I have a loving mother just over in Gloryland
Mary Reeves Davis, This World is Not My Home, Sung by Jim Reeves
And I don’t expect to stop until I shake her hand
She’s waiting now for me in heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
The most beautiful baby of our family has departed this world. He follows Ma by just six months, and two older brothers who passed on around the same age, and our father who left us in our youth.
As he is released into the light, he leaves behind him the darkness that plagued him for half of his life.
Divinely innocent, angelic, intelligent
For all my growing years, his beautiful baby face decorated the wall of, first our old wooden family home and thereafter, the concrete current home my elder sisters built to replace it. As he was the only member of our family who has a baby photo, we saw our own potential radiating and reflecting from the divinely innocent, angelic, intelligent black pools – his eyes.
None of his younger generations of nephews and nieces and their off-springs and the current generations of villagers really know the tremendous promise he held, the beautiful baby, who grew into such a warm teen and giving adult, but they all know his generosity of spirit; the personal interest he took in their well-being and in their progress. He applauded the achievements of all effervescently, never once expressing regret for what we see as the cruel blow life dealt him in the prime of his youth.
Better developed psychiatric and support services for mental health might have ensured he share his knowledge and talents with wider spheres of influence as an educator and community worker into transforming rural development, shaping the agri-economy, serving grassroots farmers and farm operators with his knowledge and insights and confidence and love for the land.
Yet, he did not let this deter him. Instead, he redirected his energies to deepen his impact on his immediate environment, as a light to the next generations to make their mark on the world and fill the roles which had become inaccessible to him. His selflessness, his generosity and charitability shone through him to all those whom he touched, even as the darkness threatened to overpower and overwhelm.
Accumulating little, giving much
He warded off his demons as best he could, with giving, with music, with Seva – service to community – finding ways to pass on the knowledge and wisdom he naturally possessed, always trying to find ways to help others make a better life for themselves.
With no thought for material possessions – he amassed nothing. His most generous spirit gave away most of whatever came his way. Accumulating little possessions in his life, he lived in the knowledge that he was just passing through, a transient, as this world was not his home. Always, he reached to the greater light.
In the end it was not the dark demons but the more potent darkness of human betrayal, deceitfulness, treachery and greed that filled him with the hopelessness he had tried to hold at bay all his life. The forces darker than his own demons that preyed on his charitable spirits – the dark forces of human nature – tormented and overwhelmed him with grief and broke his heart and his spirit in the end.
His legacy is the strength of his character and spirit, his optimism, his refusal to give in to the darkness that invaded his sleep, his life, with the coping mechanisms he devised to ward it off and emerge into the light to shine like a beacon to all he touched.
It takes a village
As much as he gave, it took a village, a mother devoted to her last breath, and before her, his father and elder brothers and family members, neighbours who without hesitation were present for him when he needed and friends who remained steadfast through his darkest hours.
If we mourn him, it is not because of what life has dealt him. We mourn him because it’s now our turn to cope with the darkness he so joyfully leaves behind, for the land where where he’ll never grow old; where he could hold on to the divinely innocent, angelic, nature with which he came into this world.
Now your work here is done
And this life’s crown is won
your troubles and trials are o’er
Your sorrow endsYour voice will blend
With our loved ones who’ve gone on beforeIn the land where you’ll never grow old
James C Moore (1914), Where We Never Grow Old, Sung by Jim Reeves
First Classroom Wide Open Naparima Fields
Named Siewchand but known to all as Bobbin, he embraced life and found completeness in the world around him.
Unlike the globe trotting that became my second nature, Bobbin never left Trinidad’s shores. He lived out his entire life serving the village founded by our great grandfather, Sukhu, and its surrounding districts.
His first kindergarten classroom was the wide, open undulating fields of the Naparimas.
He accompanied Ma and Pa and my older brothers and sisters to garden and market even as a child where he sipped of Pa’s close native knowledge of the land and the ecology that gave him his first insights into the world of agriculture. It is no wonder that the country music and simple chants, hymns and bhajans he played on repeat mode day into night would forever be associated with his memory. He owned simplicity in the joys of living, honest devotion to his interpretation of Dharma and duty to kin and community and with that he held the whole world in his hands.
