shot dead in the last two days. I
suppose for all concerned it was a more sensible thing to negotiate with
Muslimeen from Camp
Ogden through
intermediaries rather than get caught in the dirty business of firing.
From Chapter XI - Flopping of the Fran
Appropriately, Guardian sent
its part-time reporter part-time stand-up comedienne, Deborah Jean-Baptiste, to
chat with me regarding my life in the wake of my newfound ‘fame’. She said not
much was known about the man himself although his involvement with NEMA is
recognized island wise (now which island did she mean – Tobago, Trinidad or Chacachacare, where lepers were housed long
years ago). She reported:
“Mathur, skilled in disaster
preparedness and operations management, explained that the function of NEMA is
to act responsibly in the face of emergencies. Referring to the exhortation to
the public on Tuesday morning for people to remain indoors, he said, ‘during a
storm it is foolhardy for people to go out, they have to stay in and weather
the storm’. NEMA has the authority to say this when people’s lives are at
stake. The Agency becomes automatically operational in the face of a disaster.”
As is the wont of Guardian it
missed out the last sentence to keep its columns neat. The unprinted words were to the
effect, “In managing disasters I do not only find fulfillment with the job but
fulfillment of my soul for being in a post where I can save lives and alleviate
suffering”.
So carried away was I by this
statement of mine that it came out as a memorized answer to Prime Minister
Robinson’s simple greeting “How are you?” when I was summoned to see him on his
resumption of the primeministership. At that he told me he would like me to
“alleviate suffering of people who were dependent on those who were killed by
Muslimeen on 27 July”. My wife Zia and I drove around the Country for the next
seven days visiting and interviewing people connected with the victims and I
was able to recommend to the Prime Minister quantum of the help to be given to
the needy individuals from his relief funds.
From Chapter XII - Three Simple Conditions for marrying my Daughter
When we met there one afternoon after work
Imshah said that he was ready to propose to Ira and wanted my blessings. I
replied that would not be a problem so long as he fulfilled my three simple
conditions. Firstly, Ira would keep her maiden surname; secondly the marriage
ceremony would be performed exclusively by Vedic rites and that his parents should
also give approval to these arrangements. So much Imshah’s heart was set upon
marrying beautiful exceptional Ira that he had no hesitation to agreeing with
all the three conditions. Our discussions had concluded even before we had
finished drinking the coconut water. I hugged Imshah and my cordiality almost
oppressed him after what had taken place at our first two meetings.
From Chapter XIII - Foiling Chemical Fury
Hardly
had I finished my address and invited questions from the audience that one
young executive got up and fired at me, “Your plan itself is a disaster. A high-powered committee of several expert engineers
will achieve nothing. The Chief Executive Officer is the best person to make
all decisions by himself”. Cheering was on a scale which would have put
California Governor recall 2003 election victory of Arnold Shwarzenegger to
shame – it seemed that I had been recalled from my post as Head of NEMA and
replaced by the young executive. But I was prepared for a rejoinder: “No one
make one’s living by advising people not to do whatever they are doing at the
time. The modern management techniques, that were initially introduced by the
Army and now favoured as a creed by modern business managers, rely on
coordination with all the players. People who act alone as dictators are
assassinated like Julius Caesar exiled like Napoleon or lose elections like
Edward Seaga of Jamaica”.
The pin-drop silence that followed was only broken when the Chairman of the
proceedings and head of the ECA, Emru Millette, rose to thank me for my address
and to bring the Meeting to a close.
From Chapter XIV -mA Ballet for Four Seasons
Fortunately, Queen’s Hall was
only a short distance from my St Ann’s
lodgings and Zia, Ira (she was the Master of Ceremonies for the evening) and I
reached there well in time to receive guests. Zia accompanied Ira to the green
Room to help her and a friend of the Theatre, one Rita Ali, latched onto me to
assist in my onerous duties. And I really didn’t want Rita tagging along – at
our earlier encounters she had (correctly) accused me of knowing nothing about
Indian dancing and mispronouncing the name of the main dancer and wife of Sat
Balkaransingh, Mondira (outrageously, she was right again). She certainly could
have never been appointed as the Chief of Protocol of Trinidad and Tobago.
I was fairly inept in presence of VIPs when left to my own devices. With Rita
tagging along, together we constituted a walking-talking recurring time bomb.
