T&T is a land of amuse­ment, the kind that makes you ei­ther burst out laugh­ing or shake your head in dis­be­lief. Last week gave us a bit of both. First, there was news of the law­suit filed against the Comp­trol­ler of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion over the seizure of a sex doll that was im­port­ed in­to the coun­try last De­cem­ber. Lawyers for the claimant are con­tend­ing that the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion doesn’t ex­plic­it­ly ban adult toys. So this is about our right to tool—as­sist­ed self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion—good to know.

Then there was the sto­ry of a Gas­par­il­lo fam­i­ly who claims to be­ing ter­rorised by a three-foot-tall su­per­nat­ur­al crea­ture be­lieved to be a “buck”. Not on­ly is this a mis­chie­vous, thiev­ing buck, but a horny one as well, for it’s been at­tempt­ing to se­duce the la­dy of the house­hold. Per­haps some­one should point it in the di­rec­tion of the cus­toms ware­house where the sex doll is be­ing housed.

Fi­nal­ly, there was the pub­lic brouha­ha sur­round­ing the di­lap­i­dat­ed state of the Li­on House—the an­ces­tral home of the Capildeo fam­i­ly lo­cat­ed in Ch­agua­nas—that was stirred up by the city’s may­or, Gopaul Bood­han, and Tabaquite MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan. All three sto­ries epit­o­mise how Trin­bag­o­ni­ans come up with new and in­ter­est­ing ways to grab the coun­try’s at­ten­tion. But while the first two might have made you chuck­le, the third looks more like a shame­ful pap­pyshow.

Most cit­i­zens prob­a­bly know of the Li­on House as the birth­place of VS Naipaul, and how it served as the in­spi­ra­tion for his No­bel Prize-win­ning book A House for Mr Biswas. Be­yond that, be­cause of the long shad­ow cast by Naipaul’s achieve­ments, it’s easy to over­look the con­tri­bu­tions made by his Capildeo cousins. Pun­dit Capildeo, the pa­tri­arch of the fam­i­ly and builder of the house, was a self-made man. He came to Trinidad in 1845, as an in­den­tured labour­er and rose to be­come a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man and landown­er. His two sons, Simb­hoonath and Rudranath, were both politi­cians and promi­nent mem­bers of the In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. The el­der one was among the found­ing mem­bers of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty and served in the Par­lia­ment from 1956 to 1966. The younger one, be­fore en­ter­ing lo­cal pol­i­tics, earned a PhD in Math­e­mat­i­cal Physics and lec­tured at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. He was al­so award­ed the Trin­i­ty Cross in 1969. It should be not­ed that the ma­tri­arch of the fam­i­ly, Soogee Capildeo, en­sured that her daugh­ters were ed­u­cat­ed along with her sons, some­thing that was un­com­mon for Hin­du girls at that time. And al­though they went on to live qui­et lives and have fam­i­lies of their own, one of them, Kalawati, served as a sen­a­tor. In­deed, even with­out the Naipaul con­nec­tion, the Li­on House is an icon of his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance for pro­duc­ing one of our coun­try’s lead­ing fam­i­lies.

Be­fore last week’s hys­ter­i­cal and over­ly-en­thu­si­as­tic call for in­ter­ven­tion, Prof Brins­ley Sama­roo raised the is­sue of the struc­ture’s poor con­di­tion dur­ing a con­fer­ence held in 2015 on the lit­er­ary works of the Naipaul fam­i­ly. He lament­ed that it was an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s fail­ure to pri­ori­tise our his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al her­itage; leav­ing such sights to suc­cumb to obliv­ion, both from the phys­i­cal land­scape and from our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. De­spite the neg­a­tive press, im­ply­ing that the site is be­ing ne­glect­ed by the cur­rent own­ers, the House has al­ready un­der­gone a restora­tion. In 1991, Suren­dranath Capildeo, the grand­son of Pun­dit Capildeo, com­mis­sioned lo­cal ar­chi­tect, Col­in Laird, to re­in­force the struc­ture. This was done at the per­son­al ex­pense of Mr Capildeo. The project was com­plet­ed in 2001 and no fur­ther work has been done since. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, both Mr Capildeo and Mr Laird re­cent­ly passed on. And the famed house that brought them to­geth­er seems des­tined for a sim­i­lar fate.

It’s in­ter­est­ing how no one in the past 18 years, not from the Gov­ern­ment, not from the Hin­du-In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, and not from the Na­tion­al Trust, has shown any in­ter­est in the Li­on House. Not even when VS Naipaul passed on last year. But now, all of a sud­den, there’s this fer­vent push by mis­ters Ram­bachan and Bood­han for the State to step in to ac­quire and pre­serve this piece of our na­tion­al his­to­ry. I can’t help but won­der whether these men have ul­te­ri­or mo­tives in mind. Af­ter all, they could have qui­et­ly ap­proached the Capildeo fam­i­ly with their pro­pos­als to ren­o­vate the struc­ture. In­stead, they boor­ish­ly thrust it in­to the pub­lic do­main, and in do­ing so cre­at­ed a farce. Don’t get me wrong—ren­o­vat­ing the Li­on House is a worth­while en­deav­our. But the tim­ing of this cru­sade by the be­fore men­tioned gen­tle­man, show­ing up like a cou­ple of “John­ny-come-latelies”, seems more like an at­tempt to gain some po­lit­i­cal mileage. Worse yet, it comes at the ex­pense of a good man’s name and a fam­i­ly’s lega­cy.

Putting those sus­pi­cions aside, con­sid­er­ing the State’s track record when it comes to the care of our her­itage sites, I wouldn’t blame the Capildeo fam­i­ly for be­ing scep­ti­cal or out­right re­fus­ing any in­volve­ment by ex­ter­nal par­ties. Restora­tion projects around the coun­try—the Red House and Pres­i­dent’s House for ex­am­ple—of­ten end up be­ing per­pet­u­al eye­sores of scaf­fold­ing and con­struc­tion equip­ment, not to men­tion bot­tom­less pits in­to which tax­pay­er mon­ey is thrown. Even af­ter work is com­plet­ed, most of these re­fur­bished build­ings are closed off to the pub­lic and sub­se­quent­ly for­got­ten. I’m not say­ing that the struc­ture is bet­ter off in its cur­rent con­di­tion, but I trust that the Capildeo fam­i­ly (or some of its mem­bers, at least) have their own ideas for the fu­ture of the Li­on House. They should be con­sult­ed, not em­bar­rassed. But, of course, that’s not how things are done in T&T.

You know…if VS Naipaul were alive, I sus­pect he would have got­ten some per­verse plea­sure out of all of this. The sex doll, the buck, the Li­on House—it all reads like a satire con­jured up from his own mind. But while the first two could be com­pared to Miguel Street and Mys­tic Masseur, high­light­ing the charm­ing quirks and su­per­sti­tions of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, the third reads like the iden­ti­ty con­fu­sion of Mim­ic Men. The ac­tions of MP Ram­bachan and May­or Bood­han show how eas­i­ly we con­fuse cul­ture and his­to­ry with pol­i­tics, and how we like­wise ex­ploit one to sup­port the oth­er. That, it would seem, is the Naipaullian para­dox that we are locked in­to. So the Li­on House may nev­er roar again in grandeur. But, even in death, VS Naipaul is roar­ing with laugh­ter at the mock­ery we’ve made of it.