Early Natural Leader
From a boy, Bobbin was active in the district mandir founded by our cousin Pariag who encouraged our deep dive into the studies of the Bhagavat Gita which shaped our thoughts on communal duty, Dharma, the material and immaterial worlds. With this informal grounding, he became a natural early leader to his peers, planning and organizing and coordinating events and activities, bazaars and festivals for the village, and then later school communities. He was one of the ringleaders of our annual impromptu old years’ night family talent show and a satellite of many of our childhood joys.
Formal Multicultural Classrooms
Bobbin’s formal education would begin at the local St Julien Presbyterian School.
The school was then one of the 72 primary schools serving some 40,000 children of various backgrounds, built by the early Canadian Missionaries under Reverend John Morton at the turn of the last century for, initially, education of the children of indentured Indian immigrants.
The education was, of course, geared to making good British colonials of the children of indentured Indian immigrants and former slaves, but had to share that influence with the early community foundations laid in the basic family, community and cultural institutions like the mandirs and the social mores. These were stronger and more abiding influences than formal education as I traced in my dissertation that became my first book, Finding a Place, now being adapted for multimedia.
His shyness, studiousness, thoughtfulness and brilliance easily made him a teacher’s pet and a school favourite.
From the Ground Floor
Bobbin followed the footsteps of my other siblings to Cowen Hamilton Secondary School. Cowen Hamilton was started on the ground floor of the home of a Baptist Missionary as a private secondary school to fill the void in secondary education to serve the rural ‘company’ districts. These districts were settled by indentured labourers and later the returning company battalions of war soldiers known as the Merikins.
Bobbin excelled at both the sciences and the arts and graduated with a full certificate. As Cowen Hamilton did not yet offer advanced level studies, he enrolled at the region’s then only other secondary school, St Stephen’s College. Its initial location was the town centre, under the eaves of the Anglican Church with its famous poui trees planted by the father of the current Queen of England and his brother until it moved to its current location in Craignish.
The son of an indentured Indian immigrant, Dipchand Maharaj had succeeded the school’s founder, an Anglican Reverend, Bindley Taylor as Principal. They moved the school to its current location on the outskirts of the town. Maharaj’s successor, Reverend Sobers was principal at the time Bobbin started his Advanced Levels.
Dazzling Delights in Books
I would join him at St Stephen’s in my first year at secondary school, as he was finishing his Advanced levels. He would graduate as a top student. Embedded in my mind his how he returned home at the end of the school year, his arm full of trophies, plaque and prizes.
I had spent the vacant months awaiting the results of my Common Entrance Exams lapping up the delights in these book prizes. I was dazzled by the processes that formed the Minerals of the World, on Earth Sciences, Geology, Agriculture and Astronomy.
I came close to pursuing studies in the physical sciences, but that’s another story, explore to some extent as the confining imperative and limitations of choice in my multimedia microepic biopic, One Night To Bloom.
As a brother, he never intruded on my college life, although was known by all my friends, and knew them, and indeed kept me informed of them as I had left the village and the district to pursue my career options in the capital and later elsewhere around the globe.
Burning the Midnight Oil
While he was never an intrusive presence in my school life, Bobbin’s study habits became, to some degree, my study habits. More than just the help with homework, helping to develop methods to work through complex formulas and the study guidance he provided to many of his peers and later their off-springs in the district, I was an early beneficiary of his brotherly companionship as I studied, burning the midnight oil, literally, into the wee hours of the morning as there was yet no electricity in our district. We turned nights into days, studying.
It was our singular purpose and as pleasurable past-time as any other. Excelling was never an ‘if’. It was a given. That inspiration came partly from him, aided by the steadying hand of Ma and the sternness of Pa who suffered no lapse in test results.
A farming father’s delight
Much to my farming father’s delight, Bobbin opted to pursue advance education in agriculture, when most were running away from the land and labour that reminded of slavery, indentureship and servitude.
He was the first member of our market gardening family to go on, after secondary school, to advanced level and then to tertiary education. Yet, he remained true to our family’s ties to the land as our ancestry stretch into the ancient civilisation that domesticated limes and other beneficial food and medicinal crops.
In this way he lifted the bar for me to follow that path, especially as I shared my first year of High School with him, in his last year at A Levels.
