?The dou­bles ven­dor at the top of the hill where I live in Sunkist, Phillip­ine, was still wait­ing for his last sale at 4 pm as peo­ple were go­ing home. My good friend Har­ry from Bar­rack­pore did not go with us on our an­nu­al Christ­mas fish and cook lime in Trin­i­ty Hills–some­thing he nev­er missed–be­cause he had to plant his cu­cum­bers "to make a dol­lar" for the Christ­mas and the New Year. Hans, an­oth­er of my good friends from this area, now "ducks" me, hav­ing to com­pete with too many oth­ers to be as gen­er­ous with his cas­cadoo as he was ac­cus­tomed to in times of plen­ty. Even Thacks, one of the biggest cane farm­ers in the area, must now bend his back to pro­duce a crop of bo­di or baigan to sur­vive on the land which was his pride and joy when sug­ar was king.

Dili­gence you may say, re­silience, com­mit­ment! Maybe, but more­so, these are acts of sheer des­per­a­tion due to the clo­sure of cane and rice in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties such as these where, with their pay-pack­ets tak­en away from them, they must now re­ly on sell­ing dou­bles, a heap of ochroes, a pound of baigan, two cas­cadoo, to sur­vive. Oh so many dou­bles' ven­dors, so many sell­ers of ochroes and baigan, so many cas­cadoo catch­ers, so many mule carts and trail­ers, skele­tal among the aban­doned cane and rice fields: a once proud peo­ple dri­ven in­to the dust of mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion! And yet hope springs eter­nal in the breast of the down­trod­den, and from where does it come? From the bo­som of the UNC and its Gu­ru! And why?

Be­cause it's all they know, hav­ing been nur­tured on a di­et of racial pol­i­tics to be­lieve it is ei­ther" they or us", and who bet­ter to lead than the Gu­ru, for al­ways? But in their sim­ple­mind­ed­ness they do not know that his race has been run and that there is a new star in the sky bet­ter placed to de­liv­er them in­to the promised land. So even as they hope for some im­prove­ment to their lives, their unswerv­ing loy­al­ty may just bring about a re­sult on Jan­u­ary 24, that will iron­i­cal­ly, en­sure their con­tin­u­ing mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion even un­to death. But there is an even hand­ed jus­tice above us, and maybe this time around the fate of the dis­pos­sessed will be dif­fer­ent.

Dr Er­rol Ben­jamin