I read Burt Bacharach to stop depression while waiting for the election results

May 24, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mr. Hamley Case sent me a Christmas gift last year – the autobiography of Burt Bacharach. He knew I loved the songwriter. It remains one of the best holiday gifts I ever received and it ranks with the ones I got from my daughter and wife.
A singer can play an important part in your life. Without a doubt, the music of Burt Bacharach has had a shaping influence on me, the details of which I will reveal one day in my own autobiography (God knows when I will complete that) but his music brought me and my girlfriend closer, because we loved the songs and would listen to them together daily while courting, especially Bacharach’s most philosophical composition on life and love, “Alfie”.
I went to bed late Monday night in a terrible mood after results came pouring in that presaged a trend – the PPP was leading. I campaigned hard for APNU-AFC, speaking at more public meetings than any other APNU-AFC politician. But Basil Williams told me he outdid me. I knew my life depended on it. I knew I couldn’t live with another PPP Government. Suicide was not an option, because I have a family that I am phenomenally in love with. But the alternative was life as a mental wreck.
There was no way the PPP would let me survive in Guyana if they triumphed in the elections. My fear was that my death would eventually come. I was afraid too that Kaieteur News would never be allowed to continue to exist should the PPP win. I am not a member of the Alliance For Change, but I knew I had to use every ounce of energy to get the coalition elected. I threw myself completely into the 2015 campaign.
When I heard some of the announcements, I was really heartbroken. I went immediately to bed so my wife would not see the look on my face. I remember one announcement was shattering. The Berbicians call it, Good Banana Land, the Guyana Gazetteer has it as Good Banana Land (page 46) but the legal name is Goed Bananen Land. It is in Canje, Berbice.
We had a wonderful meeting there. The East Indians came out to listen. We took Good Banana Land by storm – me, Dr. Ramayya, Charrandas Persaud and Michael Carrington. Families came up to us and told us of their problems. One woman begged us for a house lot should we win, because she said she is a single parent who cannot afford a rented house.
One of the early results was Good Banana Land. The coalition got whipped. I couldn’t understand it. Depression was coming on that fateful Monday night. I remember when the campaign started my engagements had me speaking at strictly African villages.
Then one day, Leonard Craig, the AFC’s logical officer for the campaign said to me in his office that the AFC had decided on a strategy where high profile Indians would speak in Indian areas where they could discourse with the Indian people of Guyana. Over the next month, I was placed to speak in Indian areas only. What I saw, the reception we got and the prospects were great for a coalition victory. But Good Banana Land was becoming my nemesis. What went wrong? I couldn’t take it, I didn’t want to know
I got up at 3a.m. on Tuesday. I couldn’t sleep. Depression was coming on. Why were the initial results so bad for the coalition in Indian areas that I campaigned in? I went to my study, looked at my bookshelves and decided I want to read something light and go back to bed. I pulled down the autobiography of Burt Bacharach, “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” This was very gloomy reading of the life of one of music’s greatest talents ever.
Burt Bacharach didn’t help. I was running away from melancholy and as they say in common Guyanese parlance, ran from the coffin into the jumbie. By the time it was daybreak, I was fast asleep.
I got up late Wednesday morning and began to make some serious enquiries about the election results. I called the numbers of Moses Nagamootoo, Khemraj Ramjattan, Nigel Hughes and David Patterson of the AFC and Aubrey Norton of APNU. There was no response.
The good news of the trend in the counting that I wanted to hear, ironically, came not from a politician but my editor, Adam Harris. Adam told me he was reliably informed the coalition had won. I called David Patterson immediately. He answered this time and said he was in a meeting. I told him I wanted to know if we won. He said yes, and it is for that reason he was in the meeting. There and then, my life was reborn.

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I read Burt Bacharach to stop depression while waiting for the election results

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