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Sunday, March 30, 2025

The Adventures of Seepersad Naipaul

...a trib­ute to pi­o­neer­ing In­do-Tri­ni re­porter

by

20141016

Many of us may know of char­ac­ters like the mys­te­ri­ous Bog­a­rt, the pos­tur­ing "tough guy" who hard­ly says a word; or Popo the car­pen­ter, who is al­ways "mak­ing the thing with­out a name," yet rarely build­ing any­thing–just two of the char­ac­ters brought vivid­ly to life by the artistry of Trinidad-born nov­el­ist VS Naipaul in his 1959 mem­oir of child­hood, Miguel Street.

VS Naipaul in these short sto­ries cre­at­ed mem­o­rable char­ac­ters through his deft way of set­ting up a scene, his use of cre­ole di­a­logue, and his clear plots, evok­ing char­ac­ters poignant in their colour­ful, flawed, tragi­com­ic de­tails.

But how many of us have ever heard of the writ­ing of an­oth­er old­er, more sym­pa­thet­ic Naipaul–VS's own fa­ther, Seep­er­sad? Seep­er­sad used these same el­e­ments, a gen­er­a­tion be­fore his son did, to tell his own good sto­ries, us­ing the more com­pact (and ephemer­al) ve­hi­cle of news­pa­pers, not nov­els. Some of his best sto­ries were print­ed in the T&T Guardian in the 1930s.

Seep­er­sad Naipaul was the cen­tre of at­ten­tion on the evening of Oc­to­ber 9 when the Friends of Mr Biswas and the Na­tion­al Li­brary host­ed a talk by Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor Aaron East­ley on the el­der Naipaul's news­pa­per writ­ing ca­reer.

East­ley is the di­rec­tor of grad­u­ate stud­ies at Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty in Utah. His talk was part of a se­ries of events planned by the Friends of Mr Biswas to fo­cus on the role of T&T jour­nal­ists. The next in the se­ries, lat­er this month, will be a talk by for­mer T&T Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief Lennox Grant on Patrick Chokolin­go.

The Cen­tral cor­re­spon­dent

Naipaul (1906 � 1953) was the T&T Guardian's "Cen­tral cor­re­spon­dent" in the ear­ly 1930s. He worked for the pa­per for three pe­ri­ods, from 1929 up to just be­fore his death in 1953.

At the time, said East­ley, the Guardian was con­ser­v­a­tive and ex­clu­sive; it wrote for the white ur­ban elite in Port-of-Spain. But led by a new ed­i­tor, Galt Mac­Gowan, the pa­per de­cid­ed, from 1929 to the ear­ly 1930s, to mod­ernise, and liv­en up its menu by ap­peal­ing to a wider au­di­ence, with more lo­cal con­tent. Seep­er­sad Naipaul was hired as the pa­per's very first East In­di­an re­porter.

It was a col­lab­o­ra­tion which paid off, said East­ley, at least for a few short years–a time when Seep­er­sad Naipaul dis­cov­ered a whole new ex­pres­sive pro­fes­sion–one which not on­ly let him write sto­ries, but ed­i­to­ri­alise through them, and some­times even take part in them. Guardian sales rose; and read­ers in re­mot­er parts of the is­land had some­thing dif­fer­ent to read.

Amaz­ing­ly, Seep­er­sad was large­ly self-taught. East­ley sketched for the au­di­ence Seep­er­sad's "harsh home life"–com­ing from a bro­ken home, he was farmed out to rel­a­tives; he helped raise cows and goats in the morn­ings be­fore go­ing to school every day bare­foot.

In all like­li­hood, this Naipaul would have faced a fu­ture of rur­al ob­scu­ri­ty. Yet in school, and out of it, he taught him­self to read, write, and un­der­stand more of the world around him. Lit­er­a­cy was the key to his es­cape from the cane­fields.

That Seep­er­sad be­came a writer at all was in­cred­i­ble, said East­ley: "The sto­ry of Seep­er­sad the jour­nal­ist is a sto­ry of per­se­ver­ance and luck, au­dac­i­ty, delu­sion and re­silience," he said, as he shared with the au­di­ence his ad­mi­ra­tion for a man who may have been quirky and over-the-top, but who per­sist­ed, de­spite var­i­ous set­backs, to make his own mark in the world.

