When I saw the head­line “Schol­ar­ship re­sults—Lak­sh­mi, 40; To­ba­go, 2” I re­al­ly thought that Prof Theodore Lewis was go­ing to ask how come one lit­tle “cow-shed” school could get 40 schol­ar­ships and the whole of would-be self-gov­ern­ing To­ba­go on­ly 2?

In­stead, I was dis­ap­point­ed, but not sur­prised, that he could find a way to use this re­sult to crit­i­cise and be­lit­tle the man who made it pos­si­ble, Sat Ma­haraj. Of course, I am de­light­ed that some­one like Steve Smith has elo­quent­ly ex­pressed the sen­ti­ments I felt af­ter read­ing Lewis’ di­a­tribe.

Come on Lewis, take up the chal­lenge. If you are so dis­sat­is­fied with To­ba­go’s per­for­mance, be a man and, like Sat, do some­thing about it. Prove to us that you are more than an arm­chair pro­fes­sor, that you can ac­tu­al­ly do some­thing use­ful. It’s even bet­ter if you can do it for the peo­ple you claim to care for.

Rumpel­stilt­skin could spin straw in­to gold. Lewis could spin the high­est achieve­ment (by his per­ceived ‘en­e­my’) in­to some­thing un­wor­thy.