Dear Editor,
I wish to thank the Alberttown Police Station for heeding my desperate plea on Monday night and turning up in my Queenstown neighbourhood to shut down the Banks DIH post-Mash noise. This was after 9pm. It took the police an hour to get there but they did, and for that I am very grateful.
I intended to check whether there is any law that allows a commercial entity to plop itself down in a residential neighbourhood and emit from 10 in the morning and onwards a thumping, raucous racket – I think it’s called music – until whenever they decide to turn it off. But is this about legality or about being good citizens?
And since I am on the subject of the annual dutty wine that serves to mark our Republican status, I am stating here that I will vote for whichever party is willing to change this annual parade and by doing so change our nation.
We are bent on copying Trinidad and Brazil. Since we are bereft of creativity and cannot make anything of our own, I move that we copy the more decent nations and have a Republic Day parade that we can all be proud of. It is a day to parade our best and finest.
I want to see our army and police in dress uniform marching in perfect order down our streets before bands that have rehearsed and are in perfect tune and harmony.
Our fire service, drug enforcement unit, our schools and clubs, our Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, our judo and shakti masters and students, and our commercial sector who will build and display aesthetically pleasing floats to a theme and can compete for prizes – these should constitute our Republic Day parade.
Note that I am not asking for better education or economic systems, or a cleanup of corruption. Whichever of the two presidential candidates has the cojones to institute a decent Republic Day celebration will, in that one decisive move, turn this country around.
He will be stating that ours is a proud, law-abiding nation where the attributes of decency, neighbourliness, morality, and all around pleasantness like good manners and courtesy are the ones we encourage and reward.
These are the characteristics on which progressive nations are built.
I say all this and know already that neither candidate has what it takes because, perhaps, they are cowardly or they believe the dutty wine is really good stuff.
What we have and will continue to have for a long, long time is leadership that will now send around a cleanup crew to pick up the droppings of litter that the dutty winers have left behind.
I usually flee my home on dutty wine day. This year I stayed. Next year I will flee again unless the incoming president changes the nature of our Republic Day parade. Given that this will not happen, would he at least change the parade route? The citizens of Queenstown and Kitty have more than done their duty for country and the annual dutty wine should now be inflicted on another neighbourhood.
Yours faithfully,
Ryhaan Shah
