Al Ram­sawack

He tried his hand at turn­ing a huge cog wheel but failed. As the rust­ed gal­vanised iron sheets banged over­head on the roof, he climbed a flight of iron steps through a maze of iron sup­ports to a plaque which, when dust­ed, showed 1874. He sug­gest­ed that this old fac­to­ry should be pre­served, not on­ly as an his­toric mon­u­ment but as a part of a mu­se­um of the past sug­ar in­dus­try, and open to those stu­dents of lo­cal his­to­ry and as a tourist at­trac­tion. Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj, a con­sum­mate thinker and cre­ative writer, who, in spite of his suc­cess as a ma­jor nov­el­ist, has main­tained his sim­plic­i­ty, his Tri­ni hu­mour and com­mon touch, and with a pas­sion for preser­va­tion of old build­ings, the en­vi­ron­ment and his­to­ry. Even though he en­joys the Cana­di­an scenes, it is his hope to re­turn to set­tle in his beloved home­land Trinidad, some time in the fu­ture. He recog­nis­es, how­ev­er, that writ­ers in Trinidad are viewed with a mix­ture of hos­til­i­ty, anx­i­ety, or in­dif­fer­ence.