Paras Ra­moutar

Cou­va mas­quer­aders are poised to put on an­oth­er bumper Car­ni­val, ac­cord­ing to chair­man, Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj. "Out­side of both cities, Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do, Cou­va is com­ing a close third, as this year's pre­sen­ta­tions will re­flect cre­ativ­i­ty an­do­rig­i­nal­i­ty. Our mas­quer­aders have been do­ing their lo­cal pre­sen­ta­tions all along. "And we feel that any puni­tive tax on cos­tumes from abroad would not af­fect our pre­sen­ta­tions, be­cause Cou­va Car­ni­val like oth­er se­mi-ur­ban shows, are lo­cal­ly-mount­ed and pro­duced," he said.

Ra­jbal, for­mer chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said that the Cou­va Car­ni­val Im­prov­ment Com­mit­tee projects to get over $400,000 in cash and oth­er prizes from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), per­son­al do­na­tions and cor­po­rate in­puts. The Band of the Year win­ner will re­ceive $15,000; sec­ond place win­ner, $10,000 and third prize win­ner $6,000. "Our prizes port­fo­lio has been in­creased and this shows that Cou­va mas has tak­en an up­ward curve, hop­ing that, in the not too dis­tant years, both pre­sen­ta­tions, prizes and pop­u­lar sup­port will in­crease," he said.

There will be the tra­di­tion­al J'Ou­vert, ca­lyp­so con­tests, king and queen of bands, in­di­vid­u­als, best cos­tume, and Miss Cen­tral Trinidad Car­ni­val Queen. "As usu­al, we project that Cou­va Car­ni­val will be vi­o­lence-free, a mode of be­hav­iour which we have been main­tain­ing over the sev­er­al decades," he said.

Cou­va Car­ni­val has grown ex­po­nen­tial­ly from a few in­di­vid­u­als, some 60 years ago, to to­day's pro­fes­sion­al pre­sen­ta­tions. "In our tra­di­tion to pass on our cul­tur­al her­itage, the usu­al Kid­dies Car­ni­val Com­pe­ti­tion has a firm place in the over­all 2011 show," he said.

"I want to im­plore the peo­ple of cen­tral Trinidad and en­vi­rons, and even peo­ple from out­ide the cen­tral precints, to come and cel­e­brate the first Car­ni­val in the sec­ond decade of the 21st cen­tu­ry," he said.

"The Cou­va Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee is look­ing se­ri­ous­ly to the es­tab­lish­ment of a Car­ni­val mu­se­um in Cou­va, as part of its con­tri­bu­tion to the fos­ter­ing ofthe Car­ni­val lega­cy. "This pro­pos­al is be­ing sound­ly con­sid­ered, and we will ex­pect sup­port from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, cor­po­rate and so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions, and we can­not leave the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go out of this," Ra­jbal said.

With the nam­ing of a Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, "it is in­cum­bent for all the var­i­ous cul­tur­al strains and ac­tiv­i­ties to be stored or pack­aged for fu­ture gen­er­a­tion of re­serchers, thinkers and acad­e­mia," he said.