From Chapter I An Introduction to Tobago
Next morning I got up at first light and rushed to
the balcony to admire the view of the Caribbean Sea.
There was an almost religious purity about the fresh morning air, the blue sky,
the grass and the flowers with the radiance of the early dew upon them. I fed
to my mind the idea that I would often catch mornings like this, unsullied, and
see the day before men and their activities had spoilt it. I was glad with
entire gladness when I took a walk on the adjacent Store Bay
beach after breakfast. I looked at the sea; I looked at the clear blue sky and
looked at the men and women on the beach. The nature and the women made me
content with the world that I had stepped into.
From Chapter II - Dreaming Scarborough Parkway
With his confidence in me now restored, the Minister
invited me one day to join him in his discussions with the visiting Minister of
Co-operatives, Carlton Gomes, from Trinidad.
Apparently Winchester was trying to convince
Gomes to give some funds to Tobago for the
construction of a co-operative supermarket. Gomes seemed dull, bored to death. Winchester proposed that
all the participants in the Meeting move to Crusoe Hotel at Milford Road for continuing the
discussions. A bottle of scotch was ordered and passed around.
Gomes looked better after the first peg of whiskey
and many pegs later gave a fluent speech promising millions of dollars for the
project. Winchester
praised himself for knowing his cabinet colleague and conditions under which
the visiting minister performed better.
I admired the perceptive powers of Mr. Winchester
and hoped that he would use similar techniques to motivate his Project
Co-coordinator for the Parkway. But no one knew how to create conditions under
which some institutions could perform for the dream of the Parkway to come
true. It seemed that people unrelated to, uninterested in, and even those who
were at odds with one another were united on the issue of blocking construction
of the Scarborough Parkway.
From Chapter III - Life in Tobago
Rotarians arrived at the bar of Mount Irvine at
12:30 PM. They were fairly punctual and were mostly leaders of the business and
professional communities of Tobago. I was
introduced to the President of the Club, Patrick Diaz - a man of much
conversation - and to the remainder of the company, as a guy who had been
imported to do a job – building Scarborough
Parkway – that was considered undoable in Tobago. After half-an-hour’s cocktails the
Sergeant-at-Arms summoned all present to the Dining Room where the President
took the central seat on the head table and began the proceedings by enjoining
all present to sing the national anthem. The anthem ended with the words “Here
every creed and race find an equal place”. This appeared to be a bit ironic for
the Club had hardly any other faces than white. No matter, each of us had a
good lunch as advertised. The President then called for reports from Chairmen
of various services, viz., Club, Vocational, International, and Community. Each
Chairman treated with pearls of sweet nothings at the end of which the
Seagent-at-Arms ‘fined’ most Rotarians for one or the other ‘offence’ to
collect money for the club. Examples of the fines: speaking with an accent
(John), continuing drinking after the Lunch was announced (David), and not
knowing the lines of the National Anthem (me). I knew if ever I became a
Rotarian I would be in for a lot of fines.
Chapter IV - A False Dawn
Peter Alexander, owner of a wooden dwelling at
Bagatelle Trace, also brought a ‘heavy weight’ lawyer to represent him and
introduced the dignified lawyer to me. He seemed to me quite different from any
other lawyer I have ever met. He appeared to be sunk in abstraction and suddenly
became aware of my existence. Both of us exchanged polite greetings after which
I told him that the meeting was only to offer alternative accommodation to the
owners and the time was not yet ripe for the lawyers to come in. Without much
ado the lawyer made a dignified exit, so uncommon for lawyers and politicians.
And he was both a lawyer and a politician. His name: A.N.R. Robinson.
