Kevon Felmine

For mas­quer­aders, spend­ing hours in the sun is all part of the Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence, but for spec­ta­tors in San Fer­nan­do wait­ing hours be­fore a band passed was a bit frus­trat­ing.Hun­dreds gath­ered at the three judg­ing points for the 9 am start for the pa­rade of the bands but it was not un­til 10.30 am when Fyz­abad band South­ern Mas As­so­ciates made an ap­pear­ance be­fore the judges at High Street, did the fes­tiv­i­ties start.

For those at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts, South Cam­pus, they had to shel­ter in their ve­hi­cles, un­der trees, um­brel­las, news­pa­pers and even ban­danas. At 12.30 pm, Fire­works Pro­mo­tion/Tri­ni Fever Crew reached the judges and then the ac­tion be­gan.For hours, the on­ly glimpse of mas were those mas­quer­aders who were hus­tling to get to their re­spec­tive mas camps, while oth­ers rushed to join the bands on the road.

Al­though many pa­trons com­plained about the tar­di­ness, once the colour, cre­ativ­i­ty and the rev­el­ry start­ed, many had for­got­ten their dis­con­tent­ment.Many bands had well-planned pre­sen­ta­tions and it was not on­ly about biki­ni and beads clad women win­ing on the road.

De­fend­ing band of the year Ivan Kalicha­ran mas band did not dis­ap­point as their pre­sen­ta­tion of Beats lit up spec­ta­tors eyes with not on­ly a va­ri­ety of colours, but the as­so­ci­at­ed the­atrics. With nine sec­tions in the bands, their por­tray­als of the var­i­ous gen­res of mu­sic to­geth­er with the dances, en­ter­tained the crowd. With beats such as So­ca, Chut­ney, Sam­ba, Jazz and Baroque, the champs made a strong bid to re­tain their ti­tle.

The com­pe­ti­tion was stiff, how­ev­er, as Fire­works Pro­mo­tion/Tri­ni Fever Crew had some tricks of their own with their por­tray­als of Mys­ter­ies Be­neath. A band that has been grow­ing in num­bers and style over the past years, their theme rep­re­sent­ed the colour­ful el­e­ments of the ocean.Start­ing their per­for­mance with a well-chore­o­graphed dance of crea­tures in the sea, they were able to rep­re­sent the Roy­al Jel­ly Fish, Drag­on Shark, Li­on Fish, Lost Trea­sure among oth­ers things.

South­ern Mas As­so­ciates and Li­onel Jages­sar and As­so­ciates showed that In­di­an Mas re­mained rel­e­vant with their cre­ative use of pat­terns and colours, while Legall and Friends show­cased the sex­u­al­i­ty and at­trac­tive­ness of mod­ern mas.

By the time 2.30 pm, some of the oth­er bands were now leav­ing their camps, while at the same time more spec­ta­tors start­ed to flood the streets. De­spite the lack of fund­ing for this year's cel­e­bra­tion, the pa­rade went on with few prob­lems, ex­cept for an in­ci­dent where po­lice at­tempt­ed to wreck a truck equipped with a gen­er­a­tor for the judges tent. The in­ci­dent held up the pa­rade for al­most 30 min­utes be­fore se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers in­ter­vened and al­lowed the show to con­tin­ue.

While parad­ing on High Street, one fe­male mas­quer­ad­er es­caped se­ri­ous in­jury when a sign bear­ing the Cat­walk lo­go dis­lodged from the build­ing, hit­ting her on the back.While there was a good mix­ture of present and past so­ca se­lec­tions on the road, Machel Mon­tano's Min­istry of Road reigned supreme.

It was a toss up for sec­ond place be­tween Ker­win Dubois' Too Re­al, Farmer Nap­py's Big Peo­ple Par­ty and Mr Kil­la's Rol­ly Pol­ly. Al­though Min­istry of Road was more pop­u­lar on the day, Rol­ly Pol­ly cre­at­ed the most ac­tion with full fig­ured women grab­bing the at­ten­tion when­ev­er the song played.