Seep­er­sad loved a live­ly, un­usu­al sto­ry. This not on­ly de­light­ed his ed­i­tor Mac­Gowan; it tick­led T&T au­di­ences, giv­ing truth to the idea that some­times, peo­ple want more than just the facts.

Seep­er­sad loved to write en­gag­ing sto­ries about or­di­nary peo­ple–of­ten very short sto­ries, yet well told, con­jur­ing up vivid scenes with econ­o­my and ef­fec­tive sen­so­ry de­tail.

East­ley in­tro­duced Seep­er­sad's writ­ing style with quotes from his work, in­clud­ing this one, the start of a sto­ry about an old man: "Alone, un­car­ed and un­looked for, save for the sen­tinel pres­ence of a faith­ful dog that sel­dom leaves his mas­ter's bed­side, a man crip­pled with age lies con­va­lesc­ing from a long ill­ness in a tiny, palm-thatched cab­in that he's built with his own hands among the lone co­conut palms on the Ca­roni coast."

Right away, Seep­er­sad gets the read­er in­volved in this old man's plight–de­spite his derelict, lone­some cir­cum­stances, the old man sol­diers on in the tiny cab­in he's brave­ly built for him­self.

An­oth­er quote, this time from a crime sto­ry, showed Seep­er­sad's love of ac­tive, emo­tive lan­guage–the kind that us­es scream­ing head­lines, ur­gent verbs and sen­sa­tion­al de­tails to sell news­pa­pers: "Green-eyed jeal­ousy made this man kill the on­ly woman he loved, hack a man to death, sev­er the right hand of an­oth­er and de­prive a 16-year-old youth of an ear." It was a live­ly sto­ry about do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.

In some sto­ries, East­ley said Seep­er­sad en­ter­tained peo­ple with en­thu­si­as­tic tales of per­son­al ad­ven­tures–in­clud­ing, once, stak­ing out a haunt­ed house to try to cap­ture ghosts. An­oth­er time, Seep­er­sad wrote about spend­ing the night with frogs in a tree–af­ter be­ing knocked off his bike.

Prof Ken Ram­c­hand, head of the Friends of Mr Biswas, in a 1987 Guardian ar­ti­cle, wrote that Seep­er­sad's sto­ries "in­clud­ed news of...quar­rels, wound­ings, beat­ings, vil­lage feuds and fam­i­ly vendet­tas...Seep­er­sad was in­ter­est­ed in odd or ex­tra­or­di­nary char­ac­ters: a woman 112 years old who had seen slaves be­ing lashed and shipped; a Hin­du do­ing penance by the riv­er; and a man they called Robin­son Cru­soe"–who set out from Ch­agua­nas to dis­cov­er an over­land route to To­ba­go.

It wasn't all fun and games for Seep­er­sad, though. East­ley em­pha­sised that Seep­er­sad al­so wrote se­ri­ous sto­ries, cov­er­ing re­li­gion, pol­i­tics, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and oth­er is­sues of the day pro­fes­sion­al­ly, while get­ting im­por­tant in­ter­views, fol­low­ing up on sto­ries and show­ing in­tel­li­gent ini­tia­tive in help­ing to re­port on and shape the news.

Seep­er­sad's jour­nal­ism al­so record­ed the "changes tak­ing place in the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty; the er­rors and con­fu­sions in­to which it was falling in its ig­no­rance about it­self and its past, and its in­abil­i­ty or un­will­ing­ness to pro­pel or project it­self in­to the fu­ture," wrote Ram­c­hand in 1987, re­fer­ring to the frag­men­ta­tion of tra­di­tion­al In­di­an cul­ture in Trinidad in the 1930s, as a new cre­olis­ing world emerged–a world "with­out rit­u­al, cus­tom or cer­e­mo­ny." These changes dis­mayed Seep­er­sad, whose re­sponse was of­ten to make a joke of things.

"For a fright­ened man, he was brave," com­ment­ed Ram­c­hand: "His jour­nal­ism and his short sto­ries re­main an ac­cu­rate and de­spair­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty in cri­sis."