After Robinson’s departure Alexander revealed to me
that I had just met the former Deputy Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
Later, when I proclaimed to others my discovery I found that the attitude of
the general public towards him at that time was, at best, one of tolerant
amusement at a “has been” politician, at worst one of mistrust and acid
reprobation. He had left the PNM and formed a new party in Tobago,
the Democratic Action Committee (DAC) and thus qualified to be called a
turncoat and a self-advertiser. To take him down a peg or even several pegs was
not only a pleasure but also a duty – to society and the nation. But to me
there was nothing false, inflated, or artificial in his demeanor
Chapter V - Synopsis of My Indian Past
This was the first time I
addressed a gathering in Tobago and I was not
unpleasantly surprised to note that the more I spoke of my embarrassing moments
exaggeratedly stated, the more were the Rotarians delighted with my speech. In
my new world then I would move as an actor, with as little sense of ego as
possible, feel elated at my ups, delight others by my downs, but always with an
illusion of hope.
Chapter VI - Opposition to the Parkway
By a peculiar coincidence the day
after the elections the Indian High Commissioner to the Country, Dr. Barakat
Ahmad, had come to Tobago to be the guest speaker at the Rotary meeting of the
week and asked me to drive him to meet the Minister of Tobago Affairs. I told
him there was a slight problem – there was no Minister of Tobago Affairs -
Robinson had beaten Wilbert Winchester in the elections. In fact the DAC had
won both the Tobago seats; in Tobago West
DAC’s Winston Murray had defeated the Attorney General, Basil Pitt. And DAC
lost all the seats in Trinidad where PNM won
20 and ULF 10.
Barakat Ahmad argued since he was
fasting for Ramzan and would not accept any hospitality, he would go to see Winchester. When that
logic seemed to create some confusion in my mind he clinched the issue by a
stronger statement – President of India, Fakhruddin Ahamad, was also fasting
that day. At his house Winchester
was dealing with the situation as any decent man does – by getting drunk.
“People of Tobago must be punished for this
affront”, he declared. A hanger-on wit rejoined maliciously, “That Robinson is
their representative is punishment enough for the people of Tobago”.
After they had exchanged a few more mischievous remarks about other politicians
and the High Commissioner and the has-been Minister had made observations on
the joys of having politics only as a second career, the diplomat’s visit to
the defeated Minister ended.
More from Chapter VI
On the way to my office at Scarborough we collected the daily newspapers. Their
headlines pertained to the usual infighting between ULF senior leaders – Panday
and Rafiq Shah. McClean commented that these people were destined to destroy
themselves. Good thing McClean also belonged to the tribe that had Politics as
their second career. As a soothsayer, his second career would have been much
shorter. The Parkway would take years to complete and that too by a different
Contractor. The ULF, instead of destroying itself, would form the Government in
its next incarnation some 18 years later with Panday as the Prime Minister and
McClean himself would be Speaker of that Parliament by the courtesy of Basdeo
Panday.
One rainy August morning a
strapping young man knocked at my office and introduced himself as the
Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Works and stated that he had been
sent by Minister McClean to familiarize himself with the Parkway Project. My
briefing on the progress of the contract whetted his appetite to visit the
site. Since only earthworks were progressing it was not an ideal day to drive
on rain soaked freshly cut soil. But having an exultant sense of credit, he let
it be known that he was a Geologist and knew a thing or two about soils. In my
official jeep then we drove to the Parkway site. Near the Government Farm Junction with the
Parkway excavated clay had swollen and from that clay our jeep could not
extricate itself even with a four-wheel drive. The jeep only got disentangled
when its driver steered the wheels and the geologist Parliamentary Secretary,
Patrick Manning, and I pushed it together from the rear with our full strength.
This was, of course, much before Manning subscribed to the philosophy of doing
things alone. As a Political Leader, much in future, he would win an election
alone, lose a drawn election alone, lose an election alone, and win a drawn
election alone
Chapter VIII - Agony of Scarborough Parkway
Responsibility for Tobago
Administration had now been entrusted jointly to Ministers Patrick Manning and
Marilyn Gordon. On one of their joint weekly visits to Tobago while I was
conducting them on a tour of the Parkway site, Manning suggested to Gordon that
to economize their efforts it would be better if in future the two Ministers
came to Tobago separately on alternate weeks.
