People’s Prime Minister Panday’s Parting Punch in prep for Tell-All Memoire – mutating orator into author In Remembrance

We know him as a fearless and fierce fighter for the people, for his punchy and spicy picong, a master orator and actor, but there are yet a few things we do not know of the man who has given his last breath in service of his public.

Inglorious Gift of Gab

At the close of his long and distinguished political career in which his inglorious gift of gab would take him to the pinnacles of his profession, it is the pen that would prove the mightier to the sword-sharp tongue of the Silver Fox, former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday who also served as trade union leader, lawyer, Minister, Opposition Leader, Member of Parliament, actor and many other roles.

Shared Roots and Routes

Many have fond memories of him which they are sharing on social media. Mine was firstly of being born in the same cosmopolitan village with a Mosque at one end, Presbyterian Church on the other, Hindu mandirs in between. Here was rooted our orientation in national unity with its eclectic mix of ethnicities and religion – Hindu, Baptists, Orishas, Muslims, Pentecostals and Presbyterians ate from the same pot! Descendants of African slaves, Indian indentured workers, Chinese labourers-turned-shopkeepers, and in our village, the proprietors of the massive sawmill, Europeans, Merikins (AfroAmerican Soldiers) and Syrian Pathiks jammed together in the ribbon sprawl of the village. The pundits, priests, Imams and even the Obeahman (Papa Nisa) and Obeahwoman (Ma Corn Husk) were brothers and sisters of my market gardening Pa.

I attended the same school as this larger-than-life legend who was a champion of the common labourers, my parents among them, (there is much more to say of this early common influence but in another post). Then, as I was scooped up from the village, almost literally, into journalism straight out of high school.

One Love Alliance

It was the period of the historic ground swell for change that swept across the land like breeze through cane arrows. The theme of One Love pervaded both in spirit and in rhetoric in wave of optimism that would lead to the sweeping elections of 1986. Set to cover the vast expansive rural districts of South Trinidad in a pre-journalistic trial, my interviews tapped into the aspirations of those entering the political arena, several new, some seasoned, all hopeful of transformation.

Opposite ends of service to the people

A similar tide that swept the new Government into office, deposited me to sit at what seemed opposite ends of service to the public to the politician, covering the Parliament, local government, social, cultural and educational beats, the trade unions, the diplomatic and regional front.

Through the multiple dramas of the One Love break-up and Panday’s subsequent victorious entry into government, this time as Prime Minister, he had become more hardened to the office and the national institutions that seem to be working contrary to his vision of national unity.

‘Should the media be allowed to publish lies, half truths and innuendos?’ That was Panday’s retort, when I confronted him on perceived hostility to the media after he agreed to an exclusive interview! It became the slogan of his relationship with the media. His addendum, ‘What of the media’s hostility towards me?’ a sentiment that has gained less focus which I will unpack at another time on the rise and fall of Panday.

Less politically good-looking

As roles evolved, mine out of the institutional newsroom into new media’s evolving arena of international communications for development and safeguarding the memory of the world through memory capture, analyses and documentation, Panday moved into roles assigned to those who had become less politically-good-looking, in his own words. If he had pursued his career as an actor, which he gave up to become politician, that would have been his eventual fate too!

Out of the Parliament, out of the party he founded, he kept a tenaciously foxy grip on the unfolding politics, refusing to surrender to the tides that had made his brand of politics less politically good-looking.

Years earlier, he had confessed to me in an exclusive interview as he stood on the precipice of his political roles, that he would continue to serve, Until My Last Breath. Make contact to explore how you can support Digitisation and Multimedia Reproductions of these valuable archives to build knowledge banks of the GloCaL Knowledge Pot.

Drowned Out Hands Up Against Glass

In those days of waning political glory, as he struggled to be heard above the din of new politics casked in old constitutional bottles, save for his sharp wit and humour, he cut a somewhat tragic figure, hands up against a glass-fronted society, calling out to be heard.

Into a new era of superficial selfies, it also drowned out the core value he brought to the arena – his equally tenacious belief that unity was the lifeblood that the nation needed to survive!

When the multitudes mourn him, it is that loss that must be uppermost in our minds, of how someone who so taped into our vision of nation, nationhood and national development had all the opportunities to do so snatched away from him, virtually at every turn from one chain of circumstances to another.

Panacea to the Pass Over

To assuage the pain of passover, so to speak, in various exchanges, I encouraged him to think beyond the immediate politicking and to concretise the lessons of his life’s work.

