One of the saving graces we have in this society is an understanding that while politicians and polemicists divide us to conquer power and gain purchase, they get along quite well among themselves. Citizens are left with sentiments-particularly racial sentiments-so irritated that some trade in the nastiest stereotypes while the instigators all just get along.
On August 3 when Government MP Chandresh Sharma was injured in a car accident along the Lady Young Road, it was Opposition MP Donna Cox who held his hand, spoke to him, phoned Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan and called an ambulance to take him to the hospital.
At the request of Sharma's driver, Cox stayed on for another two hours until the police arrived. She would later tell a newspaper, "It could have been me, so regardless of political affiliation we are all human beings made by God..."
In August this year, as National Security Minister Jack Warner and Port-of-Spain Mayor Louis Lee Sing squabbled over who was responsible for a meeting with Laventille gang leaders at the St Paul Street Multipurpose Facility, Cox told the Express, "Everybody in the country knows that they are friends or were friends."
I didn't know that, incidentally, but I was glad to discover it. Before the country shamed the PNM in May 2010, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was good friends with Cox; she also had-and perhaps still has-friendly relations with Opposition Senator Penelope Beckles and Opposition MP Marlene McDonald, perhaps among others.
When Prof Selwyn Cudjoe launched his provocatively-titled book Indian Time Ah Come on November 23, 2010, Cudjoe described Maha Sabha general secretary Sat Maharaj as his friend; Maharaj delivered the feature address at the launch.
Maharaj, about a month later, wrote a two-part commentary in which he explained that he and his friend Cudjoe sat on the Race Relations Committee, where they differed fundamentally "on several issues of race, history, politics, education, religion and culture in T&T. However, despite these differences we remained civil to each other and we never allowed our different opinions to become personalised..."
This is Trinidad. So nothing seemed odd to me when I saw Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley and his wife Sharon at the opening of the Divali Nagar last Sunday evening. Nor was I quizzical when I saw Penny Beckles, Faris Al-Rawi, Paula Gopee-Scoon and Franklin Khan.
Perhaps Dr Rowley himself has forgotten that this is not the first time he has attended the Nagar; in November 2002, when he was planning minister and not rebranding himself, he attended and delivered an address "to an otherwise appreciative audience" wrote Krishna Maharaj on Page Six of the Express.
The article, headlined "Rowley unfazed by Nagar heckler," said Rowley was "unperturbed by a lone heckler who had a child on his shoulders, stood at the back of the gathering and made uncomplimentary remarks about Rowley throughout the speech."
I was in fact happy that the man had put that behind him and accepted the invitation to attend this year's opening.
I was also buoyed because the day before, Port-of-Spain was inflamed with racial innuendoes during and following the march, yet on Sunday evening some of the principals involved had returned to relations-as-usual; Rowley sat next to Finance Minister Larry Howai, and all the Government parliamentarians I saw there greeted Rowley and his wife, generally with a handshake, except for MP Stacy Roopnarine, who gave him a royal nod which he returned.
The cultural presentations were excellent overall but Quincy Kendell Charles was downright special. A Mayaro-born African-Trinidadian kathak dancer performing at the opening of Divali Nagar, getting applause even during his performance, and being commended by the MC after his rigorous routine reinforced the best of our Trinidadianess. That Charles holds a BSc in pure mathematics, well, that is a related story about human creativity.
Jack Warner missed out on a pleasurable evening because of truculence and pettiness. His letter to National Council of Indian Culture (NCIC) president Deokinanan Sharma was melodramatic as it was dishonest. In the first instance, he so loves Hindus that he refused their invitation. Overwhelmed by this love, he surmised that the combination of himself and Rowley could amount to nothing less than sacrilege.
In the latter instance, Warner so loves Hindus that his first act as National Security Minister was to stand with soldiers and police to demolish the Highway Re-Route Movement's protest camp, which included a Hindu prayer room. He later initiated contact with Dr Wayne Kublalsingh outside the Hall of Justice following that tyrannical move; by his reasoning he should have avoided the entire block.
This tells us what we already knew about Warner: he is petty, he cannot countenance disagreement and he personalises criticisms. The Hindu orthodoxy represented by Sat Maharaj and Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj was unmoved by the demolition of the Re-Route camp.
One wonders what their reaction would have been had a PNM government done the same thing, but I can at least understand their deep hurt, consolidated by years of PNM neglect and insensitivity, something that the PNM must acknowledge if it seriously wants to broaden its constituency.
Warner, however, is a come-lately. I suggest his condition is not an awesome love of Hindus but a hate of self. This too is Trinidad.