The inscrutable East Indian mind from Guyana

Jul 02, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I get an awful lot of emails. I try my best to read all but that is impossible because there are days you are too distracted by exigencies and you move on. I try my best to reply to as many as I can, hoping desperately that if I don’t, I am not dismissed as an arrogant person.
Arrogance and craziness do not synchronise. Since I have always been crazy, I cannot be arrogant even if I try. Last year, I decided that I will end my policy of erasing en mass, the emails I receive. I decided long after I am gone those emails can help researchers understand the mind of the East Indian from Guyana.
So I have been keeping many of them. The majority are from Guyanese Indians who migrated or those who were born to Guyanese parents in foreign lands. I don’t know why a majority of strangers from foreign countries who contact me for a discussion about people, places and events in Guyana are East Indians and quite frankly I am not interested in knowing. People are people, so why should I care.
When I ask my friend, Leyland DeCambra who lives in Britain, last week to speak about his experience publicly as a founding member of the UK branch of the WPA in the 1970s, a little bit of apprehension came over me. Because of my experience with Guyanese Indians who I know live in an inexplicable world of humongous fear, I know Leyland might say no.
But then I said it will work out – Leyland is Portuguese so the fear syndrome has not infected him. If you don’t know, Leyland spoke his mind in two columns I wrote – one last week, the other yesterday. You have to see the emails I get. I would be given all sorts of information about all sorts of things in Guyana and then I detect the invisible hysteria – “please Mr. Kissoon, don’t mention my name.”
And who are these folks? Persons in their late fifties, early sixties, late sixties, early seventies, long gone from Guyana, long settled in other countries, long removed from the persons they once knew in Guyana. It would fill several columns if I describe the subjects we discuss. But as usual – “don’t mention my name, Mr. Kissoon.”
Of course, you don’t have to see my emails to get a glimpse of this inscrutable mind. Countless letters appear in the all the daily newspapers about visiting Guyanese expressing disappointment at what they saw and the signature would be withheld. Who are these people? Why do they think that if they say that their name is Rarawana Singh and on a visit to Guyana, they saw a policeman misbehaving, who is going to kill them or beat them up or lock them up when they visit again?
If you want to see the graphic expression of this inscrutable mind read a most bewildering, upsetting letter in the Stabroek News of June 30, 2021. Titled, “A gathering in Brampton” (Canada), the writer tells about a gathering of Guyanese, all in their mid or late fifties who all worked in the same financial institution in Guyana, long ago.
The occasion was a funeral of one of their colleagues back then at the same institution in Guyana. He didn’t name the financial institution, didn’t name the deceased person, didn’t name himself. But he was quite happy to let readers know that they are all gone from Guyana and are contributing their skills to developed countries.
The first thing that struck you is why he (it was a he because he referred to wives of his friends who were present) wrote the letter. Secondly, you want to know why he would be afraid to say, “We all knew each other from Barclays Bank and we attended the funeral of Seemangolin Ramgolin.”
How do you explain this fear that is deeply lodged in the psyche of the Guyanese East Indian? Ravi Dev has a sound analytical mind and knows diaspora Indians well. Can he explain it? A man who knows diaspora Indians extensively will be Vishnu Bisram. Does he know why Indians behave like this?
You are not going to believe how desperate these people are in wanting their names withheld when they write to tell you things that should be published. The basis of this fear has to be irrational because no one in Guyana or the foreign country could be bothered with hunting them down. Is it because these people once lived in brutal, bestial times under Forbes Burnham that the fear seeped into their psyche? The answer is yes. But young Indians embody the fear factor just like their grandparents.
(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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