Tony Deyal | BC Pires, the gifted and gift giver

My colleague and, most recently, my friend, BC Pires, died last Saturday. In looking through his many articles, columns and comments, this one about me demonstrates the ability of BC to get me (and other people) to talk, and then take from all that I said what he thought was me.

It is a gift that he had and, in this article passed on through me to all of you, especially my readers, it is my thanks and honour to BC. In his way and mine, it is my own epitaph as well. May BC rest in peace or, as he would have immediately responded, “But (hopefully not) in pieces, Tony. You understand!”

(Hopefully Not) Tony Deyal’s Last Scene

Friday, May 27, 2022 Filed in: Trini to d Bone

Picture courtesy: Mark Lyndersay

My name is Tony Deyal and I have written a humorous column in Caribbean newspapers for nearly 30 years.

I was born in South Oropouche and lived in Carapichaima until I was ten and my family moved to Siparia, my “spiritual” home. Meaning, where I felt totally at home. Now I live in Lange Park in Chaguanas. But it could have been anywhere.

I lost my father first and then my mother. Sheer effing carelessness for an only child. I’ve had two families myself, two wives, four children. Ena, married at 23, Marsha and George. Indranie, married 1999, had Jasmine when I was 52 and Zubin, 53.

Through many of my own faults, my first marriage ended. I told my two older children how they got along with Indranie was their business, but when it comes to children, I don’t deal in halves. They had to treat Indranie’s children like their brothers and sisters. And I don’t believe in ‘daughter-in-law’. George’s wife, Sara, is my daughter, to heck with the law. We all try but sometimes any of us can be very trying.

I went to primary school in Picadilly for a year. It was a great transitional place. I learnt to fight. My father had given me a very short ‘trim’ and the fellers tapped me the whole of my first day and the second day, until recess. Then I fought back. By the time a month passed, I was one of the worst. My aunt lived on Duke Street opposite Theodore Funeral Home, over the Dry River, next to Mansingh’s Grocery. Piccadilly prepared me for Siparia. My father was an alcoholic who lost every job he ever and, when the bank seized our house in Carapichaima, we ended up in the home of one of my mum’s aunts in Siparia.

The best thing about Picadilly was I was able to join the POS public library. The librarian told people, “De boy read out the whole library!” Not true – but I was reading Fenimore Cooper and Biggles, Mark Twain and the William and Billy Bunter books etc.

In Siparia, we call it SIP-aria. Anybody who says Sip-AREE-ah not from there. We also called it, like the taxi drivers, Sip-aree or just Spree. Which is what we did especially during Siparia Fete time.

At 19, I started teaching at Iere High School in Siparia. Among my students were [Opposition Leader] Kamla [Persad-Bissessar] and her husband Gregory. I taught O’ and A’ Level English, history and geography. And was in charge of drama, college quiz and all sports. I was Kamla’s netball coach.

At age 77 now, I think I outlasted any of those who were there in my time, including Patrick Manning.

At Presentation College San Fernando, QRC beat us at football Intercol. And then came and beat us on the bus!

Just the same way I got a schooling at Presentation but an education at Iere, I grew up in Carapichaima opposite Sadoo’ (the temple man) shop but Siparia is where I grew up with some terrors and, to survive, was worse than them. My reading saved me but I was lucky not to make an early jail for offences including but not limited to gambling, whe-whe, pelting bottle and threatening people to kill dey mother so-and-so. My oilfield-working friends were Indian and black, the bosses were white.

My great-grandparents were from India – dark-skinned people – but when my grandmother was born, her father wanted to drown her. She was white! So Grandma was 50 per cent Irish, my father was 25 and I am just over 12 per cent, together with other stuff from the Irishman, including Spanish, Portuguese and a better Finnish than I got from Presentation.

My parents held our principal at Carapichaima, Mr. Ford, in high esteem, maybe because of his size and big mouth, but he was a nasty SOB. Once he hit me 36 lashes with a leather belt. I refused to cry and laughed when he stopped. So he hit me another 36.

What did a teenager in Siparia do in 1962? Hunt, play cricket and football in the savannah, play whappie in Moses Club – and make all kinds of over- and under-tures to the girls passing. But, regardless of what I did, or how much I drank, when I reached home in the night, regardless of the time, I read, sometimes until morning came, took a shower, and went to teach.

Initially Hindu, my mother wanted to be a Catholic but lost her nerve and screwed up the Catechism test. My grandparents married her off to my father who had taken up the worst job for a drunk – truck driver. My mother eventually had me baptised but when I went to Presentation, I kept the name Sookdeo, Hindi for Friday, the day I was born. The “Anthony” only came out when I went to school in Canada and I knew they would have problems.

I lived in suitcases for years and fit in quickly, wherever I am. I find my space in my head through books. As an only child, I lived in my head. Especially when my father came home drunk. Or did not come home at all for weeks. Or my mother and he were quarrelling. Or she was sewing for other people so we could survive. Books did it and still do it for me. When my wife vex, I read. When I have a problem to solve, I read until I get it sorted out and then go on my computer. I’ve never been without one since 1980.

My first column in Carleton University’s student newspaper The Charlatan was called ‘Blackadaisical’.

In Siparia I went to Shango, Shouter Baptist, Pentecostal etc, mainly because my friends were in those. And they either had girls there or food. Or, best of all, both.

Religions are like different rivers that empty into the same sea.

If God didn’t exist, I might have had to invent Him or Her or even It. The bigger picture is to have someone you can pass on the tough things to. I believe that, while I’m around, I have to try to be the best I can be. Whether God exists or not, I will not commit suicide – but if a car bounce me down, I won’t mind. I have lived a life of fun, games and laughter.