As a panacea, I encouraged him to redirect his energies into the creative arena and to pen his memoires. He was already a member of my online creative community, Caribbean Literary Salon which had become a vibrant discussion and support group for creators, writers, thinkers and publishers from across the region. As a non political arena, it must have been a refreshing change for him.

It was in one such exchange that he confessed to me a newfound ‘weakness’.

That too was characteristically true to pepper form Panday as it was not in the whining tones of a weakling, but the wicked tones of one who knows he is erring, but refuses to surrender! Never Surrender, the headlines had read to one of my articles arising from his speech when he was shoved out of office in the deadlock elections at the turn of millennuim.

Punch with the Pen

I tried to wean him off that, to redirect his substantial energies in the post-triple bypass heart surgery era, to lay down his political sword, or at least to imbue its punchiness into his pen and pen his memoires.

The People’s Prime Minister Basdeo Panday Parting Punch is now neatly couched in such a pep-talk to him to pen his memoires – a promised tell-all which will leave no one ‘unscathed,’ I did not really have to but I did anyway set out the frame for him: as “a most colourful biography… in frank manner, all gloves off.”

Glib with gab as he was, with a tongue as sharp as a sword, the Silver Fox in one of these exchanges in his mutation from orator to author surprisingly confessed his ‘weakness’, the Achilles Heel, the spoke in the wheel to his progress. Not surprisingly, it is a weakness that plagues many-a-writer.

Prodding Panday to Take Up the Pen

As he persisted to pound at social media to take heed of his political pronouncement, I prodded Panday, to lay down the political sword and take up the pen, as I continue to do for many others, to pen his memoires to leave a more lasting legacy than the transient social media rhetoric.

Mutating Orator to Author

This is no easy task for a doer to lay down his gauntlet, move away from the social media hype and devote more time to journey into and explore the deeper thought channels, as his confessions below show. It is a process and indeed a new process of deconditioning and reconditioning on self-representation!

And it is too an awakening to that reality many, especially those in or who have held high office as the Silver Fox, that there is as Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott penned to music, a ‘Sower in the Sky who sows the seeds of stars. That Sower’s name is death!’

How difficult it is to face the only certainty – that even as our minds remain sharp, our bodies are not immortal and must, eventually, go the way of all flesh, as I continue to impress upon many as great and lesser beings than the Silver Fox! And I have lamented often enough the lack of mechanisms that can allow the aged to move gracefully on and make way for youth, while they share their wisdom and experience to build progressive futures. That is one mechanism I have been trying to develop in the Global Caribbean Literary Salon to which Panday was a member, would you believe?

Loss of Life-Lessons and Lifelong-Learnings

When we lose an individual we do not just lose a loved one, a friend, confidante, someone to share and exchange ideas and laughter. From where I sit as an educator, creator, writer, when we lose someone like Basdeo Panday, whose life and work even the best of us is trying to contain with words, we also lose their experiences, life-lessons and lifelong-learnings. It is institutional memory, yes, but more than that, it is memory of self-development, self improvement and in his case valuable and much needed memory to advance our country, our society and indeed our humanism and our civilisation! So if the soil of this generation might be rocky and impervious, in laying it down for posterity, the ‘seeds of stars’ Walcott’s Sower sows, may germinate in more fertile minds of next generations. (Scroll, Read on for more)

Panday joins the Nonagenarian

That is considerably augmented in one who has that come from living through nine decades, as Panday is but a recent entrant to the arena of Nonagenarians, to join Ma, his community ‘sister’ as I detail the village connection in this post.

As he told those gathered to pay tribute to him at the Divali Nagar on his 90th birthday, he has exceeded by 20 years, his Biblically allotted three scores and ten, because ‘someone up there knows him’ – so prefer to leave him down here, or brave him mobilising the angels in revolt and rebellion as he fought for better wages, less hours and workload if he was to be called ‘up there’. (Scroll, Read on for more)

Brutal Currents of History Social Conditioning

In Panday’s case, they are also life-lessons of our fragmented social and cultural selves, burdened by layers of brutal currents of history and social conditioning that has made his lifelong vision and quest for national unity so elusive, to this day, which we will explore subsequently.

Behind the Scenes Real Stories

While much of Panday’s life has been played out in the public arena, all of us know that the real stories are those yet untold, those that are lodged in our hearts and minds, with our feelings when we we turn off the public spotlight and away from the social media glare.

Inner Interrogations

Those are the inner interrogations that I encourage from those who seek me out for support in their creative processes and undertakings.

