Holding the Saddle

I was learning to ride a bicycle for the first time. After my training wheels were taken off, my father would hold the back of the saddle while I pedalled down the street and at some point let it go without my noticing. But, he would run behind the bicycle just in case I was about to fall.

One evening, as we were engaged in this hold and release exercise as usual, my bicycle was roughly pushed to the side. I fell on the side of the road for my father hadn’t had the time to catch the falling bike given the sudden appearance of an oncoming car. I was angry. I got up and "began quarrelling", as he recounts it, accusing him of throwing me down "for spite". He was unable to convince me that he had tried to save me from being hit by the car. In my head, he had let go of my bike. As I remember it, in the irrational state that anger conjures up, he had had no right to let it go, whether or not I could ride the bicycle without his help. It was his duty to ensure that that saddle was in his hand. I had trusted that he had my back even though I knew that there were moments he would release the saddle once I had a balance. But he was always there to catch the bike if I faltered. On that day pushing me to the side of the road would not have had to happen had he been holding the saddle in the first place. I forgave him of course. It helped that he didn’t fight me down but instead waited until I had calmed down and was ready to receive the explanation with a clearer head. Our interaction to this day follows this design. Should either of us lose our tempers, one of us becomes instantly quiet. It makes for a harmonious relationship because despite differences of opinions that exists, there is a general feeling that there are no hidden agendas and so there is the freedom of dialogue. I think of this incident not as a way of boasting of a perfect relationship but as one of the stories through which I have been fleshing out national issues through the personal.

Over the last week San Fernando Mayor Junia Regrello’s comment about naming the auditorium at the Southern Academy for Performing Arts, the Dr Leroy Calliste (Black Stalin) Auditorium instead of its current dedication to Sundarlal Bahora (Sundar Popo) drew comments from several quarters accusing him of a racist agenda. Regrello’s remarks follow, not least of all, the UTT firings and the sari skit, all of which have been interpreted in the one major way in which we have been conditioned to see the world that we inhabit – through the lens of race. Of course, the fact that the nation is now under a PNM administration does not help in soothing the continued feelings of marginalisation that the general East Indian population has felt for years. Whether the feeling is unfounded or not is not the issue. The issue here is why? It requires further probing and intellectual integrity.

Reflecting on the personal, the one major underlying criteria for a healthy relationship is that of trust. Unfortunately for us as a nation, the trust account began with minimal currency. Listening to the elders speak of politicians from the early years of independence is to listen to stories of mistrust. They are also stories of power plays and twisted histories. To hear of PNM/PDP to PP/PNM we hear of parties with one-sided ethnic leanings to coalitions that can best be described as "attempted douglarisation" or perhaps multicultural parties. Look closer and we may be able to untangle deeper issues.

For the Mayor of San Fernando to call for maturity of thought that asks people to stop thinking in terms of ethnicity, first requires that citizens who feel marginalised, trust that politicians speak in their best interest. Unfortunately, we are now at a point in our national history where the trust account has been further depleted by other economic and social problems. People are focussed mainly on survival. And so I figure there is no room to move towards true acceptance of each other at this point. Unless citizens begin to feel some level of trust rather than the desperation to survive, we are going to continue on this train of mistrust, and race relations, having presumably governed how resources are divided, is the most sensitive of issues over which to create riots.