Queen Elizabeth II - Speak no ill

Queen Elizabeth II – Speak no ill

Sep 16, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

Queen Elizabeth II is now gone to wherever kings and queens end up when this mortal coil expires. Much has been written about the 96-year-old Elizabeth Windsor (and the rest), a fascinating and enduring regal presence of 73 years. The canvas is wide, ranging from gushing to cursing to lamenting. I stayed my hand so that the outpourings could flow; now I venture.

It is said that it is better to speak no ill of the departed. I don’t, with assurance that the divine right of royalty has no bearing for me. My fellow Guyanese should learn. With a nod to the facts, I detect that the beloved Queen was a billionaire, with the same said for her successor son. I like and laud the idea of individual progress and prosperity. I like more that lovely reminder from Honoré de Balzac: behind every great fortune, there is a correspondingly great crime. I think that that is enough, may it register. To remind everyone, whatever Queen Elizabeth II did or didn’t do, she was no different from the banking industry, which takes other people’s money, uses it, and makes more money. There is some charity embedded somewhere in the moneymaking powerbroking activities to smooth things over. I hope that Guyanese are still with me. As an aside, my prior public position stands: monarchy, royalty, and aristocracy are useless. Utterly so. Be it the new man with his standing, precise one-inch toothpaste commands, or the old lady, both expensive luxuries to make people feel good about themselves, give them a monument to worship, dream. Yeah, there will always be rogues (iconoclasts) like me to rock the cradle the ruff way.

On another note, enough has been said about Africa and India. I understand the still simmering rancor in some quarters, but my appeal is to let us all tone it down. It has been the way from Ashoka to Aurangzeb, from Nebuchadnezzar to Nero, and for those who flinch, I ask how they think the world of today would have been if Hitler and Hirohito had prevailed. Just thinking and laying things out in the open as usual; no mischief is intended.

We can look back as much as we wish, and curse as long and loud as it pleases, but this one thing I know: we can’t turn back the clock, that bell has chimed. Elizabeth II was the sun that never set, until she did. In view of our own history and thinking of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, it is amazing how many Guyanese still find the time and taste to think adorably of what transpired. Sure, the Americans are jabbed over the 1960s, and for all that have followed since; the downward spiral continues. Oil accelerated. The Yanks were the ones given the dirty job to make things happen, by whatever means, and they did so zealously. Peel back a leaf or two, and there were the arrangers and composers, who are better known as the British, with their footprints ever present. It is how Guyanese civilisation was saved. It is part of Guyana’s unending mysteries that the PNC is so hated, but the British Queen is so beloved, despite being sponsor, aider, and abettor of its dreadful presence. I am still trying to figure that one out.

Thanks to queen and company, Guyana has never been the same since then. Given the local barbarians that have flourished thereafter, I will take the Americans over the British since their objectives are clear. Business only. No hypocrisy and all that rot. The trouble is that consideration of things this way puts Queen Elizabeth’s reign and things British under some intense heat, but it is a solemn moment, and I step back respectfully. I close with that recall from millennia ago. It was of the slave Moses to King Pharaoh: let my people go. They left, and we too must find it in ourselves to shake off and leave completely behind all those old, rusted shackles. When we do find new angels and glowing heroines, let us work diligently to get genuine ones, who are of and for the people. At least, Elizabeth II had one thing going for her: Guyanese were her people. But then they really were not. It has been a long journey, sleep descends. Rest well.

Sincerely,

GHK Lall

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