Those days I was reading Edward Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of Roman Empire” and
was inspired to make the wild remark, that the arrangement would be much like
Roman Consuls of the old when two of them, to share power, ruled Rome on
alternate days. To this weird remark
Manning responded by looking at me quite calmly before making a rejoinder,
which was not only weird but also incomprehensible. “The Chinese might soon
roll down a nuclear bomb from the Himalayas to the plains of India”.
I stored the remark in my memory
for deciphering sometime in the future The point was somewhat clarified a
quarter of a century later when he declined to share power with the United
National Congress (UNC) when both the parties – his PNM and the UNC – won 18
parliamentary seats each. The man did not like the idea of power sharing in the
style of the Roman Consuls of old.
More from Chapter VIII
A dearth of intellectual activity
always plagues Tobago for the heavenly breeze,
sun and sand of its beaches are more conducive to ‘liming’ rather than reading
and writing . To encourage reading the Tobago Library organized a competition
for reviewing Vidia Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ at which the best three
entries were to be given appropriate awards. As somebody who haunted the
Library often, I read the notice, procured the book, and after reading it a
couple of times made out a review in a style copied from an issue of “Sunday
Times” of London,
and submitted my entry by the due date. A month elapsed and I heard nothing
from the Library. To satisfy my curiosity I went to the Librarian to inquire
the results of the Competition. Very delighted I was to hear that I had won the
first prize. When I probed further to enlighten myself on the names of second
and third prizewinners, I was told there were no other winners. Mine was the
sole entry for the Competition!
Chapter IX - A Journey to Known and Unknown Lands
Brussels did nothing to belie the denseness
with which the Dutch credit the Belgians. My own ineptness brought the best out
of them. I was the only person who had
not bothered to get a visa for France
while we were in London.
The tour leader shrugged her shoulders and told me to take my family in a taxi
to the French Embassy to get visas while she escorted the remaining party to a
sightseeing tour of Brussels.
The taxi driver pretended he did not understand English and took us to three
different Diplomatic Missions before bringing the car to a stop on the wrong
side of the street where the French Embassy was located. He then pointed out
the Embassy and helpfully suggested that while crossing the busy street we
should keep our right hands outstretched so that oncoming cars do not overrun
us.
By the time we emerged from the
Embassy it was too late to join our bus tour, and I asked the taxi driver to
take us to Waterloo
battlefield, which, it appeared from the map, was just ten miles away. I also
grumbled about the 125 US$ of which I had been relieved as visa fees for five
of us. Promptly the driver quoted a similar amount for our excursion because,
he asserted, Waterloo
was some 25 miles away. My protestation, that if that was the case Napoleon
would not have lost the battle because von Blucher forces would not have joined
Wellington in time, cut no ice with the Belgian and crumbling on my seat, I
decided to withdraw to our Hotel rather than attempt to reach Waterloo.
More from Chapter IX
Crossing the River Po, where
Napoleon following the footsteps of Hannibal had
won a great victory before overrunning Italy,
we reached the historic city of Milan.
It had been once part of the pagan Roman Empire
that was prepared to accept any religion that did not involve human sacrifice,
so long as its devotees were prepared to pay lip service to the state gods.
This ‘acceptance’ became ‘toleration’ of all religions in the year 313 with Constantine’s Edict of
Milan when Christianity supplanted Paganism. A little more than 300 years later
another religion would rise that would replace ‘toleration’ with ‘jihad’. So
much for the progress of spirituality in the human race. But the memory of a
beautiful, gigantic Church – St Marks – with thousands of pigeon flocking in
its huge square still lingers.
Chapter X - Watering Down Brandy
Quite unsettled was I over the
opinions of the Contractor and the Director of Contracts and I disagreed with
them in entirety. Hugh Francis, Minister of works agreed with my disagreement
and fixed an appointment for both of us to discuss the matter with the Attorney
General, Selwyn Richardson. Richardson’s
reputation was already daunting. He had recently got the old Fire Station at St Vincent Street
demolished to build Government offices – never mind the offices were never
built and a Library was still under construction at the site 24 years later.
