Life in this fabled realm is predictable

Dear Editor,

I survey the local landscape, and rediscover the dismal predictability of life in this fabled realm. Whether it is about the routine or the occasional or the exceptional, there is the same numbing desultory story to carry past predictable people and predictable times.

Take the city’s roadways and it is yesterday, the same story today, and what is sure to be displayed tomorrow. Traffic police ranks liming (surely they can’t be working) in full regalia near the crowded, sometimes chaotic intersections. The problem is that the men in partial blue are either in the shade, or on the grass, or some distance away from hustling, bustling, worming, overtaking, violating actions occurring right under their eyes. They declare themselves unmoved, and actually are.

I declare that the Traffic Chief might be similarly inclined, given his own failure at redress. I question the utility of these scarce resources deployed as they are. It could be that they see themselves as air traffic controllers and thus not fully grounded in matters of the street. This might explain the blank, distant gazes; the thousand yard stares.

Regardless of which group is in power, and at which interval, their whole basis, their raison d’être, is submerged in cornerstones and foundation stones that speak to racial alignment and racial congregating.

This is just the way it is, and on which this society thrives.

Without justifying anything, or anyone, it is why I have always looked on with disbelief when the inexplicable laments, the rolling ricocheting predictable dirges spiral over racial discrimination. No matter how couched or rationalized, what else is there to expect?

And which one group hasn’t walked that swamp during their time and ascendancy, however subtly or secretly?

This is the civilization constructed and adored and embraced, thus let there be an end to these very predictable protestations about discrimination. That is as ubiquitous as the air breathed and heat endured. Endure it!

Having tabled the predictability of de facto racial discrimination at one time or another, and its underpinnings, it is just as predictable to watch meritocracy give way to palpable mediocrity (higher education is desperately called for and approved); fair opportunity diminish to obscenity; and democracy hasten into degeneracy.

What is unpredictable about any of these things in this lovely, but loveless land? Protesting Guyanese do not need a summit conference on any of this, so why the utterly predictable cries?

That earlier expression of racial congregation drives home another observable predictable reality. On this occasion, the congregation is not of political artists, but one ensconced in the halo of Gospel Good News.

For certainty, there is the soaring predictable high decibel trumpeting from the altars on the small matter of love of neighbour as the good book exhorts, indeed commands. It does not, however, require a spiritualist to draw a picture of the reception to that message in the hearts amidst the pews, or sketch (even in caricature) the post sermon clustering by kind and mental affiliation; or suspected affiliation. If someone said colour coding or party animals, then collect the jackpot.

From the aforementioned, it becomes increasingly clear that the only unpredictable constituencies are babies, addicts, confidence tricksters, and the crazed, among an otherwise inconsequential minority.

And they do not count in any statement of polls, whether legitimate or otherwise.

Leaders are predictable, too. One struggles against core instincts to shed the vile and vituperative and divisive. That beast is still spotted, and it is not an owl.

On the other hand, the other has come to characterize the largely bland, the unmoving usual, and the fashionably traditional. A young supporter said rubberstamp the other day. I thought that that was a little harsh.

It is not harsh to state that segments of the media are predictable, too. For extreme titillation, come over here and get soaked. Care should be exercised, as it is not always water. For blue blood propriety, and a huge dose of squeamishness, perambulate to the marketplace of ideas. Be careful: those ideas can be tentative in posture, word, and drive at times.

As I look at them, I realize that mistakes were made in their identifying mastheads; there is a reversal. The purveyors of the low ought to be about the cacophony of the market square, while the blue bloods are better suited to the heights. It is a long unbecoming splash though. Predictably though, Guyanese have come to expect (demand) their printed voyeurism in colour.

Now on a personal note, I recall those who were rollicking in their enthusiasms when I questioned or challenged or excoriated the old government. I could do no wrong. When I continue along the same lines (admittedly more gently) with the new kids in town (and they are, but don’t mistake them for The Eagles), many of those powerfully vocal one-time friends and fellow patriots (so I did believe) have become guarded, silent, and coolly distant. I am not an obeah man (although I could use the earnings) but that was predictable, too.

I leave with one more prediction: this one is also about me (beware narcissism). I limit myself to this simple standard: Honour, Duty, Country. I must be; be it for today and for every tomorrow in store.

Anybody out there who is of the same mindset is my spiritual friend, my soul mate. I reach to touch. And that is not only predictable, but immovable.

Yours faithfully, GHK Lall