Tag Archives: Vaneisa Baksh

Ask someone for help to resolve an issue and more often than not they will tell you that YouTube is your friend. It can sort out all sorts of technical things and show you how to fix or assemble gadgets and devices. Google it, they say. Today’s challenges are solved …

I was a fair way into my column when the call came. It was from one of the sharpest, most beautiful minds I know. He is not even forty, but he has accumulated wisdom far beyond his years—partly because he has lived a life that has been buffeted from all …

I have a question—a few actually. They are related to the policies at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, commonly known as Mt Hope hospital. I was genuinely perplexed at the procedures regarding patients who had been admitted through the Accident and Emergency portal. People complain about the waiting period …

Before international matches begin, it has become customary to play the national anthems of the teams. It wasn’t always so. In fact, that helped the West Indies cricket team avoid the dilemma of finding a song that represented its constituents fairly. Ours was (and still is) the only multi-national Test …

For some time, the thought of approaching a memoir as a collection of essays has been floating about. Assembling memories in the hope that they might make for useful reading means committing to candour and truth. People’s feelings have to be taken into account. What to include, what to leave …

Hard to imagine that Sade is 67. For decades, she wooed the world with her mellifluous voice and songs about passion. I suspect many people believed themselves to be madly in love at her behest. How easy it is to float away on the cloud of Kiss of Life! Listening …

For those who might have wondered about the absence of my column last week, the Express has decided that it only requires my offerings fortnightly. I had already begun writing when I was told, so I continued. I’d listened to three episodes of the Corie Sheppard Podcast on Carnival Tuesday. …

It isn’t something I do—but when Alta, the Adult Literacy Tutors Association, contacted me to ask if I would write something to bring some attention to their Readings Under the Trees event, I could not refuse. Their annual event, held at the Royal Botanical Gardens (I am surprised that it …

Someone suggested rather irately that I write about how the rich and powerful operate with a different code, with such impunity that they get away with behaviour that is abhorrent to the moral masses. Several people have been raising indignant voices, and the air is vibrating with their vehemence. I …

My father considered music of any kind to be unpleasant noise. In his later years, when he became a bible-toting Witness, he listened to some form of gospel. But as children, we were not allowed access for a long time. He was rough about it. I came to really hear …

A dear friend sent me a despondent message in response to my lament about divisive and crass online comments. “I want you to identify for me anyone else who has integrity that you know of personally in the world, because I can’t find too many,” he said. My first reaction …

We can’t pretend that this society, our society, has not become ugly and hateful. The place has been practically reduced to internecine warfare, spewing venom-like mud volcanoes. Try as you might to avert your eyes and focus on the little sparks of decency and beauty that still refuse to be …