Because of his anti corruption drive, he claimed people greeted him with words
like, “Hi Sello, keep it up”. And Hugh Francis and I were very careful as we
walked up to his office at the Red House as he had recently provided for a $500
fine or 6 months’ imprisonment for anybody littering in the precincts of the
Red House.
Much to the chagrin of my wife, I
have always believed that I am but a vessel to do God’s will, and divine to
that extent. When I met Richardson
for the first time that morning I felt I had come across a man a step ahead of
me. Delighted I was to meet someone who acted as if he were God himself. ‘Express’ columnist John de Silva was
completely innocent of matters divine when under the heading what I want for
Christmas he asked for a little humility and modesty from Attorney
General Selwyn Richardson. By Trinidadian standards Christmas was
near and ‘Sello’ offered we Black Label scotch at 10 in the morning. I was
impressed with this civilized conduct – I do it too to celebrate my son’s
birthday. He then chastised us, as was appropriate, that we did not go about in
the right way the task of acquiring the buildings for the Parkway. He had
simply got issued Quit Notices by the Agriculture Minister, George Chambers (on
whom was peace and now descended grace enough to propel him to be the next
Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago), under the Land Acquisition Act to throw
out tenants and owners to make way for the Hall of Justice that he was getting
built nearby on Knox Street. That surveys of a small area for a building and
for large tracts for a Highway require different sets of timings and resources
was a minor detail.
Chapter XI - A Maharaja, Two Maharanis and a Princess
The Maharaja and Maharani
insisted that I call them Bapji and Hemlata respectively but, in turn, would
address me only as ‘Colonel’. After dropping the family at their rented house
at Mount Irvine, I drove Bapji to Mount Irvine
Hotel to address the luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club. With his Oxford accent Bapji spoke of the India of 1975
and after. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi found guilty by the court of electoral
malpractice. State of emergency declared. Arrests of opposition leaders, Press
censorship. End of Emergency at the 6th General Elections in 1977. Janata Party
government taking power under Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Mrs. Gandhi and
Congress crushed. Without pleasure in performance but with the encouragement of
pretended attention of the Rotarians, he explained the theory of non-alignment,
measures to eradicate poverty, plans for improving infrastructure and
increasing production. He did feel a ghost of pride in his performance. Lucky
speakers on India
– they can keep speaking for centuries and the contents would remain the same.
It is like the casting of artificial pearls before pseudo swine by jet-set
preachers.
Thanks to Aristotelian
friendship, nurtured in champagne, between Bapji and me, a few months later he
called me again to announce that an aunt of his was visiting him and he would
like to bring her to Tobago. Could I arrange
to meet them at Crown Point
and take them –Bapji, Hemlata and the aunt - around to the Pigeon Point and
Buccoo Reef? Always a sucker for beauty, I readily agreed. But I was not
prepared for what I saw on reaching Crown
Point. The aunt was none other than Maharani Gayatri
Devi of Jaipur herself.
During the boat ride I videotaped
the two Maharanis frolicking in their bikinis. Though well past her prime,
Gayatri Devi still looked like an Esther Williams in her swimsuit. During lunch
at the Pigeon Point she and Bapji talked about some royal intrigues of which I
knew nothing and cared even less. At those moments I thought of myself as a
camel among the armored vehicles, and preferred to chat with Hemlata. Now it
was the turn of my own princess – Princess Zia – to walk out of our hut
haughtily because she perceived I was being unduly attentive to Hemlata. It was
with great difficulty and thanks only to much groveling that I was able to
persuade her to be condescending enough to join the Maharaja and two Maharanis
at lunch.
