Tony Deyal | Bits, bytes and Biswas

It is easier to run amok than run a Moke, and both are less difficult than speaking in public, which, some experts say, is the most common of all phobias and a form of performance anxiety in which a person becomes very concerned that he or she will look visibly anxious, maybe even have a panic attack while speaking.

I’ve never had one, but what I experienced earlier this week was the joy of hearing and seeing myself on the lips and in the eyes of others. This was a rare opportunity granted to me – temporary refugee status in the House of Mr Biswas and even permission “to mash up the place”.

Despite being the name of a work of fiction by Vidia Naipaul, the House still lives and breathes through a group called Friends of Mr Biswas who, on Wednesday night, offered me time and the power, as Robert Burns wrote, to see myself as others see me. I performed a few bits and pieces from my own 26 years as a regional columnist, but the real fun I had was hearing others read some of what I had written so very long ago when I was on the road or safely in a house or hotel in some part of the Caribbean or the wider world.

Professor Dr Ken Ramchand, chairman of the Friends, took on a Godfather role and made me an offer I could not refuse. Even though he did not call me Sonny, Ken offered me a Mike to read from and proved once more that the Godfather was right when he said, “Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.” There I was, on the stage at the National Library in my old hunting and haunting ground in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, with a few hardcore friends reading, joking and singing calypsoes but also listening to the voice of one travelling in the wilderness that is Caribbean unity.

I started in Barbados, my happy home for many years and the birthplace of my two youngest children. I had arrived there in 1993 as a media and communications consultant for the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), and almost as soon as I got there, I was accepted as a columnist for the Nation newspaper and then, perhaps befitting my new status, I bought me some wheels.

Weeping and gnashing of teeth

My extremely limited wallet, as thin as Maria Carey after her gastric surgery, had no room for any vehicle of substance and the only one available after the arithmetic was completed with much weeping and gnashing of teeth was a thousand-dollar used vehicle without doors, windows or roof, called a Mini Moke.

When I was told that it would cost me $1,500 to insure the Moke, I sarcastically stated to anyone that would hear that I would have to sell the vehicle to pay the insurance. I wrote in one of my early columns which I read for the Friends of Mr Biswas who were also my friends for the night, “My only problem is that for most Bajans, a Moke is a joke. Not that I mind, but when ladies offer to take me out, they smilingly suggest that I can leave the Moke in their car trunks. One day I took my Moke to the mechanic to change the oil. He looked at the car and said disparagingly, ‘I suggest you change the car and keep the oil’.”

My friend, author Motilal Boodoosingh, took me to Jamaica with a column that I wrote on Boxing Day 2002 called ‘The Ties That Bind’, which started provocatively, “You’ve heard about the ties that bind, but what about underwear? In Jamaica, some women are not getting their knickers in a twist over their bashful swains. In fact, they’ve put a new twist on the old knickers.”

The article was based on a STAR newspaper story by Dwayne McLeod that claimed that some Jamaican women pay up to $40,000 to obeah men to ‘tie’ their lovers. How do knickers figure in the mix? According to Dwayne, “Bible verses, candles, special powders, oils and even the women’s panties are used in the process. The men say the panty is first soaked in a special oil (which they sell) and is afterwards steamed over a meal which is being prepared for the man. This practice, they say, is completed with the reading of a Bible verse.” Food for thought, eh?

Then my friend, author Cynthia Birch, an English language maven whose two booklets offering advice about usage and abusage are indispensable, read from a column I wrote on January 13, 1999, called ‘The Whether Report’, and dealt with my difficulty in remembering whether or not ‘whether or not’ was permissible or whether ‘whether’ implied ‘or not’.

I discovered that it was appropriate in only a few cases, including whether Lara was bowled for duck or nought, England’s best wicketkeeper was Evans or Knott, a psychiatrist who wonders whether a patient was a lunatic or nut, and the girl with long hair who couldn’t decide whether she would wear her hair in a plait or knot.

There was a dead heat for the star of the show in which I believe I tied for third with Cynthia and Motilal. My wife, Indranie, read ‘Birds of a Feather’ about Belize, which starts with, “A bird in the hand might be worth two in the bush, but makes it hard to touch-type.”

Her only rival in the Biswas stakes was Ken himself, who read from a Mother’s Day piece called ‘ Mum’s The Word’ and made some mothers of a few famous characters come alive, especially Humpty Dumpty’s mother who railed, “Humpty, if I told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, ‘Don’t sit on the wall, Humpty, don’t sit on the wall!’

And what you do? Would you listen to me? Noooo!” I am sure Humpty, even in his next incarnation as an omelette, would have agreed that a mother’s love might not be all that it is cracked up to be.

- Tony Deyal was last seen reading what Bruce Wayne’s mother told him (“Nice car, Bruce, but you realise how much the insurance will cost?) and remembering his beloved Bajan Moke.