24 January 1999, 962 words
Faith is defined as the belief in something which cannot be proven. But in our society, faith is more than just that: it is also the firm disbelief in things which can be proven.
For example, when the flies started to buzz around the body of 17-year old Candace Quan Chan, you'd have thought her relatives might have started suspecting that she was actually dead. But no: their faith was strong and they had Bop. When the stench got so bad that they had to drench the yard with disinfectant, persons of weaker faith would have decided that Candace was decomposing. But not these people, no sir. They had strong beliefs and stomachs to match.
Now you may feel I am being insensitive in writing this. But Candace is dead, and I'm certainly not worried about upsetting her relatives. There is absolutely nothing I can write that would hurt the feelings of people who refused to carry a very ill young girl to hospital, who watched her die, and who kept her corpse in the house for three days. Not, mind you, that I doubt dead Candace's relatives have feelings: I just doubt they can read.
Nor am I worried about offending those religious leaders and others of the faithful who say that what happened with Candace isn't part of their religion, because if Candace had been catatonic, say, and had recovered they would have been the first ones hailing it as a miracle-praise-Jesus.
No, my concern has to do entirely with myself. You see, I completely lack faith in God, religion and miracles. Indeed, except for fat women who play in the skimpiest sections of Poison, I believe that everything has a rational explanation. But I want to change. I want to learn to have the kind of strong faith that dead Candace's relatives have.
You see, I have begun to realize that faith is the best way to have power, money and respect in this place. After all, Imam Abu Bakr and his cohorts were able to kill about twenty-something people, bomb a police station, shoot up Parliament, then not only walk free but get reserved seats for Panorama prelims. Pastor Winston Cuffie has his own fully air-conditioned building, TV show, and expensive white suit with matching cowboy boots. The Maha Sabha has money to pay for TV coverage of its conferences and more newspaper columns than any other group in the country. Sai Baba has impressed both our Prime Minister and a doctor with the authority to pull the plug. So why should I lack wealth and influence just because I'm an agnostic?
Even ordinary citizens can wield extraordinary power if they have strong religious beliefs. Faith can even put you beyond the reach of the law. If you murder someone in this country, there are only two ways to get a light sentence or to get off altogether: you must either have money or you must have faith And, while I have no plans or inclination to murder another human being, it would be nice to know that I can impress a judge and jury with my strong religious beliefs if I need to. In any case, I have no money, so faith is both cheaper and more effective.
After all, in a society which didn't have faith - the godless United States or Britain, say - someone would undoubtedly have been charged with criminal negligence or even manslaughter for Candace's death. Someone might at least have been sent to the mental hospital. But since dead Candace's relatives did what they did for religious reasons, they will probably escape any consequences for their actions. After all, the Thusians were clearly indulging in child abuse, and they got away with it because they said they were beating 12-year-old "Sarah" naked in the name of God. And dead Candace's relatives are Shouter Baptists, one of the religious groups which has historically been oppressed in Trinidad and Tobago. Sure, the Baptists now have a public holiday but the authorities wouldn't want to penalize someone for practising their religious beliefs. (There are exceptions, of course: it may be okay to let a child die for your religious beliefs, but you'll definitely be thrown in jail if you smoke marijuana for the same reason.)
Now I know it's not going to be easy for me to get faith. Foolishly, I have spent most of my life trying to understand reality instead of denying it. Faith withers under such conditions. Worse yet, this habit has made me into a thinker. But not the kind of thinker whom Trinidad's intellectual elite respects. As a novelist, I try to write books that are easy and entertaining to read. If I had had faith, I would have denied reality and written metaphysical novels like Wilson Harris and been fulsomely praised by Ken Ramchand and Lloyd Best. instead, I have foolishly been assuming that character, plot, form and relevant themes are important elements of the novel.
Even as a newspaper columnist, my lack of faith has put me on the wrong path. In the Independent, I write satire instead of Each Day a New Beginning, which is the Guardian readers' favourite column. (Of course, the Guardian has only one superior columnist.) In the Express, I try to analyze current events in terms of what I have read in philosophy, social psychology, history, literature and science. I should instead do like Best and invoke "obeah" and the "divine spark", which is what we really need to solve all our sociopolitical problems.
So dead Candace has at least shown me the truth about faith. And, if the needless death of this 17-year-old girl helps reveal this truth to more people, especially other teenagers, perhaps her death will not have been entirely in vain.
Copyright © 1999 Kevin Baldeosingh