The Lights that Spark Us! Between Birthdays & Death’s day Shine On! For Denise In Tribute

I stared at the message for more than a few moments. It’s an invitation. To the funeral of the sender! The message from Denise’s phone announcing her death and funeral arrangements completely resonates with her living voice. It is the voice of a few months ago, vibrant and vivacious as in the photo, the light in her heart, shining through her eyes, lighting the room when she was filling me in on her justification for going grey, just as she turned 50! Self assured! Confident and brimming with authentic vitality. Click on image to lay video as you read on

A Wedding, A Birthday – From Friends to Family

We were at a child’s first birthday. We had reconnected three years earlier at a wedding, just as COVID was creeping in. By that marriage we became relatives, not just friends! Yes! The world, we learn everyday, is that small! The Pandemic lockdown dissipated plans to stay in touch, so, now again, family brought us together.

Now, a few months later, hear is a Whatsapp photo inviting me to her funeral arrangements. I stared at it, senselessly.

Ancestral Strands on Holy Ground

 As I entered the Susamachar Church – named in Hindi by the Canadian Missionary founders – James, her youngest son, barely holding back tears, fills me in on her sudden illness and unexpected death. Built from a base as a theatre in 1871 which then tripled as a school and church for the children of indentured Indian immigrants as well, the Church is  today filling with mourners who reflect Denise’s easy fit in the multicultural mosaic we have become –  Hindu by ancestry, Presbyterian by religion, married to a Muslim – all gather together for her last rites

Denise was one of the most vivacious women I know. I came to know her when a friend suggested her children would fit the roles of model young readers for the launch of my book LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction to commemorate the Jubilee Anniversary of Independence which also was the launchpad of the interactive engagement with the knowledge systems to lift education off its self-defacing colonial moorings through pop events – Teas, Tours, Talks and Tributes. It’s ‘reading room outside the reading room,’ model was meant to take reading out of the ‘by rote’ mode of our still colonial-styled education to the vivacious embrace and celebration of life and lifestyles encompassed in our fiction. I envisioned the launch as a programme entirely run by children.

When I met the children of Denise it was immediately clear that her daughter Aeryn would co-host the launch with Jolie, the daughter of Sonja, the designer and co-creator of LiTTscapes. Jolie and her brother Josh had practically grown up from a child to the decade it took us to put the multi-faceted LiTTscapes together to resonate with the potency of text and image much before the current social media grip has made that a norm. Yet, the modes and modus of education, teaching reading and literacy continue to lag behind.

Denise’s, a teacher herself, was already grooming her three children, preteens, for public speaking. Aeryn would join Jolie as Mistresses of Ceremony, Dillon would read a selected passage. James, feeling left out, pleaded for a role. It inspired me to add dramatisations as literary folks – a section of LiTTscapes, much like the sections of a Carnival Band that has encouraged critical acclaim along those veins.

Denise volunteered to coordinate the children’s acts. Her experience as a teacher shone through as the young readers and younger dramatists filed through their parts.   Just beyond toddlers, the younger siblings of the readers brought charm and chique to the event as they eagerly shifted into their roles as stickfighter, schoolmaster, politician, calypsonian and other literary folks in our fiction. As I had scripted the ceremony to fill one hour, I was surprised that it was running beyond time. It was then I realised Denise had extended the lines of some of the passages her children were to read – a proud mother captivated by LiTTscapes, as the opportunity the occasion offered to showcase the talents of her children.

Expanding Education for Creative Productions

Other parents would echo that they saw this potential I had envisioned that the book expand the reach of the creative sector. Parents voiced the worry they had of their boys, in particular, being drawn into gangs, and their girls, otherwise, as there were so few stimulating creative opportunities for children. Their quick engagement with the vision of the synergies for social transformation, their support and encouragement buoyed me. We were doing this by sheer good will from many quarters, with sparse material resources but an abundance of energies, it became a full production, and then some, as, for instance, drawing on the MarkeTTscape and NosTTalgia – other sections in LiTTscapes – the refreshments fare included live takes from the Doubles, Corn Soup, Coconut, and vendors of local sweets and juices.

Apart from writing a labour of love shared by Sonja’s designs to ensure the story of us, our life and styles as represented in fictional literature, the launch, and the others internationally as wel have resonated beyond text and images with the cultural contexts that responded to the interchange between reality and fiction in our literary and cultural underpinnings that have expanded known genres into spheres defined as magic realism, marvellous realism and other new connotations.

Denise willingness to coordinate the children’s appearances during the programme was a welcomed reprieve so I could sit with the guests during the programme.

Already exhausted from not just producing the book itself, but also prepping for the launch production. Few knows what it takes to move the powers to embrace the vision in the first instance and then their bureaucracies to follow through, while simultaneously supervising printing and production of the text itself. It could not have been accomplished without the lights of the many like Denise, Sonja, Rawle Mitchell of the Historical Restoration Unit, the other parents who offered their children to read and participate – Mr & Mrs Edwards and Hannah Persad and her family. The circle extended much beyond that through family and friends who put in effort and others who encouraged us with their energies and spirts of good will.

Grunts of Satisfaction from Special Author Guests

The special guests, writers as Earl Lovelace and Michael Anthony, were so visibly thrilled to see their fictional words made flesh, literally, in more ways than one, not the least of which was the enthusiasm of the young children, some of whom could then barely read.  Seated next to Lovelace and Anthony I could hear their grunts and ah-hummms of satisfaction as they savoured the unfolding events.

