Kamla’s second coming: a blessing

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 31, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeSOMETHING extraordinary happened two Fridays ago. Kamla Persad-Bissessar—the Mother of our Nation, as I call her—went to Woodford Square to thank her supporters. Her supporters from Tobago chanted: “Thank you, Kamla, the Mother of our Nation. We love you, Mother.”

Such adulation signalled that Trinidad and Tobago is evolving to another stage of social development. It reminds me of “The Chambered Nautilus”, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Snr, that explores themes of growth and change. The last stanza reads: “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul /As the swift seasons roll! / Leave thy low-vaulted past! / Let each new temple, nobler than the last, / Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, / Till thou at length art free, / Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”
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Is this what we want?

By Raffique Shah
May 31, 2025

Raffique ShahI have said this—what I’m about to write here—a hundred times over the past 20 years or so that we have marked and celebrated Indian Arrival Day.

First, I was among a vocal minority who expressed the strong view that the holiday in recognition of the arrival of Indian immigrants on the Fatel Razack in 1845 bringing the first indentured immigrants to Trinidad and Tobago, be named Arrival Day.
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