My name is Ravi Sankar and I don’t play the sitar but I love Trinidad & Tobago music.
I know Ravi Shankar and his daughter, Anoushka, are famous for playing the sitar. I will tell people my name and I will get a little tease in-between. But I don’t really listen to sitar music. Nor to bhajans or other traditional Indian music. I love hardcore chutney. Rum songs, basically.
I’m from Madras Road, Chin Chin, more Cunupia side. That’s where I spent the whole of my life. I never went anywhere else. It’s a quiet agricultural area. I’m a farmer myself but definitely not a ganja planter!
I learned agriculture from my dad. It’s a family tradition. I don’t have any kids myself but I want to have. But I don’t have time for a relationship now. Even with what BC Pires just tell me is pretty eyes.
My favourite music is really chutney but I like parang most of all. And a little bit of soca. Not much.
I never travelled anywhere but I work with a car rental firm at Piarco International Airport and, by speaking to foreigners, I could tell Trinidad has the best Christmas. I hear about English Christmas, Canadian Christmas, all kinds of Christmas, but they don’t have the freedom to experience Christmas like us.
In a farming village, people live with more love than in a residential area, where people keep to themselves. If you need help, the village will assist you.
The nickname for my village is Goat Hill because, long time, most of the residents used to mind goat, and in a large way. We’re the second-to-last people in the village who still have goats. For meat, not for milk. Curry, not cheese.
I went to Chaguanas Junior and Chaguanas Senior Secondary schools. I was bright in school. Probably I coulda further my studies, end up with a better job than what I have. But I choose to do farming. I have a passion for it. As a sideline. But I hope to make it the main thing, a profitable business venture.
There’s a wholesale market in Macoya open during the day, from 8 am-4 pm. Most small farmers need a sideline job to survive. A small farmer has to take a whole day off work to go in a daytime market, so most small farmers can’t go to market during working hours. After work, a small farmer will go home, go in the garden with his wife and family and reap, and reach in the wholesale market for two o’clock in the morning. The current working hours in the Macoya market is only benefitting big farmers who could employ workers to go there during the day.
Most Trinidadians like Carnival but, for me, I like Christmas. I love to blow my balloons at Christmas. Hang it up in my house like in a wreath. I love the colourful ones.
Crime is killing we right now but, otherwise from that, we have a loving country, a very loving population. People still care for one another. That’s one of the things that make me very proud to say I’m a Trinidadian.
We have the best cocoa in the world and we supposed to have the best agriculture in the world! Because we have some of the best land in the world! Why we couldn’t develop the agricultural sector, too? With the drop in the price of oil, we’d be more stable today.
The only problem we have is corruption. If the government could be a little more accountable, we (would) be a First World country. Because the population we have is very small, for the amount of money that we gaining in income. If the money wasn’t being stolen, we’d have the best roads in the world, because we have a Pitch Lake. We supposed to have everything because we lack nothing.
A Trini is someone who loves mixing with different races and cultures. And, regardless of what race, love his belly and love to party.
Trinidad to me is a very loving and peaceful place. The problem here is not the people, but the bandits. Just the law and the police have to buck up, be a little more swift. Police down here, compared to the States or any other First World country, very slow.
•Read a longer version of this feature at wwwBCPires.com