Among the slew of lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers tak­ing to the dig­i­tal space to meet their au­di­ences is Free­town Col­lec­tive with their Free­town Thurs­day Con­certs. This vir­tu­al con­cert se­ries, cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ed via Face­book Live (@weare­free­town), has as its pri­ma­ry aim to help keep peo­ple con­nect­ed through mu­sic dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 quar­an­tine pe­ri­od.

Emer­gen­cies and dis­as­ters can strike quick­ly and with­out warn­ing can force you to evac­u­ate your schools, neigh­bour­hood or even con­fine you to your home.

You’d be hard pressed to find a sin­gle Trin­bag­on­ian kitchen that did not pos­sess a tawa. From the Hin­dus­tani word mean­ing “iron plate”, tawas are flat, cir­cu­lar grid­dles made of met­al that are used for cook­ing flat breads like the var­i­ous types of roti and roast-bakes. The first tawas in T&T were used in earth­en fire­places called chul­has that would crum­ble each rain­fall and need reg­u­lar leep­ay­ing (plas­ter­ing) with fresh clay. The tawa would sit atop a well stoked fire and dough flat­tened with a bil­na (rolling pin) would be placed on top of it to cook. When it was time to flip the dough a sim­tah, or tong-like uten­sil, would be used, al­though the most skil­ful roti-mak­ers would use swift and nim­ble hands and nev­er be burned! How­ev­er, the hall­mark of a true tawa-mas­ter is in their abil­i­ty to sakay—the tawa is pulled slight­ly off the fire and the par­tial­ly cooked dough is made to face the di­rect flames! This makes the dough swell and some even let it get a nice toast­ing. To­day lit­tle of these tech­niques has changed.

Long be­fore there were blenders and food proces­sors, the sil and lorha were used for grind­ing sea­son­ings such as gar­lic, pep­pers, pi­men­to, etc. It was typ­i­cal­ly used in the mak­ing of var­i­ous types of chut­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly co­conut chut­ney. If you’ve nev­er had co­conut chut­ney with your dou­bles, with your cur­ry or with your nor­mal Tri­ni street food, you are sad­ly miss­ing out. No wor­ries though, here’s the recipe so you can make it your­self.

T&T is a poly­cul­tur­al par­adise, filled with vi­brant peo­ple of fete and faith, the home of the steel­pan. The ex­quis­ite lan­guage of this space is adorned with loan words in­di­cat­ing a so­ci­ety born from ar­du­ous jour­neys of its an­ces­tors. Our unique­ness is unique! De­spite the count­less av­enues tra­versed, a won­der­ful ar­ray of dish­es con­sti­tutes the de­lec­table cui­sine of this land from roti to dou­bles to fried bake. But have you ever won­dered about the cook­ing tools be­hind these scrump­tious every­day del­i­ca­cies? What­ev­er the bak­ing goal, the bil­na and chow­ki will pro­vide the so­lu­tion.

Spices and sea­son­ings crack­le and crunch un­der the weight of the lorha, re­leas­ing an in­tox­i­cat­ing scent—and you just know some­thing good is about to go down in the kitchen. If this sce­nario rang any bells for you, then you’re a lucky per­son, and you know the val­ue of the orig­i­nal way of grind­ing up sea­son­ing in your aa­je’s (pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er) and nani’s (ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er) kitchens. Yes, we live in the age of food proces­sors and grinders, but can any­thing tru­ly re­place the good ole sil and lorha? I know I am nev­er giv­ing up my tawa for a grid­dle, so if you are lucky enough to have the true and tra­di­tion­al sil and lorha, I doubt you would want to give that up ei­ther.

We may sel­dom step out­side the box of our re­al­i­ty to no­tice, but over the past three decades, there have been ma­jor fo­cus­ing events that have changed the way we live our lives. From 9/11 to Covid-19, we can no longer say such events we have on­ly read about in our his­to­ry books. We’ve ac­tu­al­ly lived through these events that have changed our lives and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to come. For the past five months dur­ing this Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, Pub­lic Health mea­sures to pre­vent in­fec­tion spread, that have ex­ist­ed with the pub­lic be­ing un­aware of them, now form the ba­sis on which we live our lives. It is in­deed an un­com­fort­able po­si­tion to ex­ist in, but if we do not learn from this ex­pe­ri­ence, mankind’s fu­ture looks quite bleak.

The sys­temic lu­pus ery­the­mato­sus (SLE) or Lu­pus as it is com­mon­ly called is an au­toim­mune dis­ease where the body’s im­mune sys­tem mis­tak­en­ly at­tacks healthy tis­sue. This dis­ease is a mul­ti-or­gan dis­ease which can af­fect the skin, joints, kid­neys and brain, just to name a few. Al­though the cause of lu­pus is not clear, it is be­lieved to be linked to fac­tors such as ge­net­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal, hor­mon­al and even cer­tain med­i­cines.

As the say­ing goes “the on­ly con­stant is change”. Even though change is in­evitable, it does not make it any eas­i­er for us to ac­cept. Big changes such as a di­vorce, death of a loved one or loss of a job can be dif­fi­cult for many adults to cope with. These changes are es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for our chil­dren whose young brains are still de­vel­op­ing. While they may not be able to ex­press ver­bal­ly that they are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with a change, you may be able to rec­og­nize it by their re­ac­tions and changes in emo­tions.

The sin­gle most com­mon ex­cuse I hear from peo­ple is “I don’t have enough time to work out.” Let’s do this to­geth­er, very sim­ple math, sev­en days in a week, twen­ty-four hours in a day, which means there are 168 hours in a week. So, let’s just say for de­bate sake you work sev­en days a week eight hours shift, that’s 56 hours, you sleep eight hours, that’s an­oth­er 56 hours, so we are 112 hours. You com­mute back and forth to work for let’s say two hours, now we are up to 114h hours. Ok so now you are go­ing to give me the sec­ond de­gree dance about gro­cery shop­ping, run­ning er­rands and fam­i­ly time. Ok! Let’s back up a bit and take three hours per week to do your gro­cery, we are now at one hun­dred and sev­en­teen 117 hours. Clear­ly fam­i­ly time is para­mount so you can take 40 hours out of your busy week to bond with the fam­i­ly, this brings us to 157 hours. Now you are left with eleven hours for er­rands but still the ex­cuse hov­ers over your head and you have no time to take care of your health. In­stead, you are go­ing to spend the mon­ey you have been work­ing so hard for at the doc­tor’s of­fice be­cause you don’t feel too good.

The tim­ing couldn’t be more ap­pro­pri­ate. The ac­tion, per­fect­ly synced. It’s al­most as though the Uni­verse called on Caribbean singers like Isas­ha, Tur­bu­lence, Caple­ton and oth­ers of the reg­gae mu­sic move­ment, to speak up.

The world was spun up­side down and just as con­struc­tion work­ers were in the process of lay­ing down the foun­da­tion of the High­landers Steel Or­ches­tra’s new pan the­atre, when Covid-19 struck a hate­ful chord, tun­ing out a clo­sure of what was con­sid­ered non-es­sen­tial busi­ness in­clud­ing con­struc­tion.