Dear Editor,

Mr Freddie Kissoon’s piece on Godfrey Chin’s Nostalgias (KN, February 19) was excellently written; perhaps it was his most objective in years. I fully support his call that Chin’s work should be examined, that he should be contacted, and that his historical materials should be preserved for posterity and viewing by our young generation. There are many valuable lessons and morals to be learned from Chin’s Nostalgias, and if each picture tells a thousand words, there are certainly many stories that the young can discuss with their parents by the light of the moon, instead of the light of the cathode ray tube.

I think, also, that other civic-minded bodies such as historical societies should  pursue this matter, and we should not just harness the government with the total responsibility.

And while we are dwelling on preservation of historical materials, might I again ask, what is being done to decently maintain Le Repentir and our various ‘Westminster Abbeys’ woefully neglected all over the country? After all, if our kids can learn a lesson by viewing Chin’s photographs (of the Enmore Martyrs), think what lessons they could acquire by actually visiting the tombs. It brings to my mind a young couple I met in a remote village in Belgium last summer. Austrians, they were just married, and for their honeymoon, they went searching the cemeteries of Belgium for his great-great grandfather’s tomb. The patriarch, a soldier, had died during the First World War. After several exhaustive searches the young man found the tomb, but there was no battle close by to the cemetery, so his death was a mystery to the young man. Over dinner, his exasperation was great as he related to me his adventures, how he solved the mystery of his great-great grandfather’s death, and the book he was writing about it all.

Yours faithfully,
Gokarran Sukhdeo