From Chapter XV - Staff College 2: Shrivenham
My expectation that my stint at
Shrivenham would be a repetition of my experience at the Staff College in
Wellington that I had undergone a quarter of century earlier were soon dashed
when I found that there was no golf course at the premises and what was worse:
there was no bridge room in the Officers’ Mess and no bridge playing gentlemen
around. I was condemned to spending most
evenings at the Mess bar! These shortcomings apart, the Course could be dubbed
as Staff Course 2 in ‘Amazement at things military’.
We were taken on a helicopter
ride as a part of an Exercise just to show how reconnaissance of a disaster
area could be carried out from a helicopter. That in real life one only
antagonizes human victims by so doing and one can do only an unsatisfactory
damage assessment from air is beside the point.
Process of ‘Appreciation of
Disaster Threats’ was taught in the same manner as ‘Appreciation of the
Situation’ is taught to military students. Instructor was the Director of the
Course, George Ritchie, a retired colonel of the British Army’s Royal
Engineers. He had attended a British Army staff course at Camberley and because
of our similar backgrounds – to say nothing of attaining the same rank in our
respective armies that our respective incompetence would permit - he expected
support from me in his presentation. I could extend none. May be I was even
more incompetent than him but I could not see the similarity in planning for
war and in planning for disasters. For war you had to plan for eventualities
that could be triggered off by an enemy at a time and place of his choosing.
For disasters location of vulnerable areas is already known only the timing and
magnitude is uncertain. Also certain are the preparedness, response and prevention
measures to counter the disasters.
From Chapter XVI - Haitians are Coming
Well might now I feel that many
senior managers in the Country – and I – were well trained during the year to
deal with any emergency. Therefore, it was with a great deal of confidence that
I headed to the Prime Minister’s Office in obedience to Mr. Robinson’s summons
one November afternoon to advice him on an undisclosed disaster management
problem. Quite disoriented I was when the Prime Minister asked me “Should we
accept Haitian refugees”? In my lifetime I had seen refugees coming to India from Pakistan
in 1947, from Tibet in 1954,
and from Bangladesh
in 1971. There was never a question of whether we accept them or not. After a
minute’s quick thinking I replied, “It would be the moral thing to do to accept
them. I can go back to my office and work out where a couple of hundred
refugees can be accommodated in Trinidad”. The
Prime Minister seemed to like my response, smiled and told me to go ahead with
the planning for receiving the refugees. He also told me that the cost of
housing the refugees would be borne by the United Nations Commission for
Refugees.
I was soon to discover that this
planning would become a nightmare and would suddenly come to an end with the
occurrence of an unexpected event. Meanwhile the usual dread of disasters in
the Country that was expressed by the words “A storm is coming” was replaced by
the words “Haitians are coming”.
From Chapter XVII - A Hair-brained Scheme
No sooner the Prime Minister’s
statement appeared in the Press, United Nations resident coordinator, Charles
Perry, requested a joint visit to the possible sites for housing the refugees.
John Andrews, the affable Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister, also
joined us for our weekend of reconnaissance. To keep this survey short, I led
the party straight to the king of the sites – Wallerfield. Proudly I expounded
the advantages of housing the visitors at this site.
It was not difficult to divine
that that while I was speaking, only one portion of Charles Perry was
operational; all the rest was stagnant. He did not seem to acquire the plus
points of the site – they were all dead to him. All was confined to money. He
balked at the figure of 6.6 millions and suggested that it would be cheaper to
put the visitors in tents or temporary accommodation somewhere near Port of Spain. I was
indignant and sarcastically commented, “We can’t put up the Haitians in Savannah opposite the
President’s House”. The humorless Perry rose to the height of his mediocrity by
remarking that he was not asking for the Hilton Hotel. I looked at John Andrews
for support; none was forthcoming. Rather than get into a slanging match with
him I suggested to Perry a worse alternative – Nelson
Island off the northwest coast of Trinidad. And thither we went. This island was used to
quarantine indentured Indians earlier in the Century before they were allocated
to estates for work and given barrack accommodation. It was certainly not fit
to be used as a refugee camp for an indefinite duration.