Chapter XII - "under" Manning the Parkway
After the Treaty of Tilsit with
Alexander II of Russia
when Napoleon was asked what was the secret of his success he said, “I was
always fifteen minutes before the other fellow.” To create an impression of
superiority he had taken a smaller but faster boat than Alexander to reach
their rendezvous – a raft in the middle of River Tilsit – fifteen minutes
earlier. Fortunately, in Trinidad
and Tobago it works the other way around.
During those days Patrick Manning used to be late for most of his Meetings and
was thus marked for great success. At one of these meetings with me he
suggested that the Government pay Moonan a sum of $8 million to complete the
Parkway Section I rather than employ Seereeram Bros because the latter and
Ministry of Works officials had serious differences of opinion on a separate
project. I suggested that decision would be justifiable only if Moonan’s
overall price turned out to be less than that of Seereeram Bros. On that
ambiguity the Minister let the matter pass. This glimpse suggested that he
lived by instincts, hunches, flashes, which he was unable to sustain in
argument.
Chapter XIII - Daughters of Dukes, Aristrocats and Smugglers
To strike a blow for the equality
of sexes then, I escorted Ira for admission to Oakdene
School in England. Still, to confirm that I
was not doing something silly, I took Ira to see the Education Officer of the
Indian High Commission in London.
Fortunately the guy, I forget his name, did not agree with the then prevalent
Ayatullahanian view that the doom of Western Civilization was inevitable. His
experiences had been too peculiar, and he projected peculiarities onto life.
Only a year before he had sent a fourteen-year-old girl from India to study Mathematics in the USA where she
was now an outstanding student. He figured that those who stayed away from
education would be out of date anyway. Now assured that I was not being
outlandish in parting with my daughter in the name of education, with Ira I
entrained for Beaconsfield.
Clearly this was the decent thing to do rather than hanging on to her in Tobago
while her heart was schooling in England.
Chapter XV - An Ambassador's Grand Slam and a Prime Minister's Low Slam
About the same time a fusion was
also forced between the Rotary Club of Tobago and me. I really should have
taken the humorist Mark Twain more seriously when he wrote words to the effect,
“I decline to join any Club which would accept me as a member.” It so chanced
that all those members who were eligible to be the President of the Club for
the year 1980-81 declined the honour. Even so, no connection should be made
between this reluctance of the Tobago Rotarians to get into a job, which
involved much writing and speaking, and a statement made by the then Jamaican
Prime Minister, Michael Manley. Wordings of the statement, in part, were to the
effect, “People in Trinidad
and Tobago do not know how to read and
write, and they don’t have a literacy programme”. This statement was grossly
exaggerated. But the long and short of the story was that the Presidency of the
Club was thrust upon me. My protestation that I would probably leave Tobago for good in August 1980 was set aside on the grounds
that the Parkway was not complete and the Government would not let me escape
yet.
“Cadillacs, Mercedes Benz, cornflakes and they can’t even
patch a blasted road”, was another part of the same Michael Manley speech,
which I now wanted to prove wrong by helping build the Parkway.
Chapter XVI - Of Quarries and Cosmos
When I met Keith Rowley at Tobago’s Administrative offices I found him to be a very
intense and charming person. We discussed acquisition of seven additional acres
at Green Hill, geological surveys and installation of a new crushing plant at Crown Point for the
airport works. He also suggested that an additional crushing plant ought to be
brought from Trinidad and handed over to
National Quarries Company to operate. But, he ruefully added, that could be
done only at the level of Mr. Manning. The scheme never materialised. That is
the way it has been between these two guys all these years. Each expects the
other to do the right thing and neither one obliges. But between Keith and me,
after the meeting, the conversation drifted from the rocks of the earth to the
rocks in space.
Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos was
being serialized those days on the local television and excitedly we talked
about it. It had dazzled my mind in a manner the Bhagwat Gita had done three
decades earlier. Even now I find it irresistible to narrate a few points of the
series that had left me spellbound.
. Less than ten million years
ago, the first creatures that closely resembled human beings evolved,
accompanied by a spectacular increase in brain size. And then, only a few
million years ago, the first true humans emerged. Human beings grew up in
forests; we have a natural affinity for them.
