Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Ch­agua­nas band­leader Dan­zo Bal­roop is count­ing his loss­es. He has been un­able to se­cure the re­lease of his Car­ni­val cos­tume pea­cock feath­ers, which were seized when they ar­rived at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ear­li­er this month. Bal­roop, who spoke in an in­ter­view, said he has giv­en up on the feath­ers, which re­main in quar­an­tine at the air­port.

"I can­not do any­thing about it now. The feath­ers are there. I am try­ing to get a new ship­ment. I am work­ing with a cus­toms bro­ker who is try­ing to as­sist me. It cost me about $3,000. Now I have to spend $3,000 more," Bal­roop said. Bal­roop's pea­cock feath­ers were seized by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion ear­li­er this month and quar­an­tined pend­ing H5N1 (bird flu) test­ing. To date the feath­ers have not been test­ed.

Bal­roop said he has lost hope of hav­ing the feath­ers re­leased. He said the de­lay in get­ting his feath­ers ham­pered his abil­i­ty to de­liv­er cos­tumes for the Bol­ly­wood sec­tion of his 2013 pre­sen­ta­tion, @ De Movies. "It is just go­ing to hold me back from giv­ing out my cos­tumes for Bol­ly­wood sec­tion. I start­ed giv­ing out cos­tumes al­ready for the oth­er sec­tions. So what I am just go­ing to have to do is hold back this one sec­tion. It is not a prob­lem now," he said.

Bal­roop is op­ti­mistic that he will re­ceive the new feath­ers by next week so he could re­sume pro­duc­tion of Bol­ly­wood cos­tumes. "If all goes well I will have the feath­ers next week so I will be­gin work­ing im­me­di­ate­ly," Bal­roop said. He said he was up­set about the stress he had to go through to get the feath­ers re­leased.

"These feath­ers are bought off the shelf in Cana­da. They would have gone through the tests there be­fore be­ing put on the shelves in Cana­da. "It is a kin­da po­lit­i­cal thing. A bunch of red tape," he said. Bal­roop said he was dis­ap­point­ed over the whole sit­u­a­tion. "All I am try­ing to do is pro­mote my cul­ture here and I am get­ting squeezed down. I am try­ing to do some­thing for my cul­ture," he lament­ed.