The street lamp outside my home was fixed at 2pm yesterday

Dec 19, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Definitely one of my favourite songs is from the Broadway play “Cats” currently being made into a movie. The song, the most famous one from the play, is titled “Midnight” and has become a classic covered by dozens and dozens of artists. My preferred version is by Barry Manilow, though most people prefer the Barbara Streisand cover.
The song features the lamplight several times, and the use of the lamplight is to convey a subtle meaning of changing forms of life with fatalistic overtones. When I think of what happened with the lamp outside my home, I thought the song was appropriate, in trying to understand the tragedy that has engulfed this nation long before Independence.
Yesterday, I looked at the clock and it said 2:18 pm. That is when I saw the technicians fixing the lamppost outside my home, which I wrote about yesterday and that the satirical column, “Dem Boys Seh” touched on yesterday too.
Of course, I don’t know if they were pretending to fix it. This piece is being written at 4pm, so I have to wait until evening hours to see if the lamplight that features so consistently in the song will shine its beams on my home.
No columnist wants to use the adjective, “asinine” to describe the use and abuse of power since President Janet Jagan retired in August 1999. But it is appropriate to describe our autocrats since 1999 onwards, up to this moment in time, as asinine.
Let’s rewind the tape to President Jagdeo and his public works minister, Robeson Benn.
Both of these men’s attitude was asinine when they left my part of the trench outside my home in 2010 unclean. Their explanation was asinine. It did not make sense. If you are cleaning from west going east and the day is finished and only one parcel is left to dredge, then it has to be the last parcel or the last two parcels or the last three sections.
But Jagdeo and Benn skipped the second to last section and cleaned the very last one. Jagdeo and Benn claimed that the work was to continue the next day. So why did they skip the second to last and complete the last parcel which was my neighbour to the west? Only fools whose heads were buried deep in the backsides of Benn and Jagdeo believed their explanation.
We come now to President Granger and his Public Works Minister David Patterson. In discussing the lamplight incident with my publisher, Mr. Glenn Lall, he suggested that I lay blame also at the doorstep of the President because like Jagdeo, he is in charge of his ministers.
At the time of writing, I haven’t seen any explanation from the Ministry of the Presidency or Minister Patterson. How it could be a mistake when in the long stretch from Sheriff Street to Industry, every lamplight was expressing its brightness except the one outside my home?
I swear on my life, I checked all the lamplights in that long stretch – only the one outside my home was not on. So why come and fix it after I wrote about it? Why was it not fixed with the others? I refer to the attitude of Jagdeo and Benn as asinine, and I am saying unapologetically the attitude of Granger and Patterson on this streetlight thing outside my home was asinine.
Please read the lyrics of “Memory” maybe twice or thrice. They are so pertinent to understanding the permanent tragedy of this lifeless nation. In one line, it says that “in the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet.” I can replace “leaves” with broken minds and broken souls that have collected at my feet in the fifty years that I am have been a human rights activist.
Midnight, not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan

Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Every streetlamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the street lamp gutters
And soon
It will be morning

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smokey days
The stale cold smell of morning
The street lamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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