Kissing sooner than later

Aug 30, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I don’t know if I will ever write a book on my life. I wanted to, many years ago, but it is yet to be done. If I ever write it, the caption above will be the title. The meaning of the title is that I embraced the dreams I saw in front of me and never thought of waiting to see how they would unfold. My name is trenchantly appropriate, Kissoon – always thinking of reaching for what you believe in sooner than later.
If the book never comes off, I would ask my daughter to take this series of autobiographical columns and paste them together in book form after I am gone. This column here is part one of autobiographical snippets or the closest thing to a memoirs attempt.
A caveat needs to be stated very early. I don’t know when there will be part two. So I will ask readers not to expect the second installment next week or next month. I have an assignment as a social commentator with this newspaper and it expects me to publish social analysis, not write on my life. I have known Glenn Lall a long time and I could easily predict his reaction to a series on my life. I could see Glenn saying; “Is wuh nonsense dis maan writing all de time about heself.”
These memoirs columns will not be in sequential order. I will not start with growing up in Wortmanville in South Georgetown and continue in that time frame up to the loss of power by the PPP in 2015. As the ideas come, I will write.
Another caveat is in order. I will not comment negatively on certain people who are still alive, because libel suits and deep hatred could visit me. This is regrettable, because I have seen evil, irredeemableness and immorality in so many Guyanese that we look up to and consider admirable people. I am talking from the time I entered into political activism right to this date on the calendar. Some who are alive I will be candid about, like the editor of the Stabroek News.
Those who are deceased, I will give my impression. For example, David de Caires was unapologetically elitist. J.O.F. Haynes was the best legal mind this country produced but working closely with him at UG, I found out that he was not beyond temptation. I knew Vic Puran when we were very young. Vic’s inherent corruptibility cost him his life. Laurie Lewis knew Monica Reece’s murderer was guilty. I will be brutally frank with my life; for example, I love animals as equal as I do human beings. I love what my African-rights friends call, “white people music.” I will name my relative who tried to assassinate Peter Taylor in the sixties.
There are those that helped to make me into what I believe I am; a multi-racial, fair-minded human being that hates to see others hurt others. The names would be many. I have met some good Guyanese. A few that should be named as early as this first column – Yesu Persaud, Father Andrew Morrison (deceased), Sister Mary Noel Menezes; Clive Thomas, Khemraj Ramjattan, Nigel Hughes, Boyo Ramsaroop (deceased), Brian Rodway (deceased), Fred Philips (deceased), Alan Parris, Milton Brandford, Courtney Benn.
Just in case you don’t know the last four, I will elaborate in future articles. I have to mention the opportunity Glenn Lall gave me. If I publish my memoirs, there may be more than one chapter on my relationship with Lall. I will have excellent things to say and I will be pungently critical. But at this early stage, I must say I am grateful to Lall.

Certainly, there will be chapters on my life with Janet Kissoon. I married Janet on February 8, 1979 and if I had to live my life over again, I will marry Janet. An introverted person that is diametrically the opposite in her personality compared to mine, Janet has been the fulcrum on which my continued existence rested. Janet sacrificed too much for me, and for that I will give my life for her. My daughter is the centre of my universe. Of course there will be nuff words on the regrets I have. They would start with my dad.
I wish he didn’t allow alcohol to ruin his life. My father was a good person with a good heart, but his love for the bottle was a direct creation of the abject poverty we grew up in. My dad could have been more responsible. That stability would have provided my siblings with a better life. My siblings and I never saw a high school door. I resented the way my dad treated my mom. She deserved better. In her older moments, she had to live without things she deserved to have. That really pained me, especially after I came home in 1984 and the authoritarian hand of President Burnham denied me employment.
Part two should appear in a few months’ time.

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Kissing sooner than later

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