Who Vex Lorse – Closet eater?

It was a good friend on the other end of the telephone line. He seemed bemused by the “Hunger Games”, as a presenter on television programme dubbed it the other night, that is taking place outside the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair.

On the one hand is environmentalist, Dr Wayne Kublalsingh, the original so-called hunger striker who has vowed to end his life unless the Debe to Mon Desir segment of the new highway to Pt Fortin is re-routed. Then on the other hand, or is it the other side since he’s literally on the other side of the road, there is young Ravi Maharaj who is the latest hunger striker. Hence the description of the popular Hunger Games.

“Why allyuh gorn and let a skinny man like Ravi take up a hunger strike? Allyuh want he dead or what?” I wasn’t immediately certain what he meant by “allyuh”, although I’m guessing he meant supporters of the Pt Highway project. “De man only strike one day and he done looking like he ready to pass out,” my friend continued. “He go be gorn before Kublalsingh.”

“Now if they did put a man like you with dat kinda big belly, it woulda be alright,” he added, “At least you woulda lose some weight an ting by d time de other man dead”. I thanked my friend for his interest/concern for my seeming overweight but assured him there was no need for worry. That was because, like Kublalsingh, I’m not at all worried that anything I do (or don’t do) with respect to food and water intake will be the source of my immediate or soon-to-be demise.

When I sat last week to write last Monday’s column, I predicted that Kublalsingh – despite not having had any food or water, supposedly, for about three weeks – would have survived to read the column. Today I feel even more confident than I was a week ago that he’ll be around to read this column. Unfortunately, I can’t be so positive about the outcome for young Ravi.

You see folks, what I didn’t expect a week ago was to see a bright and healthy looking Dr Wayne Kublalsingh. Notwithstanding his widely reported fainting spell at Maracas or his hospitalisation for claimed dehydration and fatigue. If anything I, like many others I’ve spoken with, was expecting to see last week a frail, old man on the verge of death through starvation. Imagine my absolute shock when I turned on the television and saw a strong, healthy man whose skin seemed to glow. Quite apart from the kind of dehydration you would expect of someone who hasn’t had a drop of liquid to drink in more than 21 days, the good doctor’s skin seemed as though he had been bathing in cocoa butter. “It was as soft and smooth as a baby’s bottom”, someone remarked.

Rather than being weak, hoarse and incoherent, as you would expect of someone who hadn’t had anything to eat for almost a month, the good doctor was standing strong on the pavement outside the PM’s office — strong enough to cross the road and offer support to young Ravi who, ironically, Kublalsingh said seemed to be “struggling” after only a single day under the tropical sun. Not only was the good doctor not hoarse and incoherent, he seemed totally lucid. Still, I’ll not suggest any kind of cheating since some people seem convinced (thanks to the miracle of Dr Wayne Kublalsingh) that the human body can now go almost a full month without food and water if it gets a regular hot-tub soaking. Or perhaps the good doctor is actually part-man/part-bear since he can binge on large amounts of beef and Chinese-style fried chicken then go into some kind of hibernation in which he doesn’t need to have food or water for about a month.

Somebody – perhaps those political interests that have been parading as bleeding-heart civil society groups – should do an experiment on this “magga” man who can defy all known scientific facts. If their rush to his side and their support for his endeavour was prompted, as they have claimed, by a desire to save a human life, they should be comforted now by the reality that he will not die — at least not from hunger.

And in re-assessing their ill-advised support for an ill-advised course of action, groups like the Adult Literacy Tutors Association, ALTA, would be well-advised to think carefully about their course(s) of action before taking such action. I refer to their “Gathering” that was held at the Nelson Mandela Park, supposedly to force Government to engage in “mediation” with Kublalsingh’s HRM. Firstly, the idea of forcing one party into mediation is a contradiction in terms since the principal concept behind mediation is that it must be voluntary among all parties. Secondly, the radio advertisement which invited citizens to this “gathering” with the aim of “forcing” Government into “mediation”, clearly demanded – at the end of the advertisement – that Government accept the HRM’s proposal for an alternate highway route. How on God’s once green earth, please anyone tell me, does a call for “mediation” reconcile itself with a “demand” to accept a pre-determined course of action?

Who trying to fool whom?