Unlike Panday’s revolution for social change through politics and social landscapes, my drive for social transformation have been in cultivating the finer elements of human mindscapes. (Scroll, Read on for more)

Refuge in Literary Creative non political community

Out of office and bereft of a political party, Panday was an early member of my online exchange to support writers and publishers in my own lifelong quest to cultivate a sustaianble environment for creatives, originally known as the Caribbean Literary Salon, now evolving into the GlobalCaribbean Literary Salon.

Mutual support and encouragement

As many others, while I prodded, poked, supported and applauded his literary efforts, he also encouraged me to share my thoughts, sentiments, writings and musings, Demokrissy and other Blogs as those on the GloCal Knowledge Pot. Those are usually quite a mouthful and sometimes not-too-flattering of the political pandemic and crisis of equitable governance that confronts us, as many of you know, so it’s a totally different view of the dominant image presented of the Silver Fox’s impatience towards the media.

Innovative Knowledge Platforms

The online mechanisms I am trying to develop through these platforms are unique and unconventional as they reach beyond the SEO hype, ignorance about engaging audiences, and social media riff-raff rah-rah crowd to target creative thinking. it also hopes to attract those who wish to create effective mechanisms of development through education from pre-school to policy-making towards more meaningful social and other transformations. (Scroll, Read on for more)

Panday showed a keen interest in the challenges to the Caribbean Literary Salon platform with the expansion of social media that lured and splintered interests, arising out of which I am evolving it into a more relevant mechanism for creative engagements that would align to such novel innovations as the newest creative genre i am evolving – the MultiMedia MicroEpic. This adapts the long form long winded classical epic for new short form media – And why not take the Empire at its own game? After all, what would Shakespeare have been if he did not have a captured audience and readership in the then spreading British Empire!

Negative Cultural Replication and Mental Emancipation

But long and deep colonial conditioning and mindsets are hard to change, as our Caribbean community well-knows. The fast-changing world of new media captured, distilled and fragmented the focus of the regional writing and publishing fraternity. While many in the region may have access to social media platforms, few know how to utilise them beyond being fawning fans of dominant blocs, replicating empiredoms of yore in negative cultural replication. Safeguarding memory and memory of the world casts a path for positive cultural replication. As w croon to Bob Marley, Emancipate Yuhself From Mental Slavery, we must find ways to act on it too!

Where Education Meets Entertainment

As I explained to Panday, within the framework of my CEIBA-EDUtainment initiative, the evolved GlobalCaribbean Literary Salon is envisioned to respond to harness the new technologies to better work for and fill the needs of our region and to educate and guide on better and more conscientious and conscious use of new media and certainly to enhance the creative processes and outputs of the region. It falls within my framework for meshing Traditions and Technologies pilotted with the national tech innovators’ Lumination award.

An example of directions to cull and engage writers in deepening the creative outputs as with my creation of the world’s newest creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic, that innovates on the classical conventional long from epic for short form new media.

Panday did, eventually, take up the idea and has been working at his biography, revisiting the village we share and others whom he deemed close and influential in his life-path.

Reining-in the Wayward Mind

Panday’s political career might have provided him with adequate experience – or did it – in controlling and reining-in the many individuals and individualistic mindsets of his political cast, crew, colleagues and indeed the effervescence of a nation-in-development.

He would find that the greatest challenge came from his own ‘infinite capacity for being distracted.’ These excerpts of some of our exchanges on the creative process he confessed to me his own challenges in grappling to control the wayward mind.

• Dr Kris Rampersad Are you talking of Caribbean Literary Salon… in process of aligning with more of the literary arts… working to establish that connects writings to book film theatre etc….
• ...do your most colourful biography in frank and most objective manner all gloves off … Let me know when you are back with headspace despite bacchanal season to discuss …
• ….. Basdeo Panday …. I am struggling to get focused on my biog. But I have an infinite capacity for being distracted. The birthday was quiet and uneventful. I spent my time reading to the dohas of Kabir and listening Rashid Khan sing his songs. Exhilarating!
• Dr Kris Rampersad It is always a struggle for people to finish biographies … Life gets in the way! Keep pressing on …… you know u have to get that bio done, Sir….
• …….. Basdeo Panday  Thanks, Kris, for the info on Jim. He is a long lost friend.
• Dr Kris Rampersad.…Incidentally I met Jim in London few years back during launch of my last book thru a mutual friend who just passed husband of author Lakshmi Seetaram Persaud. …those guys have been doing yeoman service for connecting our diaspora ….
• Basdeo Panday I am still struggling along with the bio. ...Share Your Sentiments…We should get together some time…..

