Tag Archives: Vaneisa Baksh

Everyone seems to be gloomy, and angry. The far-flung wishes for merriment, good health and prosperity making their way into our spaces seem regular enough, but if you have a conversation using voices, you can hear the bleakness. Things are tight financially (at least in my circle), relationships are floundering, …

Looking for a document amongst my stack of old papers, I came across a column I had written in April 1998 for The Independent, a paper whose closure I still mourn. It began playfully enough, with me saying that my four-year-old daughter proudly proclaims herself to be West Indian: “Ambitious …

He was ranting angrily about his wife of 25 years. He often came to me to vent; she did too. There was little to do but listen. They were spectacularly unsuited for each other, but the thought of getting a divorce was an unthinkable one, because according to the way …

We’re on the brink of losing many things that have shaped us. Makes me wonder what we would select to put into a time capsule for the future. Memories can be brittle. We would need physical reminders in the future to imagine the world left behind. As we enter the …

I don’t recall ever seeing such a high level of apprehension in our space. Do you? It’s coming from a multitude of shadowed places, so many that it is difficult to put a finger on any one thing as the root. Armadas and squadrons loom on our horizon. Conflicting reports …

Thinking about the issue of belonging, I have been wanting to return to the subject of patriotism. I came across this column I had written in September 2021. Essentially, it was what I have wanted to say. So, here is a version of it. In the seventies, my large group …

It’s not a local thing, not a Caribbean thing even. It’s more of a contemporary thing; this craving for brown food. Everyone succumbs to the smell and crunch of crispy, fried platters of unhealthy greasiness. Every shade is available—golden, tan, pale—however you like it, you can order it, and devour …

Permit me to invite you to tag along on a short journey that fleetingly slips inside the minds and memories of a few legendary cricketers. Their conversations emanated from the landscape of cricket, but they are replete with insights into the broad tapestry of living. I probably devote too much …

A common pipeline fuelling the vitriol that is passing for discourse online has been the blatant racism and political partisanship that are obviously intertwined. It is tempting to ask how we got to this rabid state, but it has been festering for so long that we know it is not …

This past week has seen graduation exercises at The University of the West Indies (UWI)—a batch of degreed people flowing out of its gates, just over 3,000 of them. I’ve spoken to a few of them, getting a sense of their experiences within academia. Some were first-timers, others were completing …

A few days ago, Nemme McSweeney sent me the link to a YouTube video featuring the man behind Moruga Hill Rice, Mark Forgenie. I know it’s long, she said (just over an hour), but Mr Forgenie encapsulates so many healthy concepts we keep ignoring. It was riveting: a combination of …

Off the top of my head, I can count 14 North American fast-food franchises thriving in Trinidad and Tobago. There are probably more, but this is the figure I reached without scrubbing my brain too hard. It might not seem a lot, but the number of their outlets comes up …