At­til­lah Sp­inger

Every gen­er­a­tion have emo­tion

They need love care and at­ten­tion

We must con­sid­er love for the el­der

As a cul­ture to teach the young­ster

Re­spect those who have gone be­fore

And en­deav­our to con­tribute more

For when you lift up the el­der­ly

You en­rich the so­ci­ety

-Blessed are the El­ders Shel­don Black­man

Dear Un­cle Kei­th, I start­ed off be­ing blast­ed vex with your as­tound­ing­ly ig­no­rant com­ment about Aun­ty Kam­la touch­ing the feet of the Pres­i­dent of In­dia. But then I just felt ter­ri­bly sor­ry for you. That you could reach to be a big hard-back man and not un­der­stand or know that civilised peo­ple-peo­ple who have a sense that el­ders are of val­ue-bow as a sign of re­spect and as a way of en­sur­ing fu­ture bless­ings. But such is the pro­found dotish­ness of pub­lic of­fice. Worse yet pub­lic of­fice with­out a sense of root­ed­ness to any­thing but some bizarre West­ern cap­i­tal­ist no­tion of pro­to­col. Who de­cid­ed on what the rules of pro­to­col should be? Who be­came the au­thor­i­ty on how peo­ple in pub­lic of­fice recog­nise oth­ers?

The no­tion of sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is dodgy and dif­fi­cult at best. We should, ac­cord­ing to your line of log­ic, not sing our an­them which refers to some god bless­ing our na­tion. I sup­pose it is on­ly the Chris­t­ian god for whom your pre­de­ces­sor want­ed to build a church that bless­es our na­tion. As if the wa­jangery and win­ery of Car­ni­val was not enough dis­trac­tion from the fact that the coun­try is falling apart, you just had to go and get all jam­mette on a se­ri­ous is­sue. But if you knew any­thing about jam­mettes you would un­der­stand that they had their own codes of re­spect and re­gard for tra­di­tion and the way that they were able to de­fy au­thor­i­ty was to root them­selves in some­thing that was much more an­cient and sa­cred than Vic­to­ri­an colo­nial no­tions of de­cen­cy and po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.

Had you not been so dis­tract­ed by your lack of knowl­edge, you would have stayed fo­cused on the fact that the whole trip to In­dia in and of it­self was a bit of un­nec­es­sary ex­cess that is like­ly not to solve the many prob­lems that are plagu­ing our beloved twin-is­land state. Like the fact that there is no vi­able op­po­si­tion and no al­ter­na­tive to the use­less­ness of the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties that con­tin­ue to take us down this road to nowhere. You could have been a lit­tle more clever and ques­tioned what val­ue a trip like that will have for the 99 per cent. The ma­jor­i­ty of Trinida­di­ans will see no ad­vance­ment. The one per cent of wealthy peo­ple who have the busi­ness­es will woo oth­er busi­ness­es from In­dia. And the mil­lions of peo­ple who live in a kind of pover­ty that we can­not even be­gin to imag­ine in In­dia will see noth­ing of any in­vest­ments made in Trinidad. Talk about that in­stead of the ego-trip­ping that re­al­ly be­trays the sense of empti­ness you feel be­cause you are root­less. That you do not re­mem­ber or pay re­spect to your an­ces­tors on whose shoul­ders you stand and speak with such con­tempt is re­al­ly an in­dict­ment of you.

That has noth­ing to do with re­li­gion. That has to do with ho­n­our­ing those who went be­fore. That's what the Bible, if you took time to open it and read, it would tell you. They re­count the sto­ries of their an­ces­tors for the ma­jor­i­ty of the Old Tes­ta­ment. Even to call their names is to ho­n­our them. Call the names of your own an­ces­tors some time. It might change your per­spec­tive on re­spect and who you need to bow to. But this brings in­to glar­ing clar­i­ty the re­al prob­lem with the PNM and why you find your­self out of pow­er right now. It is be­cause of that same con­tempt for peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly for el­ders, that is the rea­son why you lost the last elec­tion. Had you ever both­ered to bow at the feet of all the women of Laven­tille and Diego Mar­tin and Mal­oney, the moth­ers and sis­ters who en­sured that PNM was in pow­er for so many years through their can­vass­ing and their prayers and the pelau they made for the meet­ings, maybe your lot would be dif­fer­ent now.

But your skin just hap­pens to be black. You are about as cul­tur­al­ly and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly African as Vy­bz Kar­tel. You wouldn't be so dis­re­spect­ful to some­one else pay­ing re­spect if you had any re­spect for your own. You would have both­ered to know that it's not just Hin­dus who touch the feet of their el­ders. The Yoru­ba peo­ple of Nige­ria bow to their el­ders. The peo­ple of Viet­nam bow to their el­ders. The Fil­ipino peo­ple bow to their el­ders. And any­way your protes­ta­tions are just a vari­a­tion on the Re­pub­li­can hys­ter­ics of 2009 when Pres­i­dent Oba­ma bowed to the Japan­ese Em­per­or Ak­i­hi­to. I hold no brief for Aun­ty Kam­la. I would pre­fer that she was spend­ing mon­ey at home in­stead of run­ning hith­er, thith­er and yon to at­tract in­vestors when T&T's great­est re­source goes rot­ten in the schools, on the blocks, in the pris­ons. While her cronies and yours, the rich ones in the suits and ties who bow to no one ex­cept the almighty dol­lar, con­tin­ue to run amok.

PNM has re­spect for noth­ing. Not for the en­vi­ron­ment. Not for el­ders. Not even for its own sup­port­ers. You use your Chris­tian­i­ty like ole mas and dis­card it when con­ve­nient. I'd rather a sin­cere bow than an in­sin­cere ex­ploita­tion of peo­ple's ig­no­rance for po­lit­i­cal gain. I don't want to goat-mouth you and ask for your ar­ro­gance to curse you with that night­mar­ish fate Derek Wal­cott de­scribes in the Sad­dhu of Cou­va -the fate of not be­ing an el­der. But just an old per­son. Use­less and lack­ing in wis­dom. You still have time to save your­self. But you're def­i­nite­ly go­ing to have to learn to bow.