Seep­er­sad's con­ver­sa­tion­al, ac­ces­si­ble news­pa­per sto­ry style, his some­times bizarre, macabre hu­mour, and his pro­fes­sion­al cu­rios­i­ty were a part of his me­dia per­sona. He seemed to pos­sess a keen, in­tu­itive sense of me­dia as a kind of the­atre, where any sto­ry can get a chance to play it­self out on the stage of the page. And he used the ve­hi­cle of news­pa­pers to not on­ly "play him­self," but to com­ment on and in­ves­ti­gate his so­ci­ety.

East­ley de­scribed how Seep­er­sad re-imag­ined the staid is­land jour­nal­ism at the time to carve out a bold, unique voice all his own; a voice that was cre­ative, of­ten sen­sa­tion­al, and cer­tain­ly dra­mat­ic.

Seep­er­sad's sto­ries spoke (with­out con­tempt or con­de­scen­sion) to or­di­nary folk. He wrote not just for busi­ness­men in board­rooms, but for vil­lagers and house­wives and the com­mon man. He ex­pand­ed the nar­row range of news­pa­per writ­ing at the time.

Seep­er­sad's lega­cy

East­ley sug­gest­ed that be­hind the scenes, the very act of writ­ing for a dai­ly news­pa­per qui­et­ly in­spired Seep­er­sad's own two sons, Vidi­ad­har and Shi­va, to imag­ine writ­ing ca­reers they might nev­er oth­er­wise have pur­sued.

East­ley quot­ed this re­flec­tion, writ­ten by VS Naipaul: "There was a big ledger in which my fa­ther had past­ed his ear­ly writ­ings...This ledger be­came one of the books of my child­hood. It was there, in the old-fash­ioned Guardian type and lay­out...that I got to love the idea of news­pa­pers and the idea of print."

East­ley's talk showed that in im­por­tant, per­haps large­ly un­ac­knowl­edged ways, Seep­er­sad helped pave the way for lo­cal voic­es to ex­press them­selves, and to be heard.

"He coura­geous­ly re­fused to be con­trolled by pub­lic opin­ion," said East­ley, "...and he nev­er de­volved in­to bit­ter­ness. Through­out his life and through­out his jour­nal­is­tic ca­reer, there were ab­solute­ly mo­ments of ut­ter des­o­la­tion, of ut­ter dis­il­lu­sion­ment. It's true that his op­por­tu­ni­ties were se­vere­ly lim­it­ed, but with­in that, we still see his ge­nius...And he ul­ti­mate­ly nev­er gave up on life...He nev­er ceased, as a writer, to try to con­nect with peo­ple."

Who are the Friends of Mr Biswas?

The Friends of Mr Biswas be­gan in 2000 to de­vel­op the Naipaul House at 26 Nepal Street, St James, as a mu­se­um and a li­brary for re­search on the writ­ings of the Naipaul and Capildeo fam­i­lies, and as a form of cul­tur­al tourism.

The Naipaul house is im­mor­talised in VS Naipaul's 1961 nov­el A House for Mr Biswas, a clas­sic work of West In­di­an fic­tion based on the strug­gles and tri­umphs of Naipaul's fa­ther Seep­er­sad. The Naipaul House was the fam­i­ly home of Seep­er­sad and Droa­p­atie Naipaul, who lived there from 1946 un­til Droa­p­atie died in 1991. The house was bought from the Naipauls in late 1996 and is now a na­tion­al her­itage build­ing.

At last week Thurs­day's talk by Prof Aaron East­ley on the news­pa­per writ­ing of Seep­er­sad Naipaul, Ram­c­hand an­nounced a plan for a con­fer­ence next year on the work of all three Naipaul writ­ers (Seep­er­sad, and his sons Vidi­ad­har and Shi­va), pend­ing sup­port from the Sport and Cul­ture Fund.

Ram­c­hand al­so an­nounced East­ley's gen­er­ous do­na­tion to the Friends of Mr Biswas of dig­i­tal scanned copies of many of Seep­er­sad Naipaul's Guardian news­pa­per sto­ries, pre­vi­ous­ly un­avail­able.


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