AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Dur­ing the time of Di­vali, the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty cel­e­brates light over dark­ness and good over evil. But with the present state of the econ­o­my, many busi­ness own­ers are forced to al­so ac­cept loss­es over prof­its as the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ues to rise.

This year marks the first year of a full re­turn of Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions since 2019 at the Di­vali Na­gar site lo­cat­ed along the Narsa­loo Ra­maya Marg Road, Ch­agua­nas.

While many are ex­cit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in all the fes­tiv­i­ties, there are many more who are sim­ply ex­cit­ed to have an un­re­strict­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn a liv­ing.

“Af­ter be­ing locked down and now no masks, and with a crowd, noth­ing com­pares to that,” said Ro­hi­ni Ahoo­ja, own­er of Bol­ly­wood Fash­ions.

Many busi­ness own­ers in the food and fash­ion sec­tor look for­ward to mak­ing and sell­ing goods that are syn­ony­mous with Hin­du fes­tiv­i­ties and the lo­cal cul­ture.

But with all the ex­cite­ment, lev­els of dis­cour­age­ment linger know­ing that they will make few­er earn­ings, in a coun­try where the cost of goods in or­der to sur­vive has in­creased dras­ti­cal­ly for many.

“In terms of the crowd, it have a crowd yes, but it’s noth­ing com­pared to 2019,” Ahoo­ja said as her rea­son for their be­ing less sales.

Denise Chin­pire O’Reil­ly, own­er of D’s Poo­ja and Va­ri­ety Store, shared that for now, she is able to sell her prod­ucts at a pre-COVID price due to her de­ci­sion to stock up over the pan­dem­ic, in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a full re­turn. But she ad­mits she is wor­ried about the fu­ture.

“Next year is gonna be a lot more. I think next year will be a trou­ble­some year for the cus­tomers when they have to deal with the new prices. Cus­toms, tax­es, im­port du­ties, freight, get­ting it here. Time to get it here is go­ing to be an­oth­er fac­tor. So we hope we’ll have suf­fi­cient goods for Di­vali next year,” she said.

But not all ven­dors were able to hold out on al­ter­ing their prices. Food ven­dors in par­tic­u­lar have had to deal with con­tin­ued in­creas­es in the cost of food goods.

A family enjoyed some of the food sold at the Divali Nagar on Saturday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

“Cost of food prices is very dif­fer­ent as op­posed to pre­vi­ous years. The cost of flour and oil is very ex­pen­sive. As in pre­vi­ous years, we’d pay like $230 for flour and this year we paid like $375, close to $400 for the same flour so it has been tougher,” said Sal­i­ma Mo­hammed, own­er of Sal­i­ma’s Cho­ka House.

While prices of food goods have in­creased glob­al­ly, in the past 10 months var­i­ous food items lo­cal­ly have fol­lowed.

In June 2022, the Na­tion­al Flour Mills an­nounced a hike in re­tail and whole­sale flour prices (28 per cent and 33 per cent re­spec­tive­ly), the main in­gre­di­ent for many Di­vali del­i­ca­cies.

And while this might force food ven­dors to raise their prices, there is an­oth­er fac­tor, the in­crease in gas prices which was hiked twice for the year thus far.

Anand Sookoo, co-own­er of A&T Sweet Treats, ad­mit­ted that he has had to ad­just how he con­ducts his busi­ness and be ‘smart’ with his op­er­a­tions.

“If you have a diesel en­gine you pay less, if you have a gas ve­hi­cle you pay more,” Sookoo said.

As pre­sent­ed in the 2023 bud­get last month, the price of gas and diesel fu­el in­creased by $1.50 re­spec­tive­ly, which made Sookoo cal­cu­late his costs dif­fer­ent­ly.

“I used to shop for stocks every two weeks. Now I go once a month, so I have no oth­er choice but to do it like that and buy stuff in bulk. I can’t be chang­ing my prices every week or every oth­er week like what the gov­ern­ment is do­ing,” he added.

In ad­di­tion to in­creas­ing costs, many ven­dors claimed that there was an in­creased cost in the rental of spaces for ven­dors to sell their goods dur­ing the nine nights of the Di­vali Na­gar, which would have al­so forced some busi­ness own­ers to in­crease their own prices.

In one so­cial me­dia post, a busi­ness own­er ac­cused the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) for their lack of ‘con­sid­er­a­tion’ call­ing out the $2,000 hike in booth rental rates.

