Rhon­dor Dowlat

Dil-E-Nadan’s Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine says he is ex­cit­ed about putting Trinidad and To­ba­go on the map with his 2021 Chut­ney so­ca hit ‘Nack Ah Ting’, af­ter it drew the in­ter­est of an In­di­an bil­lion­aire this week.

Anand Mahin­dra, chair­man of the Mahin­dra Group, a Mum­bai-based US$20 bil­lion com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in more than 100 coun­tries, shared the song on his Twit­ter ac­count with a post not­ing T&T was now on top his va­ca­tion wish-list af­ter he viewed the song by Ram­nar­ine.

Mahin­dra shared the video on his Twit­ter ac­count of 9.6 mil­lion peo­ple un­der the ti­tle ‘Mon­day Mo­ti­va­tion’.

“This isn’t the usu­al, #Mon­day­Mo­ti­va­tion type of re­flec­tion. But I think it guar­an­tees an up­beat start to the week! And Trinidad goes to the top of my va­ca­tion des­ti­na­tion wish-list,” Mahin­dra said in his tweet.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for his re­ac­tion, Ram­nar­ine, who is cur­rent­ly in Flori­da, said the busi­ness­man’s tweet had “made his week.”

Ram­nar­ine de­scribed it as ex­cit­ing and as­sured he will meet with his man­age­ment on the way for­ward.

“Every­thing hap­pened so fast you would not be­lieve. I got re­al ex­cit­ed when I hear about the red, white and black be­cause with my mu­sic and through my mu­sic, we’ve al­ways been fly­ing the flag of red, white and black no mat­ter where we go. So just know­ing that he tweet­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go has ba­si­cal­ly topped his va­ca­tion list af­ter he viewed the Nack ah Ting video, that’s just deep. So, so deep I just feel so blessed. I feel so hum­ble, so grate­ful but I haven’t spo­ken phys­i­cal­ly to man­age­ment as yet but we go­ing to talk about it be­cause this is huge. This is amaz­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Ram­nar­ine said.

He added, “By re­ceiv­ing that blast yes­ter­day it re­al­ly made my en­tire week, so I’m just look­ing for­ward to all the dis­cus­sions. We def­i­nite­ly want to reach out to him and talk more about the way for­ward for Trinidad and To­ba­go. I would love to see a lot more of in­vestors com­ing in and a lot more peo­ple com­ing in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go and I’m re­al­ly just catch­ing the whole vibes of our sweet T&T.”

Ram­nar­ine not­ed that he has al­ways tried to in­spire and talk to his fel­low artistes about pro­mot­ing T&T.

“I al­ways tell them to keep writ­ing, keep pro­duc­ing, to think. Let’s go be­yond the nor­mal way of think­ing and think about re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing stuff to write about, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to the Chut­ney so­ca in­dus­try. To think about the dif­fer­ent top­ics when you’re do­ing new videos and no mat­ter what you do, you push Trinidad and To­ba­go, push Trinidad and To­ba­go, push Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, this is just like an­oth­er plat­form. A step­ping stone to in­spire oth­ers, to in­spire my­self to work even hard­er,” he said.

“I have a bunch of great mu­si­cians but all my mu­sic and all the songs that I have and have re­leased over the years are songs that I wrote and songs that I’ve pro­duced along­side my broth­ers. So, this is just like an in­spi­ra­tion for us to keep writ­ing and bring­ing hap­py mu­sic and pos­i­tive mu­sic.”

Ram­nar­ine said his man­age­ment will reach out to Mahin­dra.

Asked if he thinks the up­surge in crime would be a de­ter­rent to vis­i­tors, Ram­nar­ine said while it dis­turbs him, he is there to de­fend T&T.

“We live in Trinidad and To­ba­go and bot­tom line, we’re sup­posed to de­fend Trinidad and To­ba­go as cit­i­zens. Every­body does that and yes we have crime, yes and in some cas­es, we say crime is kind of un­con­trol­lable and be­sides crime we have oth­er is­sues that we deal with and we wish that life can be a lit­tle more smooth and stuff but you know, when we go all over the world we see crime. ... Every coun­try has its prob­lems,” Ram­nar­ine said.

He chal­lenged peo­ple to start pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive things about T&T.

“I tell my friends that just as we have crime and just as we have neg­a­tives back home, we have so much good things hap­pen­ing. We have a lot of pos­i­tive things hap­pen­ing home. It’s just a pity some­times that some­times the pos­i­tive don’t re­al­ly get high­light­ed as much as it should.”