Gods, angels, demons and hypocrites

Nov 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In the media business, you encounter terrible fears on the part of people who have a story to tell but are scared to death to let you see their faces or know their names. They would drop you a note, an unsigned letter or you will get a brief telephone call with the Caller ID saying, ‘Private” so you can’t dial them back. You come to accept these things because fear is a terrible reality in this land and you do the investigation to see if their stories are based on facts.
Last Friday night around 22:00 hours, I received a telephone call. The speaker sounded educated; around his mid-sixties. The conversation was indeed brief. He asked me if I read the Stabroek editorial for the day. I said yes. Then he inquired if I did the same for January 1, 2009. I amusingly told him that I don’t know but if I did I haven’t even the faintest clue as to what that was all about since that was almost a year ago. He intoned; “Freddie go, look it up and read it and the Friday editorial again and then write.” I interjected: “Write what?” But he was gone. There was no forwarding number for me to call back. What was this all about?
I went back to that editorial. I read it and I read the Friday one again. No connection appeared. What was this guy telling me? I read both again and I got up from my chair, looked across to the Atlantic Ocean from my study and murmured to myself, “Eureka.”
This gentleman is a very astute man. If he is reading this, I kindly ask him to make contact again. I saw the picture he wanted me to see. I know why he wanted me to write. He knew my approach to life in this country and he knew I had another essay to compose about life in Guyana after reading that editorial. Here is my essay.
One of the problems I have consistently talked about from my freshman days at UG right through to the epoch of the WPA right up to the present time as a daily newspaper columnist. Everyone one of us wants the other to be a God, an angel but refuse to express or to develop the same values in ourselves. We talk about tolerating each other, caring for each other, forgetting about past animosities and working together. But we don’t see those values being practiced by those who talk about them or write about them. That editorial that the unknown gentleman directed me to and the one from last Friday can fill volumes.
The Friday Stabroek editorial is an appreciation for the contents of a speech delivered by Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine at the last QC reunion. For readers who don’t know, Dr. Roopnaraine’s exhortation is about the need for Guyanese to reclaim the values of the past that so knitted us together as a caring, generous, and mutually respecting nation.
It is useful to quote the Stabroek News; “In other words, Dr. Roopnarine was looking to the past… for the essential and enduring principles rooted in our common experience which would give us strength to confront the challenges of the future, embracing the collective good and eschewing all that would divide us…”
The above is what this society is all about – talk, talk, talk – but not one ounce of demonstration of solidarity for those who are violated, only if it brings us publicity and catapults us into the limelight. The torture boy rightfully got his solidarity. But his supporters were mountainous because his case brought publicity and media coverage to those who crave it. Others were not so lucky. The others included the trawler worker who lost both legs. Has he got employer compensation as yet? Where are the voices for him? No, there weren’t any because the demonstrators wouldn’t have received the mileage they got from the torture boy case. Did we see picketers coming out for the dirt poor employee of a multi-billion family company who drowned while on duty in the Abary River? Did anyone come to the rescue of seven parents whose children were expelled from a private school in the middle of the school term?
We will read more editorials like the one quoted from above. We will hear and see more advocacies from many stakeholders about the need for all of us to reclaim our dignity and human values and speak to each other about each other and help each other. God! There are sections of this society that I dislike. I think hate is too strong a word.

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Gods, angels, demons and hypocrites

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