Founded in 1954 as the Eastern Caribbean Farm Institute, ECIAF was itself established out of the colonial legacy as a Colonial Development and Welfare Scheme, to teach farming. Later, it expanded into its forestry functions and with that came the name-change, the Eastern Caribbean Farm and Forestry Institute, with stated aim to offer the best possible residential training in agriculture, forestry and ornamental horticulture.
The two-year resident programme in pursuit of a diploma in agricultural science would take him away from home, save for occasional visits as it was a residential college.
In the year Bobbin graduated, a World Bank Loan, financed the Agriculture Teacher Education Centre, and more recently, ECIAF was absorbed into the tech/voc offerings of the University of the Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) through its predecessor, the College of Sciences and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (COSAATT).
With his heart in education, it would have been where Bobbin would perhaps have made a significant national contribution. But any such aspirations were soon blown to the wind.
I am happy to have been able to fill some of that void in working to integrate biocultural sensitive development and helping the Caribbean Agriculture Research and Development Institute’s executives and extension service providers transition into the age of new media and spread their messages of agriculture and food security.
One Prideful Morn
I still feel the bustle in the air as I dressed for school that prideful morn while our household was in another headspace. Pa discarded his accustomed merino and guarabara shirt, for a long sleeved tucked-into-pants finery, dapper silk-sashed and lined earth-toned suede fedora and gleaming oxblood polished shoe. He, with Ma, Uncle Dip and my elder siblings boarded the maxi taxi of my big brother, northbound from our tiny country village, for Centeno and Bobbin’s graduation from ECIAF.
Some of the friends he made at ECIAF remained lifelong friends. He graduated among the top students of this batch.
He would become an agriculture extension officer, serving the southern districts to which he remained closely tied.
His graduation from ECIAF was more than just a source of great pride to my father and the rest of the family. It held the promise to lift agriculture from the traditional moorings as practiced by Pa, to a more dedicated role as an educator- called extension services, consulting with farmers, providing advice on crop, soil and animal care.
His graduation would be the highlight of his life, as shortly after he would be struck by a condition that plagued the rest of his life, through which, the glimpses of the social community leader he may have become, often surfaced.
My brother lived out his life in the village. He remained rooted to knowledge of the land, the earth. The surrounding villages benefitted from his knowledge of agriculture. Even after his condition made it difficult for him to effectively function in his role as an extension field officer, he continued to informally counsel farmers. His ambition was for others to prosper.
He had no wish to be king, or prince or governor of any domestic or wider domain, yet lauded his siblings with such ambitions.
He always boasted his siblings had enough brains to rule the world. In the end he wished they would have enough heart too, to do so conscientiously, compassionately and meaningfully.
Quest for Meaning
His early grounding in Hinduism and formal education that exposed him to persons of all faiths, ethnicities and background was the fodder for his treatise for unity that he articulated in the booklet he published and distributed freely, The Meaning And Purpose of Our Existence.
A simplistic but profound exploration of our humanism, it represents his deep-dive into comparative religion with anecdotes of the commonality that underline human nature, despite religious, socio-cultural or other conditioning. A derivative text, it displays his extensive reading, drawing references from multiple sources of philosophy, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism and others as well world literature, music, hymns and bhajans. It provides insights into the sources of his astounding wisdom and humanism that identifies with Mahatma Gandhi and Bob Marley and others propagating non-violent social justice.
A Helping Hand
Family members and villagers know how he followed closely our progress, without being intrusive, ready with advice or to lend a helping hand.
He heartily applauded all our achievements, a source of encouragement to every member of our villages and communities within his reach towards greater accomplishments and achievements. I am not sure if there are any villagers who do not have a recommendation from him as he identified the value in everyone and sought to help them make the most of it. He sat with many of them and later their children, helping them with their studies.
Bobbin gave his life savings to buy the land on which we lived. Although part of my great grandfather’s estate, it was in fulfilment of my father’s independent spirit to not be beholden to the family.
Throughout his life, he would, similarly, give his earnings and savings to those he felt or came to him for charity. Many respected him on his generosity, a few preyed on it..
In the end, the predators on his generosity of spirit, in acts that went against the deep-seated charitableness that was his nature, rendered him helpless and broke his heart.
