Wes­ley Gib­bings

For over 10 years—be­tween 1987 and 1998—Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ken­neth Ram­c­hand’s T&T Guardian col­umn, ‘Mat­ters Aris­ing’, was re­quired read­ing for any­one with an in­ter­est in na­tion­al and glob­al pub­lic af­fairs, lit­er­a­ture, scholas­tic dis­course and clever ole-talk and hu­mour.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, Ram­c­hand al­so served as an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er, and res­i­dent ex­pert on any­thing to do with Caribbean lit­er­a­ture—a func­tion he still per­forms, by the way.

Through ‘Mat­ters Aris­ing’, he was able to cap­ture the essence of the peo­ple and is­sues he en­coun­tered as a pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­al, a lit­er­ary men­tor, a sto­ry­teller, and as some­one with a deep in­ter­est in the fu­ture of T&T and the Caribbean.

To­day, and in time for the gift-giv­ing sea­son, a col­lec­tion of these columns, pub­lished by Ro­yards Pub­lish­ing, is now avail­able at se­lect­ed book­stores and soon, via on­line plat­forms.

In the Au­thor’s Pref­ace to the col­lec­tion of these columns, Ram­c­hand con­fess­es to hav­ing writ­ten “in­stinc­tive­ly” on an ex­ten­sive range of sub­jects.

Such con­cerns in­clude cli­mate change, al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy, “the per­ni­cious na­ture of the po­lit­i­cal par­ty”, economism, ma­te­ri­al­ism and greed, the threats to racial har­mo­ny, the op­pres­sion of women, the abuse of Par­lia­ment and democ­ra­cy, ed­u­ca­tion, cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion, self­hood, eq­ui­ty, em­pa­thy, “the ge­nius­es we have pro­duced”, the Uni­ver­si­ty, seek­ing haven, be­ing a fish­er­man, and “in every breath, the sus­tain­ing en­vi­ron­ment.”

Read­ing the columns in this col­lec­tion years lat­er, the au­thor’s in­ter­ests are recog­nis­able in mea­sures of dif­fer­ent voic­es speak­ing from a va­ri­ety of van­tage points. Yet, there is a com­mon, uni­ver­sal­is­tic thread of con­cern that hov­ers over the hu­man con­di­tion.

“Go­ing over these writ­ings now, I find they were not sep­a­rate from my work or my dai­ly liv­ing. The things that were wor­ri­some and ex­cit­ing then are still wor­ri­some and ex­cit­ing,” Ram­c­hand con­cedes.

Close fol­low­ers of the col­umn have been known to cite ‘Mat­ters Aris­ing’ on many is­sues. For in­stance, ‘Let them call it Buss-Up Shut’ was pub­lished on No­vem­ber 30, 1989.

In that col­umn, Ram­c­hand ar­gued against lin­guis­tic degra­da­tion of “paratha” to some­thing called “buss-up shut.” To con­duct such mes­sag­ing, the writer cast him­self as a roti ven­dor who said he had been “chris­ten as a Hin­du.”

Through the voice of the name­less ven­dor, a full-scale as­sault is al­so launched on grow­ing ref­er­ence to the term “dhall-purie skin.” Many years lat­er, Ram­c­hand finds his name be­ing called in ab­sen­tia dur­ing ar­gu­ments about this, al­most as fre­quent­ly as his dogged ob­ser­va­tions about a gram­mat­i­cal er­ror in the na­tion­al an­them.

For some strange rea­son, the ill-fat­ed foot­balling Strike Squad of 1989 is drawn in­to the “buss-up shut” dis­course for good mea­sure. All in sup­port of an as­ser­tion that Tri­nis ap­pear pre­oc­cu­pied with “jumbieing our­selves with sound­ing words and ex­trav­a­gant slo­gans.”

Through most of it, there are voic­es rem­i­nis­cent of ear­ly VS Naipaul, es­pe­cial­ly in the sto­ry­telling pieces. This is not sur­pris­ing. “In­stant read­abil­i­ty,” was how Ram­c­hand de­scribed the late No­bel Lau­re­ate’s great skill. In­deed, such can be said of the ex­pect­ed cre­den­tials of ac­com­plished news­pa­per colum­nists.

For sure, there are char­ac­ters like Angwoo in The Wife’s Lament pub­lished on Jan­u­ary 6, 1988. The roti guy of “buss-up shut” fame and the writer’s tale of ‘Her Own House.” But there are al­so the pro­fes­so­r­i­al voic­es ex­plor­ing VS Naipaul (via Seep­er­sad Naipaul), Derek Wal­cott (If Lov­ing these Is­lands must be my Load) and Ernest Hem­ing­way (The Fish Who brought in a Man).

Of Wal­cott on the oc­ca­sion of his 1992 No­bel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture, Ram­c­hand sur­mis­es: “I can­not think of a writer more de­serv­ing of the No­bel prize than Derek Wal­cott. If Vidia Naipaul had got the nod, I would have said “I can­not think of a writer more de­serv­ing of the No­bel prize than Vidia Naipaul.”

But it was to Naipaul’s ‘Mim­ic Men’ the colum­nist turned for an un­der­stand­ing of the shat­tered pol­i­tics that sig­nalled the end of his own en­chant­ment. It was in 1987, fol­low­ing the suc­cess of the ill-fat­ed Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) ad­min­is­tra­tion ‘Mat­ters Aris­ing’ oc­cu­pied fixed space on the pages of the T&T Guardian. There was Ram­c­hand, “hope­ful of racial har­mo­ny, ra­tio­nal­i­ty and fair­ness, when the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion swept in­to pow­er in 1986.”

Suc­ces­sive columns re­flect­ed a bro­ken heart sus­tained on­ly by de­fi­ant hope­ful­ness. “The theme I dis­cov­ered in what I wrote is how the com­mon man feels about what is go­ing on around him, his mem­o­ries of the dan­gers he has passed, his strug­gles with the present, and his prepa­ra­tion for what is to come,” Ram­c­hand ex­plains.

‘Mat­ters Aris­ing’ mourns as much as it cel­e­brates. It is thus much more than hol­i­day read­ing. It de­serves space on every Caribbean book­shelf and every­where else the col­lec­tion’s uni­ver­sal themes of love, loss and tri­umph be­long.