Tag Archives: Vaneisa Baksh

LAST August, I wrote about Wishing for Wings, the 2013 book by Debbie Jacob, and the 2022 film by Dr Kim Johnson. I’d written about the indefatigable efforts of these two in promoting the culture of this melodious, cacophonous paradox called Trinidad and Tobago. The film’s premiere was then being …

Ask people what it is that makes certain meals so special for them, and I bet that when they reflect they will say it is because it invokes some warm memory from childhood. Hardly is it connected to a lavish spread—it has more to do with its homely nature. The …

A long time ago, I had a discussion—maybe an argument—with a newspaper editor about what constituted “soft” news. He thought that issues affecting women were soft, and should be relegated to pages headed by labels that suggested they were for women only. Instinctively, I rejected that. It seemed to me …

Snippets from childhood can pop up arbitrarily and stick in your head. As a wee ­reader (from the age of three), I read anything I could find, and some things have obviously lingered. I kept hearing this line from what was probably a morality tale during a difficult period these …

When someone dies, it is traditional to hold a wake. It’s a time for relatives and friends to gather during the nights before the funeral to offer commiserations and support for the grieving ones. Wakes are thought to have originated within the realm of Catholicism, when the idea was to …

It is one of those rare occasions when every praise song being sung is true. Not one word has been misspent—generous, gentle, erudite, kind, gracious, pioneering—it is easy to endorse them sincerely. Since his passing, Gordon Rohlehr has invoked the kind of gratitude and love that truly befits the colossal …

In Afghanistan, under such bitterly cold conditions that more than a hundred have perished, the Taliban has kept its focus sharply on repressing women. The economy has shrunk, but the forces are hell bent on keeping women restricted from public activities. No to education; no to certain jobs, no to …

Following my last column about the responses to textures, particularly in food, a friend asked how I felt about souse. For a fleeting moment I thought she had made some and was offering me a taste that Sunday morning. Although her message was about the column, my brain is so …

I have always misunderstood marshmallows. Never quite got their popularity. In the old days, they popped up mostly around Christmas time, along with butter cookies and other treats. I’ve since discovered that they are actually made up of 90 per cent sugar, but that had nothing to do with my …

Straight out of the gates, on 2 January 2023, the news hit like a bucket of cold water. As though we did not know enough about the new year’s challenges, Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF managing director, predicted: “[…] 2023 will be ‘tougher’ than last year… We expect one-third of the …

He is in his mid-fifties, a woodworker of the old school, where craftsmanship was an emblem of pride. He had come to Trinidad many years ago, on a roundabout journey from Guyana that had taken him to places far, and jobs disparate. Now, in modest circumstances, he plies his trade: …

I met the face of grief a couple of weeks ago and it has haunted me since. It was a chance encounter with someone I did not know. It isn’t quite accurate to say it was chance, because I had gone seeking his artisan services. His kiosk bore a handwritten …