29 June 1998, 992 words
By all the usual standards, I am not what you might call a successful person. I don't wear ties, carry a briefcase, or own a cellular phone. I don't have a wife and 2.2 children. And, far from having a fixed income, I have an income which is in urgent need of repairs.
I have been trying to analyze the causes of my lack of success. I mean, there's no obvious reason I should be a failure: I'm quite intelligent, don't spit in public, and have naturally curly hair. But all success begins with the right attitude and, when I read a few weeks ago about the $25 a week upper-class Trinidadians pay their domestic workers, I realized that my attitude is all wrong.
You see, some years ago I decided to hire a woman to clean the small three-bedroom house I was renting at Trincity. I called an acquaintance to find out the going rate, and she told me she paid her maid about $35 a day twice a week for cleaning, washing and cooking. I was a bit surprised because, although this acquaintance was upper-class, she was also a socialist. (Indeed, she had once severely berated me for suggesting that humankind progresses only because of its extraordinary individuals, rather than "the masses.") But in the same conversation she told me she was cutting her maid's wages because the woman was now working shorter hours for her. I don't know why I should have been surprised: Trinidadian socialists are virtually indistinguishable from Trinidadian capitalists: they live in upper middle-class areas like Valsayn, drive $500,000 cars, and play golf on Labour Day.
My own view was that anything less than $50 a day for cleaning my house would be unfair. After all, I think housework is hard work, the woman was coming in on Sundays, and I earned a quite decent salary in those days. I even used to play 96.1 FM for Pauline while she was working (I sat in a corner and read meanwhile) because I myself hate doing chores without music.
How stupid of me, I now realize, to treat a domestic worker like a human being. Pauline's husband, I should mention, used to cut my yard - and I actually used to give him cold water from the very bottle I used myself. So it's no wonder I have been unable to progress in life! After all, progress is clearly impossible unless you climb on the backs of the lower classes. I mean, that's why they're called lower. Yet, though language is my business, I never realized this.
I blame my parents, of course. I grew up in a middle-class household, but both my parents came from lower-middle-class backgrounds and failed to bring their children up as snobs. But I'm going to try very hard to remedy this. After all, the first thing ANR Robinson did when he became President was cut out coffee and sandwiches for the domestic staff at President's House. What better example could I emulate than that set by the country's President? (It is true that his predecessor, Noor Hassanali, was very considerate about the staff, but I consider both Mr. and Mrs. Hassanali to be an aberration: what State officials ever gave money back to the country? And how did such decent and unpretentious people get to be heads of State in the first place? Clearly, someone was sleeping on the job.)
I have also been looking at other successful people in order to discover what I should do in order to be a success myself. I could do like Pastor Cuffie and open my own fully air-conditioned church. It wouldn't be difficult. I'd just need to grow my hair and learn to say "Jesus" in three syllables. I figure it wouldn't be too long before I'd be able to get Earl Lovelace's novels banned in schools, wear white cowboy boots, and drive a quarter-million dollar vehicle. And I wouldn't even have to stop being a newspaper columnist, because newspapers would invite me to write for them (something which, though I'm a professional writer, has never happened to me.)
Or, better yet, I could imitate Abu Bakr. All I'd need would be a long white robe, a few AK-47s, and a voice which sounds as though I have a vise clamped to my testicles. This would get me personal gifts from the Prime Minister, praise from Wellesley College professor Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe, four wives, several expensive properties, and free NCC seats. What more could any man want, except for the vise?
Then there's Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj - the very epitome of success. Ramesh now has - or is trying very hard to get- the ultimate power: to kill other human beings legally at regular intervals. Until he became Attorney General, this was a privilege enjoyed only by members of the medical profession in Trinidad and Tobago. Indeed, so successful is Ramesh that he's even taking over the duties of the Minister of National Security, a man who ended one career giving orders and started another taking them. How did Ramesh attain this pinnacle of success? How did he turn Joe Theodore from hero to wimp in a mere two years? I am not sure, but obviously having absolutely no principles is a huge advantage.
If Ramesh is a success, one might be excused for feeling proud to be a failure. "No one can be respectable without being wicked," the philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote and, when you consider most of our leading exemplars, you see what he meant. From paying your maid pocket change to preaching hate messages to subverting the country's Constitution: this is what you must do in order to be a successful person in Trinidad and Tobago. So now that I've thought about it, I'll tell you what: if ever I do become a success in this place, just shoot me.
Copyright ©1998 Kevin Baldeosingh