Opinions
An Elections Year
This is a season for elections, worldwide. Here in Canada Alberta’s Rachel Notley (NDP) is trailing Jason Kenney’s conservatives, with candidates in both parties under some investigation, including Kenney, whose leadership win is the subject of an RCMP probe, plus Notley’s accusing him of alliance with right wing extremists. Kenney brought in Federal conservative leader Andrew Scheer to back his campaign, despite Scheer’s alleged linking with the contemptible white supremacist Faith Goldy. Notley rejected NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, because of opposite
views on oil pipelines. By the time you read this, election results should be known. PEI votes on April 23rd, Newfoundland and Labrador October 8th, and Canada October 21st. Overseas, elections dot the global calendar, some concluded, many to come, in all continents. Major current ones are in India, the world’s most massive democratic elections, with 900,000 voters. They began on April 11th , amid unrest in Kashmir, and end on May 19th, with results on May 23rd. This timetable is due to the need to shift electoral and security paraphernalia across the huge country; it’s a logistic triumph to complete an Indian general election, the equivalent of 40-45 Canadian elections all at once! It is a challenge for participants. Incumbent PM Narendra Modi has a poor press outside India where his promotion of Hinduism seems to be a bother among the uninformed. By contrast, the INC had down-played or ignored it in the first fifty years of India’s independence. Modi’s stance is no different from the Saudis on Islam, the Pope on Christianity, or Netanyahu on Judaism.
A BJP election manifesto stated, "Nationalism is our inspiration. Empowerment of the marginalized is our vision. Good governance is our mantra. We spent the last term fulfilling needs of common Indians. Now our goal is to fulfill aspirations of common Indians." It promised to increase farming income, reform taxes, push trade and investment, lowering tax rates, “simplify the Goods and Services Tax process”. They would improve education and healthcare, bring clean drinking water to all Indians, enhance infrastructure generally, reduce corruption. curb terrorism, citing the chronic killings in Kashmir by Pakistan-backed Jaish e Mohamed and Lashkar e Taiba.
The main opposition INC promises increased attention to development and social services: "Justice for the poor, justice for farmers, justice for the youth, justice for the ill and disabled and the common man who is scared, in colleges, in universities, journalists, businessmen, for all."
They rebutted the BJP”s performance claims. The INC leader Rahul Gandhi has registered his candidacy in two states, UP and Kerala.
April 13th was the centenary of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar, India, a blatant example of officially excused premeditated murder by a British officer, a black day for Indian relations with Britain, for which the latter has yet to apologise, while retaining a surprising level of support from India in commerce and international relations. It’s truly amazing to see how forgiving Indians have been to their former oppressor, and how they have swallowed the centuries of hate and vilification, and the millions killed by people who are still an immature and bullying nation. That this stance persists is seen in the pronouncements of Gavin Williamson, British Secretary of State for Defence since November 2017, an outspoken anti-Russian in a visit to the Ukraine, and a neo-colonial in wanting western military bases in Guyana or Montserrat, and Brunei or Singapore in the East! Such gall! He sounded like Churchill, wild and wayward, and seemed to have ignored history. He is in Theresa May’s clique, subservient to Trump, and has just taken custody of Julian Assange after his expulsion by Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno (odd fist name for a rightist) from their London embassy; he has kowtowed to the US presumably for debt relief, and to punish Assange for erratic behaviour in custody. Trump has turned 180° in his position on Assange, backing a nebulous charge of “’conspiracy” now laid. England will extradite him but the process is likely to be a long one, and Sweden may have a prior case for extradition there. Time will clarify.
Should we believe that Washington is telling the truth this time? Should we, after “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” “Iranian nukes,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” “Russiagate,” Golan Heights, and on and on, ad infinitum?
No one in their wildest nightmare could have invented an erratic fiction named Trump. Only reality could frame such a thing. God bless America!
A BJP election manifesto stated, "Nationalism is our inspiration. Empowerment of the marginalized is our vision. Good governance is our mantra. We spent the last term fulfilling needs of common Indians. Now our goal is to fulfill aspirations of common Indians." It promised to increase farming income, reform taxes, push trade and investment, lowering tax rates, “simplify the Goods and Services Tax process”. They would improve education and healthcare, bring clean drinking water to all Indians, enhance infrastructure generally, reduce corruption. curb terrorism, citing the chronic killings in Kashmir by Pakistan-backed Jaish e Mohamed and Lashkar e Taiba.
The main opposition INC promises increased attention to development and social services: "Justice for the poor, justice for farmers, justice for the youth, justice for the ill and disabled and the common man who is scared, in colleges, in universities, journalists, businessmen, for all."
They rebutted the BJP”s performance claims. The INC leader Rahul Gandhi has registered his candidacy in two states, UP and Kerala.
April 13th was the centenary of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar, India, a blatant example of officially excused premeditated murder by a British officer, a black day for Indian relations with Britain, for which the latter has yet to apologise, while retaining a surprising level of support from India in commerce and international relations. It’s truly amazing to see how forgiving Indians have been to their former oppressor, and how they have swallowed the centuries of hate and vilification, and the millions killed by people who are still an immature and bullying nation. That this stance persists is seen in the pronouncements of Gavin Williamson, British Secretary of State for Defence since November 2017, an outspoken anti-Russian in a visit to the Ukraine, and a neo-colonial in wanting western military bases in Guyana or Montserrat, and Brunei or Singapore in the East! Such gall! He sounded like Churchill, wild and wayward, and seemed to have ignored history. He is in Theresa May’s clique, subservient to Trump, and has just taken custody of Julian Assange after his expulsion by Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno (odd fist name for a rightist) from their London embassy; he has kowtowed to the US presumably for debt relief, and to punish Assange for erratic behaviour in custody. Trump has turned 180° in his position on Assange, backing a nebulous charge of “’conspiracy” now laid. England will extradite him but the process is likely to be a long one, and Sweden may have a prior case for extradition there. Time will clarify.
Should we believe that Washington is telling the truth this time? Should we, after “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” “Iranian nukes,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” “Russiagate,” Golan Heights, and on and on, ad infinitum?
No one in their wildest nightmare could have invented an erratic fiction named Trump. Only reality could frame such a thing. God bless America!
When generations clash making ‘tea’
Romeo Kaseram
I wonder what Ma would say today should she still be around to call for her morning cup. There are those wonderful, thrilling moments when I hear her raspy voice calling to me across the decades. I could just hear her now, speaking out strong and firm, and no longer using that feeble, fading voice during her declining years, saying, “Beta [son], please bring a cup of ‘tea’ for your nice Nani, nah!” I find myself wondering how that reviving cup of coffee would be made were she alive today. For sure, it would cause a major discussion in our modern-day kitchen. Right away, Ma’s great-grandsons would intervene, one reaching strongly across
to turn off the glowing, electric stovetop, on which I had just put water to boil. I imagine the intervention going thusly, with her great-grandson shaking unkempt locks with disapproval and speaking from a great height using an instructive baritone: “Dad, two things. One, why are you boiling water when we have a Keurig sitting on the kitchen counter? And secondly, great-grandma asked for tea. Why are you making instant coffee?”
In defence of my actions, replying to the second question first, I would say to my grandmother’s bewildered great-grandson, “Son, where we come from, and particularly during your great-grandmother’s time, when someone asked for ‘tea’, they meant ‘coffee’.”
Now to answer the first question involves a complex connectivity of sensations, the passage of many years, and poignant memories that will never go away.
Among my early memories as a young boy growing up back home is my first taste of coffee, illicitly spoon-fed by my grandmother from her freshly-brewed cup. Now Ma making her morning coffee was more than ritual; it was a way of life.
I recall her reaching into branches, handpicking each red-and-ready coffee bean from trees growing in our nearby, cultivated fields. These she dried out in the sunshine, roasted in an iron pot over a hot, wood fire, then ground on a curved stone with a round rock she selected for its turning by the rolling current in a nearby river.
The aroma of newly-ground, freshly roasted coffee filled the kitchen, and the yard, and then crept over fences across to other houses. Until a neighbour, unable to restrain her taste buds and an inquisitive, intervening tongue, called out from a few doors down, across open yards populated by patiently scratching chickens, and a flock of tethered, contented goats.
“Mammy! Oui, Mammy! Your ‘tea’ over smelling nice! Make an extra cup for me, nah! Call me over when you’re done!” This neighbour issuing her friendly imperative, her hair tied with a white bandana, arms flecked with foaming laundry soap, would later stand in her backyard, make a sipping gesture to remind my grandmother, who obscured by woodsmoke, would beckon when the coffee pot was well underway with a roiling boil.
This is Ma’s recipe for her neighbourly concoction. Fill a pot with water and put to boil on a fireside flaming with dry, mossy wood gathered from an orange orchard two plantations away. When the water is boiling, toss in two or three – make it four handfuls – of recently picked, dried, dark-roasted, and hand-ground coffee. Bring to a boil for ten minutes until the pot is roiling, frothing, and gurgling like a river’s current, its steam filling the house, then climbing over hibiscus fences so neighbours begin inviting themselves over.
A timid knock on the kitchen window, followed by: “Mammy? Your ‘tea’ smelling nice too bad! You didn’t make an extra cup for a greedy neighbour?” Ma’s pot always had leftovers; and among the grounds in her coffee pot was an extra cup of ‘tea’.
