SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Gov­ern­ment would be spend­ing $1 mil­lion to up­grade fa­cil­i­ties at the Dow Vil­lage Ram­leela site, the home of the old­est Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions in T&T. This was an­nounced by Rudranath In­dars­ingh, Cou­va South MP and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, when he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the close of Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions on Sun­day night. Ac­cord­ing to In­dars­ingh, gov­ern­ment was al­so com­mit­ted to fund­ing cel­e­bra­tions across T&T through the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. He said the mon­ey would be spent through the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, to up­grade the fa­cil­i­ties at the Cal­i­for­nia venue that has been host­ing Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions for the past 131 years.

The com­mu­ni­ty felt a sense of pride when the Dow Vil­lage Ram­leela and Cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion was award­ed this year's Cha­co­nia Medal Sil­ver for the work it has been do­ing to keep the cel­e­bra­tions alive for more than a cen­tu­ry, In­darsh­ing said, as he heaped prais­es on the num­ber of peo­ple who would have con­tributed to the cel­e­bra­tions since its in­cep­tion. The MP said he was al­so pleased to see that the area had de­vel­oped a per­ma­nent and ded­i­cat­ed site for the fes­ti­val, which he pre­dict­ed was poised to be­come one of the ma­jor tourist at­trac­tions in Cen­tral. He re­mind­ed the hun­dreds gath­ered at the venue that No­bel Lau­re­ate, Derek Wal­cott, in his writ­ings re­ferred to Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions as one of the great­est pieces of street the­atre in T&T.

"This is some­thing to be proud of." Cel­e­bra­tions cul­mi­nat­ed on Sun­day night with the burn­ing of a 30-foot-high ef­fi­gy of the de­mon king Ra­van.