The ancestors are weeping

THE EDITOR: Our ancestors are weeping for Trinidad and Tobago. They weep for our ignorance, arrogance, forgetfulness and our lost innocence. They lament that we have forgotten the lessons of our past, that the concepts of brotherhood, community, neighbourhood moral values and the oneness that made us who we are seem to be fading into oblivion. The heroes of the past, the simple and not so simple people, those who were willing to give their lives for change are crying. Those who toiled and sacrificed, so we could enjoy the fruits of their labour, they cry, because we fail to understand or appreciate the battles fought in the towns and villages, the streets and fields of long ago. We are betraying our ancestors.

They weep for the young men in the killing fields of the northern hills. They lament for the sons and daughters, kidnapped and brutalised. Hearts aching they watch as the lives of so many are ruined and constantly washed away by the  flood waters of the central plains. Shuddering in disbelief, the ancestors wonder at the housing settlements in prime agricultural land and the destruction of the hills. The spirits of the 22 murdered in the Jahagee Massacre and of the Orishas, Shouter-Baptists, Hindus and Muslims, long gone, cringe at the banning of Divali celebrations and the destruction of the Ramleela sites in Couva and Tarouba. They question if the battles for cultural space, fought so long ago was in vain.

Indeed, the spirits curse the rouge elements in the protective services and the corridors of power, which divide and tear apart for their own ends. Pleadingly the ancestors call out to us, for every creed and race to truly find an equal place and the watchwords to become a reality, so lives long gone would not have been wasted. Yes, the ancestors are weeping for a land fertilised by the blood of the indigenous peoples, the slaves, the indentures and the European colonisers, seemingly now to have been shed in vain. They beg us not to waste their lives for if we forget the lessons of our ancestors, then we may have to fight the battles all over again. The tears they weep are tears of pure grief for a nation gone awry.

NIRVAN MAHARAJ
Trincity