Tony Deyal | Juvenal delinquents of the Caribbean

I have always considered myself 'well-trained'. People who came into contact with me in the early days constantly complimented my mother and my teachers on the frequency and quality of my "good mornings" and "thank yous" and they gladly took the credit and plaudits.

"Yes," my mother used to say, "I always made sure he had his manners." My neighbours, too, who took a hand and sometimes a belt in my development also believed they were at least partly responsible. Little did they know that I ascribed most of the credit to the Trinidad Government Railway (TGR), which was started by the British in 1876 and closed down on December 28, 1968, just three days after Christmas and four days before what eventually turned out to be a very unhappy new year.

The closure of the TGR might not be responsible for the lack of training demonstrated on streets, classroom and social media by today's youths, but my constant trips by rail to and from Siparia, San Fernando, Port-of-Spain and Carapichaima ensured that when it came to training I was a boss.

I was also, and continue to be, very well bread. Some of you, looking at the previous sentence, might think sarcastically, "He might be well trained, but not in spelling. De man cyah even spell 'bred' self." That is simply untrue. I am not like the Trinidad politician (supposedly Chanka Maharaj) who, hot on the hustings and anxious to win votes on his record of public service, asked rhetorically, "Who give all youh land, L-A-N-D, land?" The crowd, fuelled by the rum and roti that were readily available at election events and eagerly consumed, shouted "Chanka!" and he revelled.

Then he essayed another question about his tenure as a leader in the colonial government: "Who give all youh bread, B-R-E-D, bread?" Even though the crowd did not particularly care and cheered as usual, one of Chanka's henchmen whispered, "Sir, you forget the 'a'." Chanka then hastily corrected himself, "Who give all youh B-R-E-D-A, bread?"

I am not Chanka or any other politician. There are times when I lack liquidity and the dough situation can only be described as hard-up, but I am a crusty, old son-of-a-bun, and when I say 'bread', I don't mean 'bred'. As I constantly make it clear, if I were to be reincarnated as a fruit or vegetable, I would return as a bread-nut.

 

Insight

 

As I travel through the Caribbean, when people call me 'Breads' or 'Breaddah', I marvel at their perceptiveness and insight. How do they know that bread is my favourite food? My preferred hymn is 'Oh, Breadder Man' and my prayer of choice is the Lord's, which includes "Give us this day our daily bread."

Despite what seem to be astronomical increases in the price of flour and commodities made from it, my consumption continues undeterred and undiminished. Bread is the staple that holds the pages of my life together and may even be the material from which the Almighty's Book of Remembrance of the lives of Caribbean people is made. It is already referred to in the Bible as the staff of life.

 

Caribbean variety

 

While Jamaicans have their 'hard' and 'coco' breads, and Barbadians love their 'salt' bread, in Trinidad, our staple was always what we know as 'hops' bread. We also had butter bread and, eventually, the sandwich loaf, but my first exposure to hot dog buns, or bread, was at the circus, which came to Trinidad when I was still a little boy.

I used to read everything in sight and so the Enid Blyton Circus series, which started with Mr Galliano and featured Jimmy Brown, and his parents were my introduction to the wonder and excitement of circuses. I made every kind of promise imaginable, and threat, to be taken to see a real, live circus.

My mother, fortunately, had read the book, too, and she persuaded my father we should go. The hot dogs were a puzzle. I remember begging for one and my father saying, "Dog? We doh eat dog." I took the cotton candy as a substitute and focused on the spectacle.

I did not know then how far back in time the concept of the circus went. In Ancient Rome, there were at one time four circuses, one of which, the Circus Maximus, was capable of holding 250,000 people. There was also a lot of free bread which, with the circuses, was used as freeness akin to the rum and roti of Guyana and Trinidad.

Bread and circuses were the basic ingredients in the formula for winning elections and influencing people.

The satirical poet Juvenal (around 100 AD) was extremely upset at the decline of Roman heroism, the increasing lust for power, and the fact that giving out cheap food and providing free entertainment, in other words "bread and circuses", had become the most effective way to rise to power.

As he said, "Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt." Now the term 'bread and circuses' is used to describe government policies that seek short-term solutions to public unrest, or freeness and 'goodies' offered as expedient means of pacifying public discontent or diverting attention from sources of grievance.

In this phrase, bread and circuses, Juvenal captured not just the politics of Rome but also the politics of the Caribbean. Recently, immediately after imposing a national budget which has driven up the cost of food and everything else by almost 33 per cent, the governing party had a gathering of its supporters where the music and food were free, the bravado plentiful, and people danced with the wild abandon that only bread and circuses can produce. It was a rum spectacle given the context.

Actually, the one thing that all the political parties in the region have in common is their reliance on the combination of bread and circuses to keep them in power or win them the power to provide even more largesse and handouts. As I watched the spectacle on the television newscast the next day, the only thing I could think about was a calypso by the Mighty Sparrow that was released in 1982.

It is titled We Like It So and like the excerpt I have included, it is as accurate and as heart-rending as it is poetic: "Hospitals have no linen, is brown paper they using, Public transportation is an abomination.

Well, food, clothes and rent is proof , Cost of living gone through the roof , Classified information for personal gain is common , We know but we like it so!"

Tony Deyal was last seen saying that one of his bread-and-sandwich-lover friends ran up a breakfast bill for $200 and refused to pay. When threatened, he insisted, "But your sign says Glutton Free."