The best calypso as poetry is Benwood Dick.

I must read fiction before I fall asleep at night. PG Wodehouse’s work never stales or fails to make me laugh but I put Frank Herbert’s “Dune” above the rest because it has something new each time. I read it when it was released in 1965, went back to it a couple times. My favourite line: I will face my fear ... And when it has gone past ... only I will remain.”

Returning from Carleton University with a first class honours degree in journalism, I tried to find work in the newspapers. I thought I was “hot” but I learned quickly I was “over-qualified”. George John at the PM’s office put me in charge of Government Television which sported names he had given the programmes, ‘Face of the Nation’ – thiefing the US Face The Nation – and Issues and Ideas, which my young daughter knew as Excuse of Ideas.

Black Stalin is/was a friend and we pulled a heist the year he won the Calypso Monarch with Caribbean Man. I used to do (the old TTT chat show) Issues and Ideas on Wednesday nights, so I was so sure Stalin would win that, two weeks before the Monarch contest, I made my boys at TTT tape a show with Stalin celebrating his victory. He loved it. [I did it beforehand] knowing Dr Williams would be told – lots of people scoring points by carrying news. I ran it on Ash Wednesday night and the only people who complained were those who called TTT during the show.

My favourite director used to be Peckinpah. But I like the work of Denis Villeneuve.

I served out my time at Government Television and did not write prose, just dialect poetry – which Derek Walcott told me I should stick to. This was before Paul Keens Douglas. When Chambers lost the election, I asked Therese Mills if I could write a column and she agreed. I was one of the few people in TT who had the technology to send my columns and Caroni Ltd news releases via email.

All the years of Wodehouse and other humorists, mixed with my love and knowledge of the English language, were the road back to sanity and strength. I remember jokes, calypsoes and poetry, which I learnt by rote and pass on by wrote. While my real work for the World Bank etc is a model of correctness and good prose, my writing for anything else is always fun for me and hopefully for the readers. Humour is my trademark.

I wanted to capture the entire Caribbean people in my writing. My style is “cinematic” – but like the old Plaza theatre in Siparia or Gaiety in Sando. While I write for the people in house, I make sure I have something for those in pit and a bit of highfaluting for balcony. In the early days, every fourth column used to be for pit, since I wanted them to stay with me. I know Caribbean people well. We love good language, a little sex and world play, and jokes. Like a long time “Trebor” toffee: it has sweetie paper on the outside, the first layer is soft and sugary and, in the middle, a hard core of truth, of whatever I feel is important.

I’ve worked for nearly 30 years to show Caribbean people we are one people and have more in common than we have differences. I am a Caribbean national, born in Trinidad, with a Guyanese wife, two Trini and two Bajan children.

For my collection of columns, Tony Deyal Was Last Seen … some friends helped me [choose] one for each day of my life at that point (76) but for me it is difficult. I am a punster and figure that my next and final collection Tony Deyal Say That How ... will have bits and pieces from most of them.

The best part of writing a newspaper column for nearly 30 years is I have fun. The worst is a lady stopped me on Frederick Street. “Wait, wait … I know your face.” She looked at me closely, front, back and side and then said, with pride, “You used to be Tony Deyal!”

There are times, not often, when I have what I call “dog nights of the soul” that keep me awake thinking through something. The good thing is that I wake up looking forward to the day. Regardless of what I know is coming at me. I am such an effing optimist that, if you give me a bag of horse manure, I delve deeply into it – looking for the horse!

After three score and ten, I welcome each day in the morning and treat it as a lagniappe. I am over the hill – but that is when the good athletes pick up speed. I have lived a full – and many times a fool – life. But, if I die driving home, I have no regrets, except not seeing my son get his Oxford Blue for cricket and being at Lord’s to see him play.

I love children and I don’t blame ordinary people for what I see as the screwups who we’ve had in power since the Eric Williams days. I worked for many of them. I can’t blame the workers of Caroni because the company lost TT$400m every year. I can’t blame the DEWD and other make-work, free-money workers for enjoying the freeness. And now calling the shots of the politicians. I don’t blame children who curse, thief or do badly in exams. What bothers me most is that the Trinidad I was born and grew up in is now so deeply divided by race. We lived so harmoniously in Carapichaima, Siparia and even Piccadilly. We had an understanding that kept things in place and proportion.

I have family who are black, half-black, white, all races, creeds and colours. When my son, George, was told he was an “Indian” his response was, “I ent have no feather.” That is how my children grew up in my house. We are dougla-matic, six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. But there is no equal place here in Trinidad for ‘us and them’ again. It sickens and saddens me that the present Government and Opposition are so deeply into race that the divide has deepened to a point of destruction. When my son Zubin was told he was Indian at kindergarten in Trinidad, he shouted, “Tell them Mummy. I am a Barbadian.” If they sending back people for true, Kamla, Rowley and their racist followers must go.

A Trini is now a changing phenomenon. Generally the party in power or Carnival.

What does Trinidad and Tobago mean to me? Tobago is part of a two-island state and an island I used to like but I no longer feel comfortable there. I started an online, literary magazine called My Trinidad: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow because this is where I found an equal place. But when Cro Cro started to tell me I had no right to be there or in my country, I stopped going to calypso tents. When Kamla talked about an Oreo, I saw it as racist and said so. I am a Caribbean national, a citizen of the British-created Trinidad and Tobago and a Trinidadian born, bred and battered.

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