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This Little Divali Light of Mine ...


My Divali love: a shadow of its former self?

Shubh Divali, world! Belated though I be.


     The most full of light thing in the world is love. So, for me, the Mother Laxmi Hindu festival of light, Divali, is a festival of love.
     I love all things love. So you know I love Divali!
     Except ... maybe I don’t.
     I realised just as I am writing this post that it is the idea of Divali I love, the intention of it and most definitely the memory of it. But this new face of Divali in Trinidad and Tobago I don’t really know; so can I claim to love it?

Come together


     Growing up in my little village of Surrey in East Trinidad, we looked forward to Divali like we did Christmas; especially with my family’s mixture, and having always been exposed to Christian and Hindu religious ceremony in equal measure.
     During the day, neighbours went around giving out brown bags of blessed parsad, (including a cut of banana, a thin slice of apple, a prune and a bit what was like a crystallized sugar stone to suck and suck on). We would be eating parsad from the fridge for a week. So good!

In days of yore these bent  bamboo sculptures to hold deyas would have filled this field.


   Later, villagers would come together in the coming dark and light the deyas balancing on the amazingly bent bamboo formations.
     As the night unfolded, while the elders looked on with laughing eyes reflecting many little lights, we children flitted hither and thither with not a thought of differences in our minds. We thrilled at being allowed indiscriminate access to fire, even as fingers were burned by heated oil lapping out of deyas (small clay pots).
     I remember sometimes holding hands with a cousin while one of us used our free hand to shield out the sweet country breeze as the other was using her free hand to reignite one deya with another.
There was “cripsy” kurma and supple parsad to glut on. There was the woomphy boom of bamboo being burst louder even than the nights and nights before.
     I remember smiles out of shadow, such smiles all around; and darkness, light, music, touching, diligent hands and the smell of slow-burning sweet oil.
     Divali was an experience of sweet tastes, thrills, magic and holiness, too. It made me feel good and holy. That’s the Divali I love.

There were no elaborate posters in my day, the effort all went into the rituals
Photos by Jhaye-Q


     That’s not the Divali I’ve had in recent years.
     I don’t know the last time I went to a friend’s house to mark the day with prayers, food and conviviality. Nor when last I went watching lights on people’s houses, or set on bamboo sculptures in open Savannahs.
     I don’t know when last I set flame to specifically a Divali deya.
     It isn’t all my fault, mind you. People-change-the-country-changes-my-life-changed.
     Perhaps in small bucolic enclaves like my Surrey Divali is still done like there is light and love in people’s hearts toward everyone. Maybe I’ll get to a place like that soon one day.
     Till then, I must borrow from Gandhi’s advice and, Be the light you want to see in the world. Not just on Divali, but every, every day.

Shine on


Trinidad & Tobago: the land of light and shadows. Read more at Trinbago Come Good
For free downloadable photos of true, true TnT, hit the link: Jhaye-Q Trinbago
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Tribute to Apache A Cross-cultural Tradition

Carnival is Storytelling
Smoke signals or cellphones: all people cherish communication


INDIANS PLAY INDIANS in Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.
I mean Indians whose ancestors are from India play Indians whose ancestors are from the Americas.
     Also, Africans play Indians, and Spanish play Indians, etc. And, because we have people in whose veins flows the blood of our native Amerindian people, then surely Indians whose ancestors are from the Americas play Indians whose ancestors are from the Americas.
     Indian mas has been popularly played in TnT Carnival for generations; even during the days when people used to root for the cowboys in films starring Audie Murphy and John Wayne, and every Indian was called Apache. 2019 Carnival evinced that this tradition is dancing on strong legs yet.
     I was awestruck by the intricacy of detailed work that went into every costume I leaned forward to eye. My photos let me study them for even longer: beadwork and feathercraft akin to true Native American mastery, handed down over centuries in cultures far removed from home here.

     I think we would make them proud ... to see how deeply they have inspired us to honour their tradition.


     We have Red, Blue and Black Indians in the masquerade. It’s not skin colour that’s signified by the names, but a specific type of costuming.
     By far, the Fancy Indian, like the Fancy Sailor, is the most beloved. Headpieces are of sophisticated workmanship, colours don’t even try to mimic pigments produced from natural-world materials. When you think you’ve taken in everything, there’s another detail that draws attention, so you feel you can never stop looking.

     Fancy Indians are a photographer’s dream!



     As these folk parade before the judges, often in the earliest hours of Carnival Monday and Tuesday, they effect a call and response in improvised language. And they dance. Yes. They do that special hop on one leg three times then gracefully bounce to do the same with the other leg, again, again, again, while curving the torso forward and back, simultaneously swinging and bobbing the head.
     Anyone who has seen a Native American pow-wow dance in a movie or, better, in a documentary, will know the dance I describe. How agile. How breathtaking. How calling us all to come join the sacred spiral.


     When I encountered Fancy Indians this 2019 Carnival, they had already crossed the judging stage. So I met them coming down the street spaced apart, walking slowly, looking spent but no less striking. Some of them walked like great warriors nonetheless. Others still actually danced and smiled for my lens. Or stared as though they’d never seen the like before – so in character, yet.
     The next street, too, was peopled by Fancy Indians of another band, paying tribute to a fallen Carnival warrior. These were at rest: rubbing legs, leaning on rails, sitting on pavements, having a meal/a drink, chatting with tribefolk, taking pictures of their own, no less smiling for my lens.
     Geronimo. The names undulated on my tongue: Pocahontas, Sitting Bull, Sacajawea, Squanto, Crazy Horse, Hyawatha, Uncas: names from out of history, out of books, out of poet’s fancy.
I am deep into Native Indian philosophy. I know how much creativity and honour are appreciated by them. I said before: I think we would make them proud.
     Next year, if I play Fancy Indian mas, I will be a person whose ancestors are Indians from India, Indians from the Americas, Africans, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese. I will be a true, true multi-ethnic Trinbagonian playing an Indian of the Americas.
     That’s my country 😍.