For thousands of years humans
were oppressed – as some of us still are – by the notion that the universe is a
marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable.
Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that
human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases
were not caused by demons or the gods; that the earth was only a planet going
around the Sun. And the stars were very far away.
Then the idea arose that there might be a way
to know the world without the god hypothesis; that there might be principles,
forces, and laws of nature, through which the world could be understood without
attributing the fall of every sparrow to the direct intervention of Zeus. These
intellectual enquiries led to the discovery that stars are mighty suns, light
years away in the vastness of interstellar space.
We find that we live on an
insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the
outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked
away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more
galaxies than people.
. It is said that men may not
be the dreams of the gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
We are, in the most profound
sense, children of the Cosmos. There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way
galaxy alone that at this moment are inhabited by beings that are very
different from us, and far more advanced.
Just sixty-five million years
ago our ancestors were the most unprepossessing of mammals – creatures with the
size and intelligence of moles. It would have taken a very audacious biologist
to guess that such animals would eventually produce the line that dominates the
Earth today. The Earth was then full of dinosaurs. There were swimming
reptiles, flying reptiles, and reptiles thundering across the face of the
Earth. Some of them had large brains, an upright posture and two little front
legs very much like hands, which they used to catch small, speedy mammals –
probably including our distant ancestors – for dinner. In one catastrophic
event all of them and many, perhaps most, of the other species on the Earth,
were destroyed. But not the tree shrews and the mammals. They survived.
Our ancestors no longer had to
live in the shadow of voracious reptiles. We diversified exuberantly and
flourished. Twenty million years ago, our immediate ancestors probably still
lived in the trees, later descending because the forests receded during a major
ice age and were replaced by grassy savannahs. We see again how tied our
existence is to random astronomical and geological events.
There are not yet any obvious
signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether
civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward
self-destruction. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth
from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinism are difficult
to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become
an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
There are worlds that have been charred and ruined by cosmic catastrophes.
If we are willing to
contemplate nuclear war and the wholesale destruction of our emerging global
society, should we not also be willing to contemplate a wholesale restructuring
of our societies? Should we not be willing to explore vigorously, in every
nation, major changes in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental
redesign of economic, political, social and religious institutions? Let us
study war as if it were, as Einstein aptly called it, an illness of childhood.
We must learn the science and technology that provide the only conceivable
tools for our survival. We must be willing to challenge courageously the
conventional social, political, economic and religious wisdom.
Chapter XVII - A Crowded Vacation
On the Air India flight to New Delhi, I kept away from Champagne for fear of a recurrence of the
scene on the New York-London flight. Nor did I need it. The person occupying
the seat next to me imparted the requisite feeling of exhilaration. Shanti had
a face of such sweetness and conversation of such simplicity that she stirred my
imagination. Her husband was an engineer in Chicago
and she was going to Bombay
to see her parents. The plane was scheduled to reach Bombay at midnight and I wished that some
miracle would strand it on some godforsaken island for the night.
At last in my life something
that I really wished was granted to me by an unseen power and the plane made an
unscheduled landing at Kuwait.
Near enough. The pilot announced the passengers would have to spend the night
at a hotel in Kuwait
while the aircraft engine received some attention. The flight would resume only
next morning. At the terminal building our passports were withdrawn and we were
told to wait outside for taxis to ferry us to our designated Hotel. Since
passengers were many and taxis few, the Air India official asked couples and
families to step forward first for conveyance to the Hotel. Shanti quickly
grabbed my hand and off we went in the first available taxi. In the Hotel
lobby, as we waited to be checked in – two passengers sharing one room - my mind
raced with ideas for an amorous night. Alas, before we could check in together,
an elderly Gujrati lady appeared from nowhere and dragged a reluctant Shanti to
be her roommate.
