Ancient ritual, new customs

Happily, I was also the official cake taster. We ate ham once a year and the smell of black cake, freshly baked bread and sorrel filled the tiny apartment and made me feel safe. I only discovered late in life that we were not well off; I was happy, so for me my life was normal.

One of my friends shared memories of her own rituals this week.

“We went outside to play, we got dirty...we ate snowcone from the snowcone man & shopped at Soo Ting shop for almost everything.

We bought chilli bibbi, fudge, sweetie, sweet drinks, corn curls etc!” There was a rhythm to life and in a real sense we celebrated the ordinary, the small things.

Life has changed as it must, but I think my friend was lamenting the loss of the sense of communal living, captured beautifully in the writings of local authors such as Merle Hodge, VS Naipaul or Michael Anthony. Something happened to that sense of ritual, community bonding where we enjoyed simple pleasures of hideand- seek, football or cricket in the street.

We must be more watchful now, whether it is reporting a car shaking in an abandoned lot because of an illicit sexual encounter between a pastor and a child, or trying to come to terms with the disappearance and eventual murder of a young woman, just 20 years old.

Our rituals are not just trivial or temporary. They document our lives and place the passing of time in context.

Tadjahs, the large mosque-like structures constructed for Hosay, are still solemnly cast into the water at the end of the festival.

Members of the Ifa/Orisa community pay homage during their yearly festivals to the gods and the forces of the earth, as they seek to strengthen the knowledge and togetherness of this community.

Hindu weddings are a display of colour and tradition over days, or they make pilgrimage to the river where rituals are done for married couples or children.

Our First Peoples still perform their smoke ceremonies, continuing the ritual traditions of their ancestors. As they hold the smoking vessel with incense and special herbs, and move their arms from earth to sky, they seek to reinforce that link between humans and the universe. Carnival is our cathartic ritual, grounded in cultural resistance, despite capitalist emphasis on the flesh.

Our TT Christmas allows us to briefly span culture and religion through the parang music, the ritual of visiting different homes and the explosion of celebratory events that lift the soul.

But how can we use the richness of these separate cultural and religious traditions to institute national rituals of reading to our children before bedtime, of teaching boys how to become men and girls to understand what it means to be feminine? How can we benefit from our combined stories, practices and traditions to create new social rituals that teach important values and help to knit us together? The earth shook this week to remind us not just of our collective responsibility to the planet, but to each other. As we bow our heads, ring the bell, bathe in cool river waters, or peer into the smoke for answers, it strikes me that we already know what needs to be done.

I understand the yearning of my friend for a ritual that is more inclusive, of which the entire society can feel a part. Unfortunately, we have operated separately for so long, it will take more than ritual to reclaim our sense of community.

Dara Healy is a perform a n c e artist and f o u n d - er of the NGO, the I n d i g e - nous Creative Arts Network – ICAN