Several years ago I found myself wading through a teeming market in Barrackpore at 6.30 on a Sunday morning.People bustled about with their brightly coloured shopping bags as vendors called out to each passer-by.Their sales pitches tried to get me into everything from a new pair of rubber slippers to bundles of seasonings.
I skip through the market, and cut a path to my "fixer" for a Barrackpore episode of The Road Less Travelled. The rendezvous spot is a typical countryside mini-grocery where requests for goods are made at an elbow-worn counter.My guide is punctual, energetically climbing out of his car and giving me one of those firm handshakes, the kind that quietly crushes all of the bones in your hand. Seukeran Tambie is a teacher and the general secretary of the Cane Producers Association of T&T.
In just a few hours Mr Tambie takes me on a whirlwind tour of this country's sugar history. We visit the site where the train would be loaded with farmers' cane. He explains that as the train whistled its impending arrival in the distance, the women gathered at the depot would begin to cry. They cried because that whistle meant there could be food on the table, money to pay credit notes at the shop and clothe their children.
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