Dear Editor,
Permit this sharing of personal experiences and observations of my early passage in Guyana. The reflections of a much younger Indian man in this time of early learning about Guyana, and then growing along a different trajectory. I was a most junior civil servant, a band or two all that separated from cleaners and messengers. It was the time of Burnham, and there I was beginning my hand at socializing in a mixed community. What was compressed into the euphemism of “disturbances” barely a decade or so old. The tensions were palpable, the separations conspicuous. From then I had friends who looked like me; but there were others who didn’t or saw matters my way. Still, I shared their company. There were heady times, with lots of dreams amid lots of surrounding despair. It was the beginning.
And it was also the beginning of another moment of learning that hasn’t stopped since. Some of the people who looked like me-some strangers, others were friends and neighbours-had only distance and scorn for me. In sum, because I worked as a nonentity presence in the civil service, I was a ‘Burnham man.’ The branding was automatic, despite neither association nor allegiance nor agreement. There was never a party card, never any invitation to join anything, simply people who saw something in me. It was and still is the limit and the vast, poignant expanse of the Guyana that has been known prior to travels, and upon returning what survives with greater energy to this day. We may pretend that things are not so, that the mentalities have changed for the better. But all that we do is deceive ourselves, play tricks with our own minds.
This is the context distilled to less than 300 words that I felt is fitting to present in the public square. I invite my fellow Guyanese to refresh their memories. There is also an open invitation to study today and examine what is different. They will find that it is nothing. Some may insist that there has been change, but the more than they are pretended to be, the more they stay unchanged. I urge my companions in this Guyanese journey undertaken to do two things, and only to be honest with themselves. Not necessarily in any public space, but only within the confines of their clearest coherence and their quiet consciousness. We have a government holding the reins of power, and like Burnham, those reins are long, and they are well-powered. They are tight and exercise great reach and control. Some would assert, and not inaccurately, that those reins of power are more dominant and more complete than even at the height of the Burnham reign. Now it is time for the reality that will be denied, but can’t, because it has its roots in the parallel story that is mine, and more than a few others over the years.
There are faces in places in today’s political corridors and public service realms. They are different faces, like mine once was. They are a minority overwhelmed by a majority, just like I once was. Now get ready. And just like me, there are those realities that they must contend with, manage with, and deal with, in their own communities. Often family and among friends, other times civilians and villagers who make villains of them. Because they have agreed to lend their names and faces and presences into a brown sea, the outsiders are looked upon as traitors and sellouts and betrayers by their own. Nothing but craven opportunists. Whether they are or not, some faint resemblance or none at all to how they are interpreted, it really doesn’t matter. The unshakeable, unmoving, inseparable judgment has been cast. It is the travesty and an integral aspect of the continuing tragedy that is Guyana.
Even in our best times, we are the essence of brutality to each other, with the worst reserved for our own who are seen as having crossed the line. I shouldn’t have to say what line, only that it is the same one that stands as a barrier, and which keeps local minds poles apart. I had hoped that things would be different in the era of great underwater developments, national upheavals no less. Vanished hopes victimized by memories that will not let go, and rage that will not diminish. I hear and read of the first positive number known being made into driving force and guiding star. Mission statements must be lived. Deeply. Thoughtfully. Sincerely. Thoroughly. Can’t be a flashy picture here, and large swaths of impenetrable gloom over there and over there. This will get us nowhere. One can be the loneliest number in the world. I should know because I have been there. Too many times. Like some say, God bless Guyana!
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