Chapter XVIII - Like a House on FireKnowing how
delighted the Rotarians – at least some of them – would be to hear ANR in
person, unhesitatingly I rang ANR to invite him to the next luncheon meeting of
the Rotary Club and present his video. He asked if I could also arrange a TV
set, a Video machine, and to pick him up for the Meeting. At the appointed day
I placed my TV and VCR at the back seat of my car and ANR on the front seat,
and drove off to the Mount Irvine Hotel. Conversing during the journey he
remarked that he really admired those who had served in the Army. I took it to
be a compliment and responded graciously, ‘It is true the Army is a great
profession and inculcates ideas of discipline, duty, and courage in all those
who do a stint in it. I was a Brigade Commander for a brief period. But all
that is behind me now’. And to return his compliment, I added, ‘I really admire
those who spend time in politics’. ANR had the last word, ‘I won’t go so far as
to call politics a great profession. I was a Deputy Prime Minister for a brief
period. But all that is behind me now’.
.....
Once again I combined the
Presidency of the Rotary Club with the Directorship of Parkway Project and
invited Crehan Polo, the Director of Contracts, to Tobago
to be our guest speaker at a Rotary meeting and then take a tour of the Parkway
Project. Here was a guy about whom even my darkest imagination cannot invent an
irreverent phrase. A thorough gentleman and a straightforward civil servant, he
was also a man of decisions. On observing the chaotic Scarborough
traffic and the accomplished progress on the Parkway, Polo gave an on the spot
approval for going ahead with the extension of the Parkway and asked me to
submit the written proposal as early as possible for his Board’s approval.
Chapter XIX - Portrait of Con Artist as a Rotary President
In keeping with the manual
developed by me I laid it on thick, thick as could be. I astonished him by
quoting an extract from his own message for the 75th anniversary of
Rotary International that was published in the magazine ‘Rotarian’ some time
back; “How different our world would be if the spirit of Rotary International
were to permeate the minds and hearts of all citizens and animate their actions
accordingly”. But this was only the beginning; I went on, “Almost 2500 years
ago Confucius told his disciples “Rid yourself of your arrogance and your
lustfulness. These are detrimental to your person’. President Clarke also
resents our infinite capacity for entertainment and revelry”.
I understated the President’s
thoughts. Then I went on to overstate, “His Excellency is the President of Trinidad and Tobago.
But his grand excellency is that he is genuine. In today’s world he is nearest
to being the philosopher king that Plato dreamed of. We may be captivated by
the Alexanders and Napoleons but it is the philosopher kings like Emperor Asoka
of ancient India and
President Lincoln of the New World who usher
in the decisive events in the history of the world. When the history of
contemporary times of this nation comes to be written, surely some of its
brightest pages would be those that would describe the guidance and leadership
of President Ellis Clarke”.
.....
On the occasion of my handing over the Rotary Presidency I concluded thus:
In his memoirs Winston
Churchill has written” At the top there are great simplifications. An accepted
leader has only to be sure of what it is best to do, or at least to have made
up his mind about it. The loyalties which center upon number one are enormous.
If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered.”
During the last Rotary year I made a mistake that was covered up by the
Rotarians. Today I wish to reveal it – not because this is a communist meeting
at which I am required to confess my crimes before being liquidated but because
the Bhagwat Gita tells us that all work can be both beautiful and holy. Says
Lord Krishna, “Bring thy failures to me and rest thy mind on the Supreme”.
When Mayow handed over the
Presidency of the Club to me last year the Delaford Playing Field was near
completion. This year we mobilized the physical efforts of all Rotarians one
day at the playing field for working on drainage and then had the high powered
team of Engineers Reg Chamberlain, Steve Hold and Vishnu Singh work feverishly
to complete the job of leveling the field. Last reports from the Project site
indicate that what a year back was a near playing field is now a full-fledged
swimming pool. Well might Mr. Robinson dream that by the time I end up coordinating
this infamous team’s labours on the Parkway and Connector roads, Tobago would
become the Venice of the Caribbean – where roads are being built today, canals
would flow tomorrow.
