Travails of a centrist

May 14, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

It is the quiet of Sunday morning. A pre-CCJ solitude surrounds. A rush of thoughts comes. What am I doing here? What keeps me here? Why do I think I belong?
In a time and place of black and Indian heroes, I can’t be one, not one. Does not aspire to be one. Who is he? How does he identify with us? For what reason? Can he be trusted? And when he is examined closely, he does not identify much with anyone, neither Indian nor black-and our passions and priorities. Too independent, too much of a centrist, something called a progressive. There are problems with those kinds of people; they think too much; speak out too much; refuse to follow faithfully, blindly.
In a land of many combinations of mixes, ‘dougla’ being a distinctive example, he is that most mysterious and elusive of mixes -here, but not one of us; in the milieu, yet insistent for the outside edges of the periphery. For this is the land today of Granger and the other gentleman, and yesterday of Jagan and Burnham, and all their offspring in between and thereafter. In some ways, no matter how I may deny and be discomfited, they are of me, and I of them. Perhaps, I should be proud, I don’t know that I am poorer for not being…
I remember other things and other people: there those unforgettable, inerasable debts of grooming and gratitude to Indian forbears and black surrogates, who eased the passage along the way: a thought, an exhortation, a timely deed. No matter how regarded, independents and progressives (I believe I am) belong. I do, if only because I owe them, and all the lustrous values imparted. Thus, I will confront and combat anyone who seeks to deny to me and others that rightful place of belonging. For to deny me is to deny the essence of those who made me, who did make a certain kind of Guyana possible. One that is today unknown and unheralded.
Independents and centrists struggle with many travails; one dominates being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong battles and going about these in the wrong way. Maybe even among the wrong people, the tone is unforgiving. Amidst all these great wrongs, there is one right, a singular one: it is pleasing to the spirit, soul satisfying: to follow star wherever it leads. It is still leading. To where I know not.
It is pleasing to have left here and go there and, all the time, being the same way. To have left here because of anxieties and traumas, trials of the soul and tangible needs of the poor. It is the need to be oneself to the extent of potential. But even with the spreading of wings, there was something missing, an unfulfilled instinct, an unsatisfied impulse and repressed urge: go there. Hope. Dream. Live. Love. Lose, too. To bow, but not to yield. It is an ordinary story. That was then. Well, there is here. And it is now.
Back to square one. To the square one of a future that is past. The CCJ will bring there. Then what? Where to, my brothers in the sun, and of soil and skin? There is an immediacy that comes, that will challenge. It cannot be the constancy of the unchanging, the normalcy of the uninspiring. I have been touched. By many hands. Many lives. Many colours. Including white. There is learning there. Trust me on this one, even if there is reluctance to do so with politics or because of politics. That’s the problem. Too much race. Too much baggage of memory. Too many impassioning prisons. I know them not. That is to be free, really free. Loving it, too.
Free enough to wonder where this place goes. Free enough to ponder about those used and left. Free enough to ask: why? And then, why not another way… That is living.
If any or all of this represents any or many strains of political and racial heresy, then I am a blasphemer. An incorrigible one. A proud one. An unconquerable one. A product of time and village, and of journeys and environments touched. I was touched more, learned more. That is why I am and how I am. There is a peace to this in the muted silence of a Sunday morning. Guyana waits. Guyana will be. But it must be another way. Maybe there is some depth and wisdom in people like me.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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