The San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples host­ed this year’s Amerindi­an Her­itage Fes­ti­val last Thurs­day at the Ari­ma Riv­er, along the Ari­ma-Blan­chisseuse Road.

For Nir­mala Ses­narayan, be­ing a good Hin­du woman means be­ing a good wife, daugh­ter, sis­ter, moth­er, and a good per­son in gen­er­al.

“Some­times a paint­ing choos­es you, not the oth­er way around,” re­flect­ed painter, writer, and di­rec­tor Vidya Birk­hoff.

On a Sun­day in Bar­ba­dos when The Mighty Gab­by was grow­ing up, his fam­i­ly would lis­ten to Trinidad’s ca­lyp­so mu­sic on a pro­gramme host­ed by late ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Kath­leen Warn­er, who was fond­ly known as Aun­ty Kay. From Kitch­en­er to Spar­row to Spoil­er, Gab­by, whose name is An­tho­ny Carter, was ex­posed to the greats of ca­lyp­so from an ear­ly age.

Be­fore Di­vali’s lights glow and Ram­leela’s drums roll, Fe­lic­i­ty awak­ens to a dif­fer­ent rhythm — the sharp snap of bam­boo un­der skilled hands. While the spec­ta­cle of Ra­van’s ef­fi­gy burn­ing usu­al­ly cap­tures the spot­light, this year at­ten­tion turns ear­li­er, to the ar­ti­sans and vol­un­teers who build it, bam­boo by bam­boo.

T he Hin­du Prachaar Kendra’s Chil­dren’s Ram­leela, Baal Ramdil­la, re­turned to the Kendra Greens, Raghu­nanan Road, En­ter­prise, with three spec­tac­u­lar nights of per­for­mances from Oc­to­ber 3-5.

So­ca pow­er­house Kes and the dy­nam­ic Free­town Col­lec­tive de­liv­ered elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mances at Maples & Mas, host­ed by the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion at Green Mead­ows, San­ta Cruz, on Oc­to­ber 4.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch 2020 and hat-trick Re­gion­al Queen of Queens Monarch (2022, 2023, 2024), Ter­ri Lyons, is no stranger to the spot­light. A tal­ent­ed, charis­mat­ic, and vi­brant prod­uct of en­ter­tain­ment roy­al­ty, she car­ries for­ward the lega­cy of her late moth­er, singer and per­former Dionne Phillips, and her fa­ther, 10-time Road March ti­tle hold­er and mul­ti­ple So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on Austin “Su­perblue” Lyons.

Breast health and aware­ness are not of­ten dis­cussed in re­la­tion to ado­les­cence or the teenage years. Yet, this stage—typ­i­cal­ly be­tween ages 10 or 11 and 17 or 18—is when girls ex­pe­ri­ence some of the most sig­nif­i­cant phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al changes of their lives.

Tri­cia Thomp­son’s jour­ney has tak­en many un­ex­pect­ed turns, and she has carved out a niche in a part of the fit­ness world that few peo­ple fo­cus on or rep­re­sent. When Thomp­son set out for Flori­da In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty (FIU) in Mi­a­mi many years ago, she imag­ined a fu­ture in law. But mid­way through her stud­ies, she dis­cov­ered mar­ket­ing—a field that played to her love of writ­ing and cre­ativ­i­ty. Af­ter com­plet­ing her de­gree in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion with a fo­cus on Mar­ket­ing, she re­turned to Trinidad and con­fi­dent­ly stepped in­to the cor­po­rate world as an ex­port man­ag­er in the mar­ket­ing in­dus­try, where she thrived for sev­en years.

“I had two imag­i­nary friends, Say-Day and Ad­dah. We had an out­house, and I would go there, afraid, and I would tell my friends, ‘I’m meant for great­ness. I will live in lux­u­ry. I’ll cook nice, nice food on a big, big fan­cy ta­ble. You’ll see,’” she re­called nos­tal­gi­cal­ly.

In the qui­et vil­lage of Fe­lic­i­ty, cen­tral Trinidad, where the name it­self means “hap­pi­ness”, a young girl grew up ra­di­ant­ly op­ti­mistic, mir­ror­ing the essence of her vil­lage.