Antidote for darkness
You Are In The Light
The Light Is In You
You Are The Light
Mantra of Affirmation Siewchand Rampersad
The music he played, the songs he composed to sing at the temple, speak to his heart, his soul.
They calmed his spirts and warded off the shadows that hung over his life.
Bobbin’s exposure to three denominations of Christianity through schooling – Presbyterianism, Baptist, Anglicanism, along with the diverse and multiethnic composition of their students and staffs would deepen his quest for commonality and his own humanism.
They gave him an inner peace that defied the mental torment provoked by his condition.
He divested himself of material possessions, living the most frugal of existence and apart from those who took advantage of his generosity. He was a continuous flow of spontaneous gifts, thoughtfulness.
With no aspirations to office or aggrandizement, he cherished and relished the accomplishments of others. He was always mindful of the potential of education for social mobility and enhanced life chances for the district’s children and their families.
He devoted time providing supporting lessons to the neighbours’ children of the districts, free of charge to lift their life chances.
Beyond the Blue
Bobbin never shirked in the knowledge that this life is transient and he was just passing through as this world is not his home and his ‘treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.’
That angels beckoned him, ‘from heaven’s open door’ away from the torments of his mind was a lived reality.
Like a lily in the muddy murky village pond, he was as full a participant as he could muster and yet, remained focused that this world was never his home.
And then,
One glad morning his life was o’er
My nephew called, ‘He’s flown away’
… Now the shadows of this life have flown
Like a bird from prison bars he has flown
To a land where joy shall never end
Bobbin chose Jesus, Allah, Sai, Krishna, Rama to silver or gold, riches, houses or land.
While he was always trying to find opportunities to improve the life chances of others – so many in our communities can attest to the time he spent tutoring themselves or their children, writing recommendations, he had no desire to title, office, applause, accolades, least of all to be king of any domain or worldwide fame.
He lived in constant thankfulness for the morning, the sunshine, and air we breathe, as each new born day meant the shadows that lurked in the night and threatened to cloud his mind were kept abeyance for the while.
The simplistic rooted country music of Jim Reeves and bhajans, chants and mantras that filled the village air day and night kept the darkness at bay, reminding him of the imminent sunrise and the promise of another day of giving.
Knocked down in his youth, he refused to surrender to the ever-present ominous darkness that constantly threatened to engulf him. He warded them off with his generosity, his charitable spirit, his abiding optimism.
Open door home for all
There is hardly anyone in ours and neighboring community who have not benefitted from his selfless seva. He put the needs of others before his own. His door remained unlocked to all. His world was in sync with the melody, literally and otherwise:
Step into my heart
Leave your cares behind
Welcome to my world
Built with you in mind
Knock and the door will open
Seek and you will find
Ask and you’ll be given
The key to this world of mine
Ray Winkler and John Hathcock, Welcome to My World, sung by Jim Reeves
Seva Dharma. Service. Duty
His unbridled generosity made him easy prey to those who unconscionably would take advantage, some whom he trusted childlike, but it did not deter him from what he believed to be his calling. Seva. Dharma. were his watchwords. Service is Duty. Duty is God and those were the foundations on which he built is own Dharma Ashram.
His cathedral was not only the four walls of the Dharma Ashram he annex to our family home, but too the wider ceiling of blue beneath the sky, candles lit by stars, its pillars the trees as nature fragranced the altar from where came the music from little birds that sing away.
They drown out the darkness with his music, Bob Marley, Jim Reeves, Celine Dion, hymns, mantras, chants, bhajans and the Hanuman Chalisa.
He marveled in every flower that blooms/birds that sing, fish that swim, even the light of the moon.
Since the day I discovered him, mouth locked and staring into eyes of darkness, daring the forests at the back of our home to creep up, his defiance has been emphatic” Satan can’t hold you. Nobody can – angel or devil spirit or man.
The melody that He gave to me and our villages will continue to ring within my heart and so,
He walks with me/And He talks with me.
Bob, Sleep, Sleep in peace and rest/Don’t be afraid of the darkness
We are better for having you walk among us.
You came, as we all do, to this garden alone, and exited it, alone, while the dew was still on the zinnias outside our home.
On behalf of all those whose life you touched and whose spirit you buoyed with love and kindness, God be with you till we meet again.