Those are extracts of some of the most recent exchanges with the Silver Fox, former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday as I prod him to take up the pen, mightier than his sworded tongue, to clinch his legacy.

In these excerpts of some of our exchanges on the writing process, he shares some of the agony, or rather restlessness in keeping the mind focussed in penning his memoires.

He would return to me for support as I prodded him to produce his ‘colourful biography in frank and most objective manager, all gloves off!’

Pandemic Panacea

Self Discover in the World of Knowledge Research

The internet unleashed Mr Panday into world of knowledge and research. It kept him abreast with world event, but also kept his mind sharp. The Pandemic lockdown allowed him to give it some dedicated attention.

Writing floors the best of us, but as we support and lean on each other, it gets done.

Procrastination, distractions and the simple reality that life gets in the way of introspecting, analysing and documenting our lives are why we need professional support.

Now, if only I can take a page out of my own advice manual towards completion of my own autobiography LiFE! Holeheartedly! in which, the tumultuous engagements with the Silver Fox through his own colourful life and career will certainly occupy more than a few pages!

But procrastination may have its purposes too as every new experience deepens our understanding and perspectives of the past. So writing becomes a process of creating and recreating the elusive world we want!

I hope you are looking forward to it as keenly as the Panday tell-all which promises, true to form, that ‘none shall escape unscathed.’

Postscript: Panday’s Parting Punch

Incidentally, as Panday lay on a hospital bed in Miami at the end of December 2023,, his revered musician lay in another hospital bed in Kolkata – Singer/Musician Rashid Khan, 55, is in critical condition battling cancer.

In writing this, I immerse myself in an atmosphere Panday described with the exhilarating music of Rashid as I thumb through a copy of of the poems of Kabir It dawns on me that Panday’s message to me is loaded and in similar tones and self-deprecating Panday, the sharp-witted Silver Fox which compels me to share some of these with you as they provide perspective on the arena of peace Panday’ entered to as he neared the end of his own tragic-comic life!

The Dohe’s of Kabir which he said he was his distraction contain all the advice and teachings on life one can reach for – wisdom of one of the immortal poets whose work unites idioms of the Hindu and Muslim worlds. Here are some of those pearls:

On Critics

On Self-Knowledge

On Legacy after Death

Well played, Silver Fox! Travel well! We know wherever you are, whoever’s there in CEIBA-space will be well edutained!

If you wish to support digitisation and creative representation of those or other elements of the expansive GloCal Knowledge Pot Archives please make contact here or via social media.

Until then, sneak peak into the shortform MultiMedia MicroEpic Biopic, One Night To Bloom that launched the world’s newest creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic!

About Dr Kris Rampersad

Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent development specialist on SIDS and the Global South, global thought leader, scholar, journalist, filmmaker, author, educator, researcher on interconnected Global Caribbean Culture.

Dr Kris Rampersad joins skills as UNESCO and National Geographic Certified Educator as a Women TechMakers and Google Digital Skills Ambassador.

She was a Commonwealth Professional Fellow 2007 and has served as former Vice President of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association, President of UNESCO Education Commission, Vice President of UNESCO Programme and External Relations Commission and Vice President of the Consultative Body of UNESCO InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Media Specialist/Adviser to the Commonwealth Foundation. She is a National Geographic Educator, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Facilitator, Global Woman Techmakers’ Ambassador, Google Digital Skills Ambassador and Worldpulse Digital Ambassador.

She straddles spheres of media, culture and education as an expert on integrated sustainable developmental issues of the CARIBBEAN, SIDS, Developing World and the Global South. A Commonwealth Professional Fellow an Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge,  Indian Institute of Mass Communication and Foreign Press Centre with a PhD in Pre and Post Colonial Literature, she invented the world’s newest creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic that adopts and adapts the long-form classical epic for short-form new media which she piloted to the Commonwealth Scholars Forum at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Her web platform, the GloCaL Knowledge Pot features her developing multimedia expositions of CEIBA-EDUtainment, novel creations that blend education and entertainment for all ages and sectors from pre-school to policy-making through traditional, conventional and new media forms.

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To support, sponsor or collaborate on developing online resources in the GloCal Knowledge Pot as CEIBA-EDUtainment and MultiMedia MicroEpic interactive initiatives, new investigative research, multimedia publications and productions and digitisation of journalistic, academic and socio-cultural archives and development of online resource base, make contact and connect through web portal GloCaL Knowledge Pot, www.krisrampersad.com; as KrisRampersad on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest, KrisRampersad1 on Facebook and @Krisramp on X/Twitter.

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