“We the booth hold­ers have to pro­vide floor­ing, tent side pieces, chairs and ta­bles, ban­ners, decor, ex­tra staff, ad­ver­tise our ex­is­tence at the event,” the so­cial me­dia post stat­ed, while an­nounc­ing their choice to not par­tic­i­pate in the Na­gar.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, NCIC pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo ad­mit­ted that while the costs of booths went up by ten per cent, it was very much need­ed since the an­nu­al event is the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s on­ly source of in­come.

“We are de­pen­dent on the gov­ern­ment’s sub­ven­tion, if and when it comes,” Man­ga­roo said.

He said that the in­crease in costs would have al­so con­tributed to the hir­ing of in­creased se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to en­sure the safe­ty of both ven­dors and pa­trons.

“Ad­mis­sion for the last two and a half decades is ab­solute­ly free to the pub­lic. There is no charge at all. There’s an­oth­er source of mon­ey and that’s the car park. Out of that we have to give artistes, the me­dia, our booth hold­ers, we have to give our ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and our spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests. So even that rev­enue, the $20 we get from the car park, that isn’t enough mon­ey to run the Na­gar,” he added.

But with all the eco­nom­ic hikes, ven­dors and busi­ness own­ers are hope­ful and are will­ing to make sac­ri­fices so that oth­ers are able to en­joy the Di­vali sea­son.

Sookoo ad­mit­ted that for his busi­ness, he has re­fused to raise his costs and has set­tled by ac­cept­ing a less­er prof­it. While this may add to his strug­gles and slow down the rate to achieve his life goals, he thinks about the con­sumers who he be­lieves are in the same sit­u­a­tion.

“Be­fore the in­creas­es, I use to make 100 per cent mark up. Now, even though my prof­it is less, I am still mak­ing more mon­ey than I would have made if I charged my full price,” he said.

For Sime­on See­brat, own­er of Tri­ni’s Pep­per Pot Treats, he be­lieves that he has no choice be­cause there are many peo­ple who have it worse than him. He em­ploys many young peo­ple who choose to work, sin­gle moth­ers and Venezue­lan mi­grants and said that he is not pre­pared to let them down.

“Well you have no choice. You see a lot of the peo­ple here, this is the big thing for the year. The rest will be small­er events where we wouldn’t be mak­ing as much. So you take it or leave it.”

The Di­vali Na­gar first be­gan in 1986 at the Mid Cen­tre Mall’s car park.

“The idea was to have a place where the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty could par­tic­i­pate in Di­vali. Pri­or to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­gar, Di­vali was cel­e­brat­ed main­ly at pri­vate homes and in vil­lages with a strong Hin­du pres­ence,” the Na­tion­al Trust has stat­ed.

Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions were held for the first time at Narsa­loo Ra­maya Marg Road, Ch­agua­nas in 1991.

The Di­vali Na­gar Site is list­ed on the Na­tion­al Trust’s Her­itage As­set In­ven­to­ry which is the of­fi­cial list of T&T’s his­toric sites that are wor­thy of no­ta­tion and preser­va­tion.

“The land for the Di­vali Na­gar was grant­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. The NCIC was grant­ed fif­teen acres of land by the NAR Gov­ern­ment in 1989. The land was pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Ca­roni 1975 Ltd. The Di­vali Na­gar site is cur­rent­ly 27 acres,” it stat­ed.

The fa­cil­i­ties on the site in­clude the Bis­ram Gopie Sangeet Bha­van Au­di­to­ri­um which is the main build­ing on the Di­vali Na­gar site.

The Di­vali Na­gar is the flag­ship project of the NCIC and has an an­nu­al theme which is tak­en from dif­fer­ent as­pects of Hin­duism.

The theme for this year’s cel­e­bra­tion is Hin­du Pant (Hin­du De­nom­i­na­tions).

“The year 2022 has giv­en us all the much longed for op­por­tu­ni­ty to hold a full-fledged Di­vali Na­gar once again,” the NCIC stat­ed.

Tout­ed as the biggest Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion out­side of In­dia, the NCIC’s Di­vali Na­gar has ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties and cul­tur­al per­for­mances by Trinida­di­ans, from the wider In­di­an Di­as­po­ra and from In­dia.

A range of items are sold at the Di­vali Na­gar in­clud­ing In­di­an cloth­ing, Di­vali sup­plies and In­di­an and In­do-Trinida­di­an foods.

It is a lo­cal tourism event which at­tract­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150,000 peo­ple over the nine-night pe­ri­od in 2019.

Tonight is the cul­mi­na­tion of the nine nights of the Di­vali Na­gar.