Dear Editor,
In this small society a mother poisons offspring, a father incinerates his trapped family, and males (mainly males) routinely intimidate and batter partners. In addition, citizens maim or remove other citizens in many and varied ways, without a qualm. At times, there appears to be no limit to the extent of depravities existing; the fragile line between civility and sanity snaps, too often, too lethally.
How can so much of this be happening amidst the prosperity of life here? Is it real prosperity? Or does it mask an unspeakable litany of perfidy, and presents a diseased veneer that entombs many ills, and much putrefaction?
Here is a society of 100,000 vehicles, and a million maggots that unravel and undermine constantly what is left of standards and ethics.
Here there is so much dirty money around, it is easier to weigh than count; there is so much of it around that the players know not what to do with themselves. Here there is a ruthless disregard for the sanctity of life; the bonds of discipline and restraint that make for a civilized existence and some semblance of quality shatter. This cuts across race and station and learning.
Just look around and behold some of the conflicts that rage in this Guyanese world of imagined cheer and pretended progress.
Buildings rear up to meet the canopy of the sky, even as the contours of conversation and conduct collapse into, and add to, the expanding islands and hillocks of garbage and filth. Ours is a world of the politically boisterous and the commercially bulky, both of which strive to camouflage myriad social anxieties and weaknesses.
Where does it end?
Certainly not at the still stirring dawn of 6 am for there are new faces in new places. Daily. Some are troubling, muttering; others embrace a stony pavement for a pillow, or a discarded discovered section of cardboard to substitute for the comfort of home and family. Who cares? Who are they anyway?
Usually, most pretend to ignore until there is the breaking point of a fateful eruption. When the dismissed side of local existence explodes, Guyanese are no longer stunned; they simply brace themselves for the next report. In the meantime, all look away, move on, and rush toward the next item.
For too many, all of this represents a momentary blip, an unpleasant reminder of how things are, and amounts to a quickly dismissed inconvenience, good for breathless chatter. After all, there is money to be made (or hustled); there are people to be conned, none more so than self.
Where are we? Where are going? Is there any place left for us to go?
As I look at this and other aspects of Guyanese life, I believe that we are great pretenders drifting in a make believe world carved by our own hands and formed from feeble mentalities. Thus, we laugh through the pain and anguish of what we have become.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall