opinions

“Dad, what is ‘lime’?” was the raised-eyebrow response. “This isn’t the citrus, is it? Is this another Trinidad word? Like ‘boogoolops’”?
My uncles loved to ‘lime’. It was a favourite part of their evening, after the day’s hot sun, the firesides in smoky kitchens blazing under pots that were vigorously boiling curry mango, and kneaded flour for roti at rest in large, chipped enamel basins. It was a time before the evening meal when they congregated with friends in a meeting place called the “gap”, which was the threshold between the house and road. It was a moment of communing as the evening began settling down with querulous chickens flying clumsily up to roost, and mosquitoes arriving with sullen, predatory intent.
They talked about their day “by the gap” – then they were apprentices, just like the other young men. Their days were spent learning trades alongside electricians, which my younger uncle followed later in life. My other uncle was attached to a construction company and was learning the gears and levers that moved heavy equipment – he too went on to spend the rest of his working days driving front end loaders and backhoes. The other young men in the village were also setting out on similar journeys, the time being an incipient one in their young lives.
And so they “limed by the gap”, talking about their day, sharing the new experiences of a brave new world which they had only just begun to tentatively explore.
Too, they would talk about girls, slapping each other on the back with approval after vivid descriptions of conquests which even I at my tender age of five or six knew to be mostly fiction, filled with longing and hope, all stitched into the hormonal make-believe of suspended credibility.
And they talked about a bigger world, one that was beyond the dusty ‘gap’ fronted with hibiscus fences where we were standing, occasionally reaching down to slap at the marauding mosquitoes, scratching the stings on the lower leg with the big toe of the other foot. This was the bigger world only seen in the comic books and an occasional magazine that found its way into the group. The full colour on the books were worn on the front covers, the pages dog-eared and thumbed repeatedly through much borrowing, a few of the faces in the pictures disfigured because the ads on the back of these pages had been skillfully cut out using a razor blade. These missing ads were filled out as far as possible - the fields for States and zip codes bare due to the limits of our world - with the intent to be sent away with difficult-to-acquire US dollars, with the hope to receive by return mail a transistor radio hidden in a ball-point pen, or a magnifying glass that contained ten other gadgets that were mostly useless among the cane fields that filled our landscape in any direction the eyes turned. But even in its uselessness, possession of such an object was prized because it was a link to a bigger, thriving and developed world.
On weekends the ‘lime’ took place by the junction. Here was a point of confluence – it was a stopover point for vehicles that were driving through the village on the way to other villages, or arriving from the small town that was at the edge of the miles and miles of sugar canes. With these vehicles came news from other groups that were ‘liming’ at similar junctions in other villages; passengers in the cars also brought news from the town where the market thrived, and with this, word-of-mouth events.
I recalled one item of news sent the youths in the village into a frenzy, my uncles among them. Word had come that another village was putting together a band of jabs-jabs for the Carnival, and were challenging everyone else. My uncles joined in the event, thrilled with the promise of the ‘lime’, sticking small mirrors on their clothes and happily making whips with thick rope.
In the end, they were soundly beaten, unaware that the jabs-jabs traveled from village to village exchanging huge body blows with the whips. The strongest and bravest were left standing in the ring cracking their whips on the road with fearsome, explosive power.
“The ‘lime’ turn sour,” my grandmother said with vexation that night as she rubbed soft candle on their painful welts.

February 18, 2009 issue
Opinions
V Day in India
	Valentine’s Day, although named for Catholic martyrs of pre-Christian Rome, became associated with romance through a chance remark by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Parliament of Fowles (which must have convened in May when birds mate, rather than cold February) and later by other Europeans, including Shakespeare who had Ophelia deflowered on St Valentine’s Eve! Various traditions followed. The holiday really became what it is today through 150 years of American mercantilism which promoted it to become the biggest spending day after Christmas, expanding in the past 40 years into Asia.
It made gains in Far East nations, but failed to penetrate into South Asia until Indian prosperity created - under secularist and open trade banners - a market for the rather (for most Indians) expensive Valentiniana that ten years ago began to enter India. The material is sexually explicit far beyond traditional Hindu views of public manners and modesty. Several social and religious moralists including Shiv Sena and Sri Ram Sena object to the exhibitionism of impressionable young Indians. Last week members of the SRS were arrested for assaulting women in Mangalore bars and threatening to marry couples courting in public. I had thought that the ritual whipping of women in public was confined to staunch Wahhabis whom I saw prowling in Arabian souks. While asserting a respect for “love” and “law” SRS announced their intent to quash public immorality and copy-cat displays of corrupting Western practices. (Did they perhaps misinterpret the initials VD?) Federal and State Governments should have foreseen this. Indians are not ready for western liberalism. It is probably not too late for Governments to take steps to mollify the majority while discreetly seeking a middle ground of individual restraint and public tolerance of new realities that will not endanger the nation. (The US had long proposed Indian failure as an aim of their foreign policy.) Although Indians are familiar with Khajuraho and other sexual temple art, the Kamasutra and Kokashastra, they see them as historical and static. The sides have squared off, spurred by Bollywood’s adoption of the more fleshy aspects of Western cinema without a full experience of the social and cultural structures that lessen their impact on an already immunised West. The threat to the republic is the same as what decimated unprepared natives on first exposure to European smallpox and tuberculosis. On the Valentine issue a “Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose Forward Women” launched a “pink panties campaign” for the women, countered by showers of pink condoms from opponents, with the telling message: “The pink chaddiwalas claim to be pub-going, loose, and forward. A condom will help them maintain being that." I cannot help thinking that both sides might be better engaged helping to lift the millions of Indians who still labour under the yoke of oppression, teaching them skills, not hate. Or they could campaign against Kashmiri separatists who also decry Americanisation but with an alien agenda. There are few ways beyond Satyagraha to arrest the inexorable Americanisation of India (now proceeding at its crudest levels) since the process is pushed by Indian industries, businesses, media and cinema that profit from it and wish now to concentrate near large cities in Special Economic Zones (SEZ), created from Government-approved “seizure” of small farms whose owners are already battling agribusinesses like Monsanto. Sadly such “sales” will NOT provide anything for farmers after the small purchase money is exhausted. The companies concerned have become powerhouses and are building land banks using the hated methods of American mercantilism, having hardly recovered from British excesses. In this scenario India celebrated its 61st Republic Day with the usual functions and parades, marred only by the absence of PM Manmohansingh who underwent cardiac surgery two days before on Jan 24. Meanwhile Canada eagerly awaits Obama’s visit. His electioneering messages still resonate although muted by the reality of an economic crisis that is pushing him into territory controlled by those who engineered and profited from the crisis. His lustre remains intact among supporters. The Bill just passed will no doubt enrich other vultures, but his vision of hope and the tone of deep concern for each citizen encourage confidence. Canadians feel the sincerity that Europe felt during his visit a year ago. In this troubled world his advocacy of unity and reconciliation has ignited desires among young and old especially the former to understand something of the history that surrounds us and even more hopefully delve into the past. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.)
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Thrills and pain come from ‘liming’
	When one talks about passing the time back in Trinidad, discussion turns to a national and cultural commitment to the word “liming.” As a young boy I was deemed innocuous around my young uncles and was able listen to discussion between them about the thrills that came with what in North America is called “hanging out”. Lately, I’ve realized that the expressions - “liming” and “hanging out” - are synonymous. This was the revelation last week while discouraging our teenaged sons from heading out to the mall to idle away an afternoon. They were going to “hang out” by the food court. “What! You want to go and ‘lime’ where?” Such was my stunned exclamation.
“Dad, what is ‘lime’?” was the raised-eyebrow response. “This isn’t the citrus, is it? Is this another Trinidad word? Like ‘boogoolops’”? My uncles loved to ‘lime’. It was a favourite part of their evening, after the day’s hot sun, the firesides in smoky kitchens blazing under pots that were vigorously boiling curry mango, and kneaded flour for roti at rest in large, chipped enamel basins. It was a time before the evening meal when they congregated with friends in a meeting place called the “gap”, which was the threshold between the house and road. It was a moment of communing as the evening began settling down with querulous chickens flying clumsily up to roost, and mosquitoes arriving with sullen, predatory intent. They talked about their day “by the gap” – then they were apprentices, just like the other young men. Their days were spent learning trades alongside electricians, which my younger uncle followed later in life. My other uncle was attached to a construction company and was learning the gears and levers that moved heavy equipment – he too went on to spend the rest of his working days driving front end loaders and backhoes. The other young men in the village were also setting out on similar journeys, the time being an incipient one in their young lives. And so they “limed by the gap”, talking about their day, sharing the new experiences of a brave new world which they had only just begun to tentatively explore. Too, they would talk about girls, slapping each other on the back with approval after vivid descriptions of conquests which even I at my tender age of five or six knew to be mostly fiction, filled with longing and hope, all stitched into the hormonal make-believe of suspended credibility. And they talked about a bigger world, one that was beyond the dusty ‘gap’ fronted with hibiscus fences where we were standing, occasionally reaching down to slap at the marauding mosquitoes, scratching the stings on the lower leg with the big toe of the other foot. This was the bigger world only seen in the comic books and an occasional magazine that found its way into the group. The full colour on the books were worn on the front covers, the pages dog-eared and thumbed repeatedly through much borrowing, a few of the faces in the pictures disfigured because the ads on the back of these pages had been skillfully cut out using a razor blade. These missing ads were filled out as far as possible - the fields for States and zip codes bare due to the limits of our world - with the intent to be sent away with difficult-to-acquire US dollars, with the hope to receive by return mail a transistor radio hidden in a ball-point pen, or a magnifying glass that contained ten other gadgets that were mostly useless among the cane fields that filled our landscape in any direction the eyes turned. But even in its uselessness, possession of such an object was prized because it was a link to a bigger, thriving and developed world. On weekends the ‘lime’ took place by the junction. Here was a point of confluence – it was a stopover point for vehicles that were driving through the village on the way to other villages, or arriving from the small town that was at the edge of the miles and miles of sugar canes. With these vehicles came news from other groups that were ‘liming’ at similar junctions in other villages; passengers in the cars also brought news from the town where the market thrived, and with this, word-of-mouth events. I recalled one item of news sent the youths in the village into a frenzy, my uncles among them. Word had come that another village was putting together a band of jabs-jabs for the Carnival, and were challenging everyone else. My uncles joined in the event, thrilled with the promise of the ‘lime’, sticking small mirrors on their clothes and happily making whips with thick rope. In the end, they were soundly beaten, unaware that the jabs-jabs traveled from village to village exchanging huge body blows with the whips. The strongest and bravest were left standing in the ring cracking their whips on the road with fearsome, explosive power. “The ‘lime’ turn sour,” my grandmother said with vexation that night as she rubbed soft candle on their painful welts.
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