As told to BC Pires

My name is Bur­ton Sanker­al­li and I am a founder-mem­ber of the Philo­soph­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T.

I spent most of my life in high­ly bor­ing Val­sayn and no one "comes from" there, re­al­ly. So I'd have to say I come from the whole of Trinidad. There is a cer­tain priv­i­lege in­volved in liv­ing in Val­sayn. But there's al­so a cer­tain screw­ing up of one's con­scious­ness.

Every now and then I get [told] I look white but, in oth­er parts of the world, not so much. In Trinidad, I stand out. Un­less I walk through West Mall.

In­do-Trinida­di­ans find my name fun­ny, be­cause "Sankar" is Hin­du and "Ali" is Mus­lim. And, of course, I grew up Catholic. The name would have been like Shakur Ali, orig­i­nal­ly, when that branch of my an­ces­tors came from In­dia. But the clerk at the docks wrote it down wrong when they came off the boat: so it's a Trinida­di­an name!

With­in the con­text of Trinidad so­ci­ety, I've been get­ting whiter as the years go by: I did not grow up be­ing reg­u­lar­ly called white. I al­so get called "Span­ish" or "Chi­nee."Now and again, maybe, an "In­di­an" might pass. But Trinidad is like that, as any school­teacher would know. You look at a class roll, call an In­di­an name, and a Chi­nese boy sticks up his hand.

I went to St Mary's Col­lege. Un­til form five. I was an aca­d­e­m­ic fail­ure. I guess that qual­i­fied me to be­come a philoso­pher.

I didn't re­al­ly like school much in the first place; and then I found re­li­gion. I was Catholic. I'm in the Or­isha tra­di­tion now. I be­long to an Or­isha shrine. Need­less to say, I stand out there, too. Can't act anony­mous­ly. I don't think I re­al­ly fit in­to the con­ven­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic or even so­cial mi­lieu.

When I left the reg­u­lar school sys­tem, I de­cid­ed to pur­sue a de­gree in the­ol­o­gy. I did a four-year UWI pro­gramme at Mt St Bene­dict. The Catholic tra­di­tion in the­ol­o­gy is a very in­tel­lec­tu­al one and draws a lot on an­cient phi­los­o­phy.

The year David Rud­der had his Ca­lyp­so Mu­sic al­bum re­al­ly changed me. It was the first time I had a di­rect en­counter with Or­isha. Be­cause David Rud­der had those in­ti­ma­tions and con­nec­tions in his singing and per­for­mance.

I'm a lead vo­cal­ist in two bands now, one a tra­di­tion­al parang move­ment. I sing for en­ter­tain­ment but, right now, it's al­so my day job, at least at Christ­mas­time. I'm hop­ing to at least have some­thing like a reg­u­lar in­come three months in the year: I'm shoot­ing for that. I'm on a very, very ir­reg­u­lar in­come. My last reg­u­lar-ish in­come was, I did a few months' work with the First Na­tions.

Penury helps phi­los­o­phy: it gives you time to think. Since the whole pa­tron­age sys­tem broke down a cou­ple cen­turies ago, it's been rough for philoso­phers. In oth­er cul­tures, pa­tron­age and� let's be frank �beg­ging is con­sid­ered holy but it has this aw­ful cul­tur­al stig­ma in our time.

The Caribbean has a great in­tel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion. But there has been a mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and break­down of this tra­di­tion, to where we have to seek refuge in rumshops. Be­cause we don't re­al­ly have uni­ver­si­ties in this coun­try �with the pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion of the Ad­ven­tists...Iron­ic, huh?

The Philo­soph­i­cal So­ci­ety was formed in late 2005, ear­ly 2006 by my­self, Dar­ryl Naran­jit and John Borel­ly. It grew out of a phi­los­o­phy class un­der the um­brel­la of the then UWI School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies.

Stu­dio 66, run by Makem­ba Kun­le, has tak­en the bur­den of ad­min­is­ter­ing the group. Right now, we just have open meet­ings and peo­ple are free to come. There has been some at­tempt to in­sti­tu­tion­alise a mem­ber­ship. But I don't know whether philoso­phers and artists make the best or­gan­is­ers.

The best thing about set­ting up so­ci­ety is that, when the his­to­ry of Trinidad is writ­ten, they'll say, "Well, at least there was a Philo­soph­i­cal So­ci­ety." No mat­ter what oth­er else was hap­pen­ing here.

Trinidad is re­al­ly not good at process and in­sti­tu­tions and Trinidad may sink or swim on that is­sue. All the in­sti­tu­tions that work re­late, some­how, to ban­dit­ry: gangs; po­lit­i­cal par­ties; con­glom­er­ates etc.

Some­one I parang with was strum­ming his cu­a­tro, and be­gan to sing Ab­ba's Fer­nan­do�the his­to­ry of Mex­i­co, peo­ple fight­ing for free­dom, and I was ready to cry; be­cause I re­alised we are not a great peo­ple: but we can be. And that's a Tri­ni.

T&T, to me, is like a mar­riage gone dis­as­trous­ly wrong. But you know you can nev­er walk away from it. At least not per­ma­nent­ly.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com