The scent of coffee brewing is among my early foretastes of the homely smells for a happy house. Other early scents are Ma roasting and grinding cumin seeds; and the pungent flaring of hot peppers burning in hot oil, preparatory to an explosion following as seasoned vegetables are tossed into a superheated, iron pot.
I suspect Ma knew she should not have given me sips from her coffee cup. Also generous with unhealthy dollops of condensed milk, to receive a sip or two from her enamel cup, the lips careful on the rim for the rising steam and its warm, rejuvenating flow, was to be lifted into rarified space with an infusion suitable for the palate of the gods. In Ma’s eyes, what was good for the gods was even better for her grandson.
Yet she cautioned me, saying, “Don’t drink too much. It will hurt your back.”
As I imagine it, the generations since Ma has passed would conflict were she to call today for her morning cup of ‘tea’. I would insist on making it on the stovetop. Her great grandsons would instinctively reach for today’s electronic instruments of convenience and immediacy.
Perhaps we would compromise and go to a coffee-shop. We would line up, order coffee in paper cups, and Ma’s great-grandsons would roll their eyes over me teasing the bewildered attendant with the business-smile, when I ask: “Do you serve coffee with condensed milk?”
In defence of my actions, replying to the second question first, I would say to my grandmother’s bewildered great-grandson, “Son, where we come from, and particularly during your great-grandmother’s time, when someone asked for ‘tea’, they meant ‘coffee’.”
Now to answer the first question involves a complex connectivity of sensations, the passage of many years, and poignant memories that will never go away.
Among my early memories as a young boy growing up back home is my first taste of coffee, illicitly spoon-fed by my grandmother from her freshly-brewed cup. Now Ma making her morning coffee was more than ritual; it was a way of life.
I recall her reaching into branches, handpicking each red-and-ready coffee bean from trees growing in our nearby, cultivated fields. These she dried out in the sunshine, roasted in an iron pot over a hot, wood fire, then ground on a curved stone with a round rock she selected for its turning by the rolling current in a nearby river.
The aroma of newly-ground, freshly roasted coffee filled the kitchen, and the yard, and then crept over fences across to other houses. Until a neighbour, unable to restrain her taste buds and an inquisitive, intervening tongue, called out from a few doors down, across open yards populated by patiently scratching chickens, and a flock of tethered, contented goats.
“Mammy! Oui, Mammy! Your ‘tea’ over smelling nice! Make an extra cup for me, nah! Call me over when you’re done!” This neighbour issuing her friendly imperative, her hair tied with a white bandana, arms flecked with foaming laundry soap, would later stand in her backyard, make a sipping gesture to remind my grandmother, who obscured by woodsmoke, would beckon when the coffee pot was well underway with a roiling boil.
This is Ma’s recipe for her neighbourly concoction. Fill a pot with water and put to boil on a fireside flaming with dry, mossy wood gathered from an orange orchard two plantations away. When the water is boiling, toss in two or three – make it four handfuls – of recently picked, dried, dark-roasted, and hand-ground coffee. Bring to a boil for ten minutes until the pot is roiling, frothing, and gurgling like a river’s current, its steam filling the house, then climbing over hibiscus fences so neighbours begin inviting themselves over.
A timid knock on the kitchen window, followed by: “Mammy? Your ‘tea’ smelling nice too bad! You didn’t make an extra cup for a greedy neighbour?” Ma’s pot always had leftovers; and among the grounds in her coffee pot was an extra cup of ‘tea’.
The scent of coffee brewing is among my early foretastes of the homely smells for a happy house. Other early scents are Ma roasting and grinding cumin seeds; and the pungent flaring of hot peppers burning in hot oil, preparatory to an explosion following as seasoned vegetables are tossed into a superheated, iron pot.
I suspect Ma knew she should not have given me sips from her coffee cup. Also generous with unhealthy dollops of condensed milk, to receive a sip or two from her enamel cup, the lips careful on the rim for the rising steam and its warm, rejuvenating flow, was to be lifted into rarified space with an infusion suitable for the palate of the gods. In Ma’s eyes, what was good for the gods was even better for her grandson.
Yet she cautioned me, saying, “Don’t drink too much. It will hurt your back.”
As I imagine it, the generations since Ma has passed would conflict were she to call today for her morning cup of ‘tea’. I would insist on making it on the stovetop. Her great grandsons would instinctively reach for today’s electronic instruments of convenience and immediacy.
Perhaps we would compromise and go to a coffee-shop. We would line up, order coffee in paper cups, and Ma’s great-grandsons would roll their eyes over me teasing the bewildered attendant with the business-smile, when I ask: “Do you serve coffee with condensed milk?”
