Kevin Baldeosingh

First, I want to thank God for pro­vid­ing all things, in­clud­ing to­fu. With­out to­fu, veg­e­tar­i­ans would not be able to pre­tend to eat cur­ry fake beef wrapped in re­al roti, which still leads to weight gain if the roti is made out of white flour. Not that I have any­thing against veg­e­tar­i­ans. Or fat. Or fat veg­e­tar­i­ans.

In fact, I have on­ly bound­less ad­mi­ra­tion for all of them. As every­one knows, veg­e­tar­i­ans are con­sci­en­tious peo­ple who have very good skin and, if they don't, aren't gen­uine veg­e­tar­i­ans. And fat peo­ple are on­ly peo­ple with larg­er skin, who need not wor­ry about health is­sues with all the new blood pres­sure med­ica­tions now avail­able. In any case, when good peo­ple die, they go to Heav­en; or rein­car­nate; or be­come one with the uni­verse. And every­one who ever died in T&T is a good per­son, as we all know be­cause of late for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

In fact, I must thank the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, which is a great par­ty and shall pre­vail, be­cause it was the PNM that made T&T an in­de­pen­dent na­tion that could man­u­fac­ture its own rum. The PNM al­so pro­vid­ed free ed­u­ca­tion, which pro­duced orig­i­nal thinkers in T&T, lead­ing to the in­ven­tion of URP, Cepep, Gate and many oth­er acronyms, and there­fore any crit­i­cism of that par­ty is not on­ly gra­tu­itous but may even be sedi­tious. I al­so want to praise the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which con­tin­ued these acronyms and al­so helped the coun­try progress po­lit­i­cal­ly by show­ing that an In­do-based par­ty was re­al­ly just the same as the PNM, just with more co­conut oil.

In fact, I must com­mend pol­i­cy-mak­ers from all po­lit­i­cal par­ties for in­sti­tut­ing wel­fare mea­sures which have im­mea­sur­ably aid­ed the poor peo­ple of the na­tion, in­clud­ing the well-off. This proves that so­cial­ism works, and if it doesn't it is on­ly be­cause it wasn't gen­uine so­cial­ism. In this open vein, I must give par­tic­u­lar cred­it to gen­der fem­i­nists for con­tin­u­al­ly push­ing an­ti-cap­i­tal­ist poli­cies.

Since all fem­i­nist poli­cies are in­tend­ed to build a more eq­ui­table world, any­one who op­pos­es gen­der fem­i­nism op­pos­es equal­i­ty for women. And if gen­der fem­i­nists' pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions are not based on ac­tu­al sta­tis­tics or re­search, this on­ly shows that im­prov­ing the sta­tus of women is more im­por­tant that mere fig­ures, es­pe­cial­ly for women with bad fig­ures. Not that I have any­thing against women with bad fig­ures, be­cause I my­self have nev­er been good at Math­e­mat­ics.

This is prob­a­bly be­cause I was schooled in an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem which side­lined African and In­di­an teach­ings. This is why it is im­por­tant to change the syl­labus to re­flect an­cient African and In­di­an wis­dom, es­pe­cial­ly that civil­i­sa­tion start­ed in Africa and in In­dia, al­though of course this would mean hav­ing dif­fer­ent text­books for African-de­scent and In­di­an-de­scent stu­dents so as not to low­er any child's self-es­teem.

In fact, em­pha­sis­ing such an­cient wis­dom would al­so lead to more peo­ple go­ing to al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine prac­ti­tion­ers who have an­cient reme­dies for every­thing, es­pe­cial­ly flat­u­lence. This is why colon cleansers are so im­por­tant to T&T, since they help en­sure that peo­ple die with clean guts. Not on­ly does this make the job of fu­ner­al em­balmers eas­i­er, but al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine prac­ti­tion­ers pro­vide a reg­u­lar flow of rev­enue to ra­dio sta­tions. In fact, I must ex­press my ut­most re­spect for ra­dio man­agers who choose talk­show hosts who con­tin­u­al­ly con­firm Trin­bag­o­ni­ans' be­liefs, hence giv­ing or­di­nary peo­ple self-re­spect for their na­tive in­tel­li­gence.

This is why suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have con­tin­u­al­ly tried to im­ple­ment ra­dio callers' rec­om­men­da­tions to stop crime, such as prayer, licks and hang­ing. Not that I have any­thing against crim­i­nals. In fact, let me em­pha­sise that I don't want to of­fend any rob­bers or rapists or mur­der­ers, since I do not want to be robbed or raped or mur­dered. Or, even if I am, I don't want that to hap­pen to my chil­dren. Not that I have any­thing against child abusers or pae­dophiles. In fact, like all right-think­ing peo­ple, I have the ut­most re­spect for re­spect­ed re­li­gious lead­ers in our so­ci­ety, who have of­fered re­li­gion-based so­lu­tions to the prob­lem of pae­dophil­ia in T&T.

In fact, I re­spect all the views of Chris­t­ian lead­ers who are mul­ti-mil­lion­aires and in­flu­ence of­fi­cial poli­cies, since Chris­tian­i­ty has been on­ly a force for good in the world. I al­so have to re­spect the view of Hin­du lead­ers who have pub­lished their own col­lec­tion of news­pa­per columns, be­cause no pub­lish­er has ever made me any such of­fer and Hin­duism has been a force for good wher­ev­er Hin­dus have set­tled. So no one should ever com­ment about re­li­gion, if they want to avoid force for good.

In fact, from now on I will no longer be us­ing the phrase "in fact": since, in this place, noth­ing of­fends more peo­ple more than facts.

Email: kevin.baldeosingh@zo­ho.com

Kevin Baldeosingh is a pro­fes­sion­al writer, au­thor of three nov­els and co-au­thor of a Caribbean his­to­ry text­book.