The lion sleeps now

PAOLO KERNAHAN

BACK WHEN I worked at Gayelle TV, former prime minister Basdeo Panday walked into the station's lobby one day. He was there to do an interview on one of their carpeted boxes.

I walked over to shake his hand. Before my outstretched palm could make contact, he jutted his chin forward, grabbed my hand warmly with both of his, and said, "Oh, how the mighty have fallen!"

He was referring to the fact that I'd come to Gayelle after hosting the Morning Edition at TV6 some years earlier – a move he perhaps perceived to be a career valley.

To his surprise, I quickly punctuated his playful barb with this: "Who do you mean, me or you?" – an impish jibe referencing Panday's banishment to the Phantom Zone of the opposition.

He threw his head back, energetically slapped his thigh, and laughed that raspy Bas laugh. He then nodded, as if to say, well played. This was payback. You see Basdeo Panday and I had history. Our chance meeting in the Gayelle lobby was a full-circle moment. It all started many years earlier when I was a beat reporter at TTT. Panday was prime minister at the time. In those days, a PM would typically have several events scheduled throughout the day.

My cameraman and I turned up at one of these typical sod-turnings with the tent, the fake plants and wobbly podium. It was raining all morning then the sun came out with a vengeance, spiking the humidity. The camera couldn't handle it. We approached the media scrum where the then PM was getting ready to take questions. I asked for just a few minutes as our camera was malfunctioning. Panday, being an infinite source of quips of varying lethality, didn't hesitate...not for a moment.

"It looks like your equipment is as defective as your reporters!"

That picong brought the tent down. The huddled crowd laughed like they'd only just discovered laughter. Satisfied with the reception to his quick-draw zinger, Bas grinned like the cartoon character Mumbly.

Throughout my career as a journalist, I had many encounters with Panday. Those meet-ups, whether they were ambushes or arranged interviews, invariably enriched my journalist life.

He was the most accessible prime minister I'd ever dealt with. Others would have you chasing them like a fool, getting tangled in your mic cable, and other swashbuckling nonsense. Panday would, more often than not, submit to interviews wherever he was cornered. It was clear he understood that, in the office he held, there was no luxury of sidestepping questions from the media.

That's the sign of true leadership; the conviction to defend your actions and sell your ideas, even if you aren't always in the right. Bear in mind Panday, like most politicians, had a decidedly fractious relationship with the media. In all interviews I'd ever done with him, however, the former PM was charming without exertion or pretence. He was also some version of controlled explosive where he felt his actions were mischaracterised.

The "Silver Fox," which is arguably the coolest nickname ever coined, also wielded the uncanny ability to say a lot and almost nothing at all simultaneously. Panday was well read, intelligent and incredibly articulate. Other politicians chew gum. Bas chewed thesauruses. He could give you what you thought was a detailed soundbite but closer inspection would reveal a masterclass on non-specifics and non-committal wrapped in mellifluous prose.

In 2020, just before the pandemic, I attended a gathering organised by Panday. This was a meeting to corral concerned citizens to wrangle with the unresolved political challenges stagnating this nation. I was struck by the broad cross-section of people drawn to this event – folks of every race and conceivable political background. Panday wasn't contemplating a return to active politics. He was trying to use the last of his considerable light to inspire others to become the process of changing our political culture. Even in the twilight of his years, the lion in winter was thinking only of what else he could do to make a difference.

My Basdeo Panday stories are as fresh in my mind today as if I'd only just lived them. He was an extraordinary man who made his own mould, somehow fashioned himself in it, and then smashed it with his interminable evolution.

Panday's greatness wasn't in an absence of flaws or a guiltless nature; some of the grave controversies that dogged his political career were self-inflicted. It was in the understanding that the struggle to attain your best self only ends when you draw your last breath.