Perry was the
best-informed person on earth as to the events of last twenty-four hours; he
was not interested as to the events of the last ten decades. He only saw that
the initial expenditure at Nelson
Island would be
negligible compared to that at Wallerfield. It was almost vulgar that the
remaining members of the Recce Party were convinced with his arguments. I was
in anguish. I could not be a party to managing Haitians in a situation that
could cause a disaster without giving any sort of compensatory benefit to Trinidad and Tobago.
Ever since the British succeeded in quietly, slowly, but surely liquidating Napoleon
at St Helena, Americans have become great
exponents of using islands as prisons. Be it Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba
or Nelson Island
in Trinidad.
From Chapter XVIII - Another Prime Minister, Another National Security Minister, Another Disaster Form
Quite different was the ambience
of 1991 Christmas Party of the Prime Minister’s Office than that of a year
earlier. That of 1990 was like a Wake observed a year earlier for Robinson’s
rule. Now it was to welcome the future in the form of a new Prime Minister –
Patrick Manning. To accommodate an expected large gathering the Ground Floor of
the Tower housing Ministry of Finance was commandeered. Drinks were flowing,
sumptuous dinner was ready for being served, loud pan music pervaded the
atmosphere and the dance floor was crowded. When the future came all present
formed a circle, and future moved like a seconds hand of a clock exchanging
special handshakes with some and indifferent with others.
When Manning came to me, he
greeted me with my full name – Colonel Mahendra Nath Mathur – as if to show
that he had not forgotten the days when we inter-acted with each other during
the construction of the Claude Noel Highway. Never at a loss of words at making
ridiculous remarks to the high and mighty, I remarked that probably now we can
play the chess match we had though of in Tobago a decade earlier. His
countenance changed immediately and he contemptuously remarked, “My business is
to run the Country and not to play chess”. I had to digest the fact that the
new Prime Minister wasn’t a whole lot of fun.
From Chapter XX - A Fairy Tale: A True Story
There is something about Indian fathers that they
just do not want to see their daughters marrying outside their own culture. I
was no exception to this rule just as even India’s great secularist and
agnostic first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was not fifty years earlier. Nehru was shocked when his daughter Indira told him of her
decision to marry Feroze, a Parsee, on her return to India
after cutting short her stay in Oxford
in 1941. Indira, who came in touch with Feroze, came back to India with him
without an academic degree after she fell ill. At meetings in prison and
through letters, Nehru tried to convince Indira to reconsider the step,
pointing to the enormous differences in background and mentality between her
and Feroze.
I did a Nehru on Rashmi but when
she insisted I told her that she was an adult and free to marry anybody whom
she wanted. She replied she would not marry him unless her parents approved and
participated in the ceremony. And both
of them were willing to do anything – almost anything – to obtain our approval.
To live up to my image of a bigoted father – and to test their resolve - I
asked that their first-born son take my surname. With this small detail out of
the way I planned a wedding worthy of a Fairy.
Neil that morning was quite
remarkable in manner and dress. He wore a Pajama kurta presented to him
that very morning by the Indian High Commissioner Lakshmanna and went through
the ceremony in a solemn and awed manner. He had been dazzled by a sort of
loveliness that Fairy was radiating. A special sari had been flown out from Southall, England
for Fairy for the occasion. And very becoming her sari was. It was red silk
with golden border. On one arm she wore a couple of magnificent bracelets and
on the other a dozen bangles. Mahendi had been put on her hands and a
red bindi on her forehead.
Dressed as she was and looking as
she did, so beautiful and yet so motionless, with the pure brilliancy of her
sari brought out and strengthened by her fair complexion. With that lovely head
and those large bold bright eyes, it was impossible that either man or woman
should do other than look at her. And indeed after she made her first
appearance at the improvised mandap neither man nor woman for some
minutes did other.The wedding was solemnized by the traditional seven
circumbulations by the couple around fire and Neil very delicately putting sindoor
on Fairy’s head where her hair parted.
From Chapter XXI - Research and Romance at Oxford
Completion of my research, dip in
my savings, fizzling of my romantic dreams, return of my wife Zia from India, a pending arbitration case of which I was
the soul arbitrator – all pointed to one direction – return to Trinidad. A person who longs to leave the place where he
lives is an unhappy person. For the third time in my life I found myself in
this situation. Minister Russell Huggins in Trinidad
immediately accepted my offer of returning to NEMA and I felt like a culprit
who had volunteered to complete his prison sentence after a successful
escape.