Shine on

For Jhaye-Q Media-worQs of days past, link to The Jhaye-Q Brew Archive



The now and future face of Fancy Indian mas.
For more, and free to download, photos link to Jhaye-Q Trinbago 
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My Story of Carnival


ONE RADIO announcer describing the Carnival Village set up this year said: "Carnival spirit was missing from the Carnival Village. That's a shame." Seems she's something of a seer.
     Carnival 2019 came in with kind of a bang, but many whimpered and opted to stay at home, rather than fork out thousands for a costume, a plane ticket and hotel accommodation, or to even pay the cost to stay hydrated during the days when you could throng the street and "see mas'."
     Funny to know that while many a die-hard Carnival-baby stayed in house this year, my commitment to blogging sent me out onto the streets ... something I just don't do by choice at this festive time.

A buck for bucking Carnival


     If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, "You's not a Trini," because I never played mas' on Monday J'Ouvert, Monday day nor Monday night, and ditto for Tuesday, I'd probably have enough money to buy a Carnival costume from one of those big bands that get future workers by letting cash-strapped people trade in their first-born child for a bathing-suit with beads and feathers decoratively attached.
     I'm kidding!
     I bet some of you are thinking (and I've heard this a heap, too): "But if you never played mas' what do you know?"
     I never played, true, but I have seen, I have been in the middle of it, I have covered it. I used to be a journalist, remember.
     More than that, however, is I felt Carnival ... at a cellular level, a socio-spiritual level. There was something on the breeze, some energy lifting the hair of your pores, some force of creative, thundering power that would surge on the very air the way the world feels changed before a hurricane hits. 
     It used to be that when Carnival was coming, you'd know it in your gut.
     I know it wasn't just me feeling so.
     Carnival is not just the playing mas' part to me. It is not just that to many people. And, ironically, that may be the very reason that some of those same people opted out of the revelry this year. 
     I mean, what is there to celebrate if you feel that something vital and wonderful is dying?
     People here argue whether Carnival or Christmas is the most beloved festive time in TnT. That's appropriate, because all the things that people list as to why Christmas has lost much of its magic and meaning are the self-same ones that can be put forward for what has sapped Mas' of its purpose and pizzazz.
     I'm not writing a dissertation, okay, so I'll just say this: Carnival, as it came to be associated with Trinidad and Tobago as "the Greatest Show on Earth," was not focused on what today's Carnival movers and shakers (so-called) are after.

Jammin' stilled


     Carnival arose, not out of a wanting to make money; but out of a wanting to be free.
     It was not for the sake of selling costumes; but for donning costumes, so to be able to walk naked in the world, unburdened by class, colour, fears, feelings of powerlessness.
     It was not created so the Haves could do at this time what they do every day, rain or shine, all through the year: which is to basically exclude and manipulate the masses for their own gain. 
     It was manifested as a way for the Have-nots, the grassroots, the regular folk to transform into fearsome characters of might: from dragons, to devils, to Midnight Robbers and the awesome, awe-some rest.
     With magic this old and powerful, of course traces remain to this day; with modern champions true to the cause trying, trying, trying all how, all now.
     But, if we are to truly keep Carnival living and breathing as something of worth and weight, this is the most important thing to remember: Carnival is storytelling.
     All storytelling is what keeps a culture alive for future generations. All storytelling is what records a culture to truly share it with others outside of itself. 
     To that end, I am devoting this entire month's blogging to Trinidad and Tobago Carnival storytelling with words and images, highlighting today and yesteryear, sharing the evolution and the history.
     I never played mas'. But deeper than many Trini-folk who have played, I, Jhaye-Q Baptiste, 💓❤💗 Trinbago Carnival.

Shine on


 Photo by Jhaye-Q: Carnival is for sharing the love; Kiddies Carnival 2018

 For more Carnival is Storytelling photos and true Trini vibes, click on the link below  
Jhaye-Q Trinbago   
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Change n' Hues


The Baptist in TnT had been hounded for, then banned from practicing their religion. Some things do change over years. 


OPPOSITE to where I have sat down is a Baptist woman in full white. Headwrap, flowing dress, sash: flush.
       How connected, I mused. I'll tell you why.
       See, I'd taken this moment to sit and write in my latest little notebook (I have dozens; go through them in a few months, fill them with life's word-milk).
       What was so pressing? I had seen a man, as the maxi passed by, with long ras hair, dressed in flush white robes, like a Baptist, too. Not uncommon in TnT.
       What made him all intriguing was that he had been engrossed, right out there on the narrow pavement near the very public Port-of-Spain Market, in helping a younger, shorter woman, who stood close in front of him, to arrange a headwrap.
       She was dressed all in white, too; and the image of them on the long, bare stretch of sidewalk made me wish I'd had my phone out to capture the sight forever.
       As the maxi had sped on, I resolved to press pause on my traipsing, to sit and write the vision while it was clear and resonant in my mind's eye: this eager, patient man helping his daughter or sister or wife drape and attach her expansive white headcloth.
       Both of them standing out against the stark world like clouds still pale in a dusking sky.

  Shine on  


Present day Baptist at prayer: a regular sight in Trinbago. Photos by Jhaye-Q
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