Transforming Whitehall creme-de-la-creme to magnificence

 It is no easy task to move a bureaucracy to allow me the keys to White Hall, the crème de la crème of the iconic buildings known as the Magnificent Seven, even in its then dilapidated condition. It meant mobilising for clean-up of layers of bird and bat drippings, to polishing and décor to decoy from its dilapidation, while developing too the script and programme and coordinating the many elements that go into staging a national event. Their energies are attestations that the launch of LiTTscapes as the commemorative publication of the 50^th Jubilee Anniversary of Independence to celebrate our often overlooked intellectual and literary at the seat of Independence, was a national event celebrating our literary achievements. The success of the book was not only its creation from the multiple strands of our literary heritage and oral traditions but also its launch must fully represent the culture which it showcases – from décor to entertainment to cuisine.

For the vivacity it exuded and the vision to move reading from the dryness of classroom  I drew on the enthusiastic energies of so many who tuned their lights on it, sharing in the vision to transform the national narrative from crime, from despair to the possibilities and potential of offering alternatives to children mired in hopelessness and reaching for less constructive distractions.

I drew on our impromptu modes for village theatre productions done with little resources and much talent just waiting to be harnessed.

I arranged a rehearsal session for them with Former Poet Laureate Pearl Springer gave them public speaking. She terrified and awed them with her demands for perfectionism but it is an experience, they say they will never forget!

Launching a Commemorative Jubilee Keepsake

It was a day not unlike this, rains poured till it flooded most of the island to keep many of the guests from south and central away. It was not yet the years of live online events. We proceeded still with an almost full hall at White hall, the building like icing on a cake itself shining its light on the Magnificent Seven then in similar states of disrepair.

By selecting this as the venue than any other, I wanted to showcase the potential for revival and restoration of the building and as it is also featured in LiTTscapes among the many literary heritage sites. It must have worked because today the Magnificent Seven are enjoying new leases on life, restored to some semblance of their original magnificence, taking their places in national life and beaming beyond the history within which they were created.

Beams of Light from despairing WhiteHall Security

The security at WhiteHall beamed whenever I paused by the gate to come through during the inspection, the preps, the rehearsals for the LiTTscapes launch. They despaired every day, they confessed, having to come to work to such a fine building watching as sentinels to its deterioration. We made the Whitehall ready as if for a ball in its heyday!  

As Denise, so many turned their lights on our efforts with LiTTscapes and its satellite of activities, woven with joie d’ vivre in its essence that attracted and sparked quintessential joy in others. In a life filled with people whose vivacity light my world. Like her, their light illuminate my path, as all whom they encounter.  These are the lights I celebrate this birthday, as I reflect on Denise’s death day.

Random Remembrances

I returned from the Church and hearing the tributes of her families and frieds. Having seen how the children had blossomed, Aeryn from the shy girl now an accomplished and self-assured young woman, trying to hold it together,

I pulled out the photos and videos from the launch.

Denise is only a glimpse here and there, on the periphery guiding the children in their roles for the smooth flow of the programme.

Looking back at the photos and recordings of the launch, Denise is only an occasional glimpse, guiding the children into the limelight. Over the years, for me too, she has been an encourager, pepping sunshine in my darkest moments. Her light radiates effortlessly.

I see her spark, the spark of Eintou and Sonja and Rawle Mitchel who are still with us and Michael Anthony who is not, and in the parents and all those others who contributed to making the event a success. The officials who lent their support, the technicians who worked with us to help clean up the pigeon poop and other muck that had taken over the building. They are the lights that illuminate us on the centrestage of life while we illuminate the thoughts and minds and heart of those trying to give form to the formless uncontained effervescence of our universe.

Their beam puts us in the spotlight.

Their spark stretch from the skies.

Washing over us with light.

I cannot fathom Denise’s as a light gone out but one shining brighter. Her beam moving higher to the stars extending the floodlight on all she has touched as a teacher as a community worker as a mother, wife, sister, daughter and friend.

I still cannot envision Denise as one may envision the dead. She is the voice behind the message inviting me to her funeral. She is ascended as a light, shining its beam from a higher realm, to encompass a greater expanse of our humanity than her mortal life as a teacher, community worker, mother, sister, daughter, friend ever could, adding to the lights of the many that have shone on to spotlight mine, as I turn the spotlight on others and as those whom I have dubbed the children of LiTTscapes are shining on in their various endeavours.

For those of us left, there is just a simple resonance. We take for granted that when we go to sleep, we will wake the next morning, that we have one more and another moment after this, as given, that there are endless tomorrows to fulfil and accomplish the many things we expect to. That is the fiction.

The reality is that all we have is this one instant to spark, to negate the ever-present darkness, to shine our pinpricks of light in the endless stream of sparks that connect our floodlight to the satellite of Cosmic Stars.

Shine On, Denise, as your children Aeryn, Dillon and James shine on in auras of your making, as they create their own.

In Remembrance, Denise Ramcharitar Ali Dec 19 1972 to June 4, 2024: See the Funeral Tributes in this link

About Dr Kris Rampersd

Dr Kris Rampersad is creator of the newest creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic which adapts the long form classical epic of shortform new media. She is a literary producer and author if LiTTscapes Landscapes of Fiction, Finding a Place, Through The Political Glass Ceiling & I the Sky and Me the Sea – The Adventures of Munnie Butterfly and Danny Dragonfly.