It remained for me to enjoy a
stress-free week visiting my daughter Rashmi, who was now at Daventry with her
husband Neil, and taking Zia out to Warwick
Castle, Shakespeare’s hometown –
Stratford-upon-Avon and Lord and Lady Mountbatten’s home in south England.
From Chapter XXII - "Excuse Me for Drinking before You'
When Kimura Nobuo of Kobe Steel
Limited and Georges Giralt of France
disclosed that robots could work to rescue persons, fire fighting and recover
damaged environments, I was amazed. Dr. R.B. Singh of Delhi University
introduced satellite technology for hazard zone mapping. But I knew it would
take light years before these technologies would be actually available widely
for disaster management. A yawning audience received my own humble paper ‘Risk
Assessment in Trinidad and Tobago’
that encompassed some of the points covered in previous chapters one afternoon
in a manner that the Coalition of Willing would receive a paper on Weapons of
Mass Destruction by a Buddhist from Bhutan.
On the last day I found time to
visit Makuhari’s twin towers that they wisely called World Business
Garden – Al Qaida would
never know they are tall towers vulnerable to flying aircraft piloted by
suicide bombers. A train journey to a Mall at nearby Narita City
enabled me to do some expensive shopping for family members. The last part of
the official programme was visit to Makuhari
Seaside Park
where we were also given a lesson in ‘The Etiquette of Tea Preparation’. I
forget the details but the guest was required to offer apologies a hundred
times to the hostess by the words “Excuse me for drinking before you”. I wish a
similar etiquette had been established for drinking Saki. Then perhaps I would
have excused myself from drinking Saki the first evening and would have most
likely returned to Trinidad with memories of
ecstasy rather than that of drunkenness of my Japanese odyssey.
From Chapter XXIII - Brattling of 'Bret'Next day a Guardian editorial
commended Gordon Draper for ‘all the measures put in place to deal with the
possible ravages of the storm’. It hit the bull’s eye when it said,
“Coordination in this effort, of course, was the key”. But that comment cannot
be applied when it said of the undeserving, “In this respect much credit must
be given to the National Emergency Management Agency and the affable, cool-headed
Colonel Mahendra Mathur who heads it”. In the TV 6 People Meter 57 percent of
the voters thought that NEMA had prepared the country well for Bret well. That
was a sort of rating that was surpassed only by George Bush in the year 2003
after Iraq
war
It was at 5.30 am that all the
occupants at NEMA office heaved a sigh of relief when informed that the eye of
Bret narrowly squeezed through the channel separating the two islands of Trinidad and Tobago
– reinforcing a popular belief in natural blessedness and casting doubts on my
theology of negative thinking. At an interview by Bernard Pantin at TV6
immediately after the ‘Stand down’ I stated that Bret had been a dress
rehearsal for the country for an event that we hope would never take place. We
should now get involved with mitigation activities to reduce our vulnerability
to natural disasters.
From Chapter XXIV - A Presentation at the Royal Society
The brain appears to possess a
special area that records in memory everything that charms or touches us, that
makes our lives beautiful. Rashmi did a dry rehearsal of receiving me by
driving from Daventry to Heathrow’s car park with her husband, Neil, so that
she could come and receive me without a hitch. And it touched cords of my inner
heart to see my youngest daughter waiting for me at the Reception area of
Heathrow. She drove me to Oxford
and then on to Westwood Hotel that was situated on a wooded Hinksey Hill where
I was to stay for my ‘fellowship’. Next day she turned up again, with her husband
driving his own car, and left her car for me to feast my sight on the autumn
English countryside.
Whenever in my life I am
excessively charmed by pleasant things happening, something happens to remind
me that life cannot be a bed of roses. Now the grim news came from Bombay that my older
brother, whom I called Dada, had passed away after a brief illness. It was my
third big loss – the first two were passing away of my mother and father - and
only Gita could console me. The wise in
heart mourn not for those that live, nor those that die. Nor I, nor you, nor
any of these, ever was not, nor ever will not be, forever and forever
afterwards. All, that doth live, lives always! To man’s frame as there come
infancy and youth and age, so come there raisings-up and layings-down of other
and of other life-abodes, which the wise know, and fear not.
