I shall never forget the windows to Germany, Africa, India, afforded me by Mrs Annaleise Kelshall, Mrs Yvonne Ashby, Mrs Tara Sharma. And their gifts of succour, comfort, love, guidance that we typically received only from our mothers and grandmothers.
Mrs Annaleise Kelshall was the wife of the iconic Trinidad lawyer, Mr Jack Kelshall. She was born in Ulm, in pre-War Germany. She lived at Phillipine in a house that Jack built. An elegant L-shaped manse, looking out from a small balcony over a slanting meadow, all shielded by monstrously grand samaan trees.
The house was cloistered. As soon as you got past the cannon in mock guard at the front gate, you became detached from the rest of the island. The music of Schubert, Mozart, Brahms. The candlesticks on the long oaken table. The mantlepiece and drawers decked with ancestral silver cutlery. And the kitchen, the shiny pots and pans turned-backwards hung up on walls. The little trough filled with rosemary, thyme, basil, and fruit, gleaned from the yard, pickled in bottles and jars.
And the long stem of the capital L, a long corridor hung with paintings on one side, and rooms on the other. And upstairs, a large library of Victorian/Edwardian books, guarded by military relics, by sentinel ceremonial swords. And the little room with the ash jar and single cot where Jack retreated to. And the conjoined workshop and toolroom downstairs, where he built toys, a rocking horse and little sail ships
The home lay halfway between my home in DâAbadie and Chatham, the site of the intended ALCOA smelter. And it was close to the HRM Debe camp. And there I often sought refuge. Recovery. Elegant breakfasts and lunches, at the long table, often with my fascinated son. Annaleise was a harbourer, of revolutionary types. Harbouring from the background. All her confidences she placed in me. The CIA in Guyana whom she fled from, and Jack, who had gone to Cheddi Jaganâs legal defence, whom she fled to.
She never let her German down. In etiquette, speech, morals, manners, she was German from point to hilt. She lived up to the crest, hung on a wall in the drawing room, the scions of olden Germany, Ulm. Trinis, and even her Trini/English daughters, puzzled her. She had lived through the War as a child, and I marvelled, at her funeral last month in Cascade, that here was a German/Trinidadian that toted an entire war â she told me of post-War Germans eating the flesh of bombed horses on the iced street – in her bosom.
Mrs Yvonne Ashby, the midwife, nurse of Chatham was fierce. She was the great-granddaughter of enslaved Africans. But her grandfather was not enslaved. Didnât he not knock an overseer off his horse? And didnât he maroon himself in the Chatham Forest? Where he lived self-sufficiently, making his own sugar, distilling his own rum? And didnât she herself possess a precious feel for our land? Patriotism, like no Prime Minister could? When the ALCOA heads and local NGC technocrats held their propaganda show at the Chatham community centre, didnât she cry: âNo smelter! Take your filthy lucre and go!?â
Her timeworn wooden home rested on the crest of a windy hill in Chatham, overlooking the bedraggled pastures, the Chatham Diary, already having been shut down for smelter. She was my intellectual comrade. Her stand was resolute and no-nonsensical. âA pinch of socialism is good,â she chided Prime Minister Patrick Manning. âGod donât like stupid,â she mocked impishly. Just across the border lay Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution.
Mrs Ashby also provided me with refuge. Intellectual and emotional refuge. He life in her house of worsted wood was lean, spare, frugal. I was disciple to her rich teachings. She was a development jefe. âLook at the little ones (voting-age youths) just walking about. What they know? Who taught them? What do our leaders know about making a society? Building something from scratch?â
At Miss Ashbyâs funeral, there were few persons. No media, no accolades. I wondered at the life and death of our real, ital national heroes. Not a little finger, not a hand to wave, from the elites she abhorred. Good.
Mrs Tara Sharma was my gurudita. She lived in a tall wooden grey house opposite doubles row in Debe. She spoke Hindi, learnt it at the feet of her grandfathers and her own gurus. She read the Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita and knew each sutra, verse, by heart. She enlivened these ancient verses, not just with her discourses, but with song. Burst she would, with song, in the middle of a sermon. Not just religious songs, but secular songs, olden hits from Bollywood.
She introduced me to the bedi (altar). I had known the bedi before, but from afar. The incense rising from the altar of pitchpine sticks, mango leaves, flowers, tariahs, lotas, brass plates (thali). And gave me a name. Vede. Warrior. Both at our Highway Reroute Debe camp, and at her home, in her ancestral temple, she gave me room at the bedi, close to the Gods. She commissioned me to build her a rudimentary temple, at the top of a lofty mound, the Moriche, on her own land, in the midst of the Oropouche Lagoon, the seat of Dharti Mata.
And as she did to others, she dosed me with instruction. Almost daily. With mantras, how to fast, how to upkeep my hunger strike, how to pray and to do months-long sacrifices. She stood resolutely with the Highway Reroute Movement. She spoke with authority, was afraid of no man or government. Her repository of ancient text, carried at the tip of her tongue, bore an answer for all occasions, all retorts. At her cremation, at Mosquito Creek, I wondered if Caribbean Hinduism would ever be as rich again.
These were my eternal comrade-in-arms, straddling worlds, nations – bestowing me with beneficence, in subcultures far away from the hubbub of the populist state and media.