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Sunday, February 23, 2025

An Indian cricket star’s Trini love story

by

Radhica De Silva
2142 days ago
20190414

He was one of Test crick­et’s finest spin bowlers but at the height of his sport­ing ca­reer in the 1950s Sub­hash Gupte gave it all up to mar­ry a Trinida­di­an girl, the love of his life.

That un­like­ly ro­mance and their long, hap­py mar­riage is the sub­ject of a book writ­ten by the cou­ple’s daugh­ter Car­olyn Gupte. Love With­out Bound­aries was launched last week­end at the Can­boulay Restau­rant at Sut­ton Street, San Fer­nan­do.

Car­olyn, a for­mer free­lance jour­nal­ist, wrote the book af­ter her par­ents died. Sub­hash passed away on May 31, 2002. His wife died on No­vem­ber 6, 2014.

Gupte said she al­ways mar­velled at the love her par­ents shared and their 49 years of mar­riage.

“Their love kept them to­geth­er. Cou­ples from that gen­er­a­tion nev­er gave up. They sac­ri­ficed and strug­gled for every­thing. Noth­ing came easy and there was a lot of com­pro­mis­es,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Gupte, one of the re­mark­able as­pects of her par­ent’s love sto­ry was the fact that they court­ed for four years, writ­ing love let­ters to each oth­er while Sub­hash trav­elled the world play­ing crick­et as In­dia’s lead­ing spin­ner and Car­ol pur­sued her de­gree in Cana­da.

“Dad­dy was the big star and she was just a sim­ple is­land girl. They met in 1953 at a crick­et game in Skin­ner Park and they saw each oth­er for two weeks un­der heavy chap­er­one. When he went back to In­dia, they stayed in touch and she went on to study for her de­gree. They could not af­ford tele­phone calls and in 1957, they fi­nal­ly got mar­ried,” Car­olyn re­called.

She and her broth­er Anil were born in In­dia and a year af­ter her birth, the fam­i­ly re­turned to build a life in Trinidad.

Gupte said the book, writ­ten in a con­ver­sa­tion­al style, has won the favour of the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion. The rea­sons why Sub­hash turned his back on crick­et and his feel­ings at the time are all doc­u­ment­ed in the book.

Gupte said many ex­pect­ed her to write her fa­ther’s bi­og­ra­phy, fo­cus­ing on him as a dash­ing and debonair sports­man. How­ev­er, in a so­ci­ety where the con­cept of love has be­come warped, she sought to “prove that at the end of the day, amor vincit om­nia – love con­quers all!”

She said: “One re­view on its Face­book page states, ‘The sto­ry­line al­ludes to the high ideals and morals, strength among women of Aun­tie Car­ol’s (Gupte) gen­er­a­tion and a con­vic­tion that every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son.’

“That is a uni­ver­sal premise that we can all re­late to, re­gard­less of what era we be­long to, or what God we wor­ship, or our coun­try of birth,” she said.

Gupte said she al­so want­ed her niece Rhi­an­non to know the lega­cy of her grand­par­ents.

Pas­sion for writ­ing

Car­olyn Gupte can best be de­scribed as an all-rounder with a pas­sion for writ­ing. She is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, pub­lic re­la­tions con­sul­tant, school ad­min­is­tra­tor, geri­atric care­giv­er, home­mak­er and sur­ro­gate moth­er but re­gards her most sat­is­fy­ing role as that of the au­thor.

At age 14, when she was asked by her Form 3 teacher at Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School about pos­si­ble ca­reer choic­es, Gupte replied with­out hes­i­ta­tion: “A writer, a jour­nal­ist.”

She knew it as a young stu­dent in Eng­land when in 1981 she re­ceived her diplo­ma in Jour­nal­ism from the Lon­don School of Jour­nal­ism and that ca­reer choice was fur­ther ce­ment­ed when she grad­u­at­ed two years lat­er from the Lon­don Col­lege of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (for­mer­ly Print­ing), Ele­phant and Cas­tle.

In 1984, when she re­turned to T&T, Gupte al­most im­me­di­ate­ly found em­ploy­ment with the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed ad­ver­tis­ing agency, Mc­Cann-Er­ick­son (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, spear­head­ing the agency’s fledgeling pub­lic re­la­tions de­part­ment, Im­age.

When she be­came her fa­ther’s full-time care­giv­er, pres­sure mount­ed to write his bi­og­ra­phy. She said she al­ways knew that the greater sto­ry would come from their riv­et­ing ro­mance.

Love With­out Bound­aries costs $100 and any­one in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing can place their or­ders through Face­book or call Gupte at 678-9425. The book will be avail­able in book­stores soon.


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