Phagwah – harvest what is sown

Mar 14, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- The festival of Holi, the colors of Phagwah, the reaping of what is sown. In religious terms befitting this holiday, it is the ascendancy of good, the retreat of evil. It is a good day, one to extend warm Phagwah greetings to all Hindus, be they of the practicing variety or otherwise. Those other Guyanese on the periphery are similarly saluted and embraced.

Broad swaths of darkness have blanketed this land. The darkness is noticeably thicker at the top of this society. The brightest electric red fades before the darkness that has taken over, now a round-the-clock presence in this country. Instead of a halo around the heads of those in the forefront, there is an eclipse that enshrouds them. According to their telling, they represent truth, while those who question that claim, are creatures of falsehood. In this country, darkness has clothed itself in the shimmering garments of a harlot, while pretending to be the essence of what is virtuous and gracious. It is how the few remaining sacred things in a struggling country have become warped, deformed before the eyes, and savaging to the senses.

In all the major belief systems, there is that fearsome presence; a powerful figure of darkness and his or her companions. If anyone was desirous of finding a bundle of them in one place, then the Guyana of today is where they have taken up residence- where they are the dominant presence. In the cycle of life- in this country- the pendulum has swung all the way to that extreme. When I behold certain shadowy figures, I discern those of a twisted nature, those whose works mark them as the children of a different world. One that prospers the most when it hides from the light, belongs to the other side of the moon where lunacy is the norm.

Right here, into this soil, thorns and toxins have been sowed. What else to expect from those whose chief ingredient is darkness and its deformities? It is said that what is sown is reaped. Oh, Phagwah has its share of grand street harvests, the loud sounds to chase away what intrudes and has the potential to interfere with the lusty celebrations. There is another harvest lurking right within sight. It will be that kind of harvest this year in these fields of toil and visions. Men have fooled themselves throughout time that their grand times will last forever. There comes that day that is a bitter harvest. I think that that day is here. I sense it in these ancient bones. The taste buds can still detect it riding on the winds.

Deception has been the language of the unscrupulous from the first day. What is it that exempts this country from such inclusion? Who is there that has been the exception to the deceptions that have been planted in soil and its hoping, trusting, imploring sons and daughters? It is said that the Creator doesn’t sleep. Accurate also is that other maxim that there is no rest for the devil. If he is such a bundle of energy, then his disciples can only be of the same disposition. They make merry, while the hungry scratch and scramble for the drink of misery. Thus, salt is sown into the earth. What kind of harvest to expect, if not a day of reckoning?  The locusts have had their day.

To speak of this state of affairs, to draw attention to its architects, is to attract the wrath of hell. So much should have gone into this land, its produce is of those who number among the wretched of the earth. So much so near, yet never near enough to grasp and grow. A parched land cries out for relief. It is the voice of the people that is heard.  Despite the clash of cymbals, the beat of drums, the forced march of a thousand tramping feet-a thunderous cacophony of sounds-, the cries of land and people rise above the strained melodies, the hollow drums. Whether Manichean or karmic, there comes that day when good comes into its own. No longer suffocated. No more at the edges. In this time of Phagwah, there is a different type of harvest stirring, straining, for the new. Guyanese are overdue a little reveling in the new and different.

It is a miracle that this country has managed to stay in one piece after existing so long in the valley of darkness. The scales of justice demand an accounting. An environment long jaded, long preyed upon and plundered by its own children, is due for the cooling embrace of a little goodness for a start, then some more to follow. The arc of the moral universe is long, its movement laborious, but it does have a tendency to lean towards justice.  There is rejoicing over the harvests of the last few years. There is a different one on the horizon. One way or another, in one form or the other. Guyanese get ready.  Guyanese now live in an oil age, a corruption age, a dark age, a crime age, a rogue age.  The piper waits with his upraised scythe to reap.

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

(Phagwah – harvest what is sown)

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• darkness, hard truths, Hindus, Phagwah, struggling country

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