May 15, 2019 issue
Authors' & Writers' Corner
its own reward
We hear a lot about the “good news” of the economy. Things are reportedly looking up in North America if not around the rest of the world. On closer examination however, this good news may not be as good or as accurate as it is portrayed to be by the politicians.
One of the indices of a “good” economy is the unemployment index – the best in decades, according to US statistics. This statistic is however “padded” by a number of factors which are not taken into account. Unemployment can be under-estimated or over-estimated. The demographics are such that there is an increasing bulge in the population of older folks who are no longer in the job market. Also, an unknown number of workers who looked for work and could not find it and have given up looking, are not taken into account.
Many workers are under-employed and can hardly pay the bills for their basic needs. Many take several part-time jobs to make ends meet. Many of the low paying jobs are taken by immigrants, legal and illegal. Incidentally, if it wasn’t for these workers, a number of enterprises would collapse. Many of these workers are exploited by the rich. This group includes women, whose salaries in many cases are not equal to men’s doing like work.
Economies are subject to what is called fluctuation. This is shown and affected by the stock market, inflation, unstable governments – Trump’s America being a prime example, the rise and fall of the dollar, the threat of war, corruption of banks, businesses and individuals – Trump being a stand out, and most of all uncertainty. The psychology of the economy is that it does not like uncertainty any more than you or I do.
In this state of affairs, the rich ironically get richer, pay less or no taxes – Trump again, while the poor, the marginalized, and the declining middle class struggle with putting food on the table, getting a shelter over their head, paying to improve their education and skill set, receiving the very basic medical needs, trying to save for the future and a retirement. Saving is however virtually non-existent.
Where is the “bump” in the economy? Where have the nation’s money and taxes disappeared to? Have the poor and middle class actually seen a noticeable rise in their standard of living? Who is investing in the stock markets? Who is receiving the tax cuts? Where is the wealth of a booming economy going? Is the economy helping the planet or is it helping to ruin it?
In this situation, rural areas seem to suffer more than the urban. The “trickle down” economy seems to die in the city, if it even exists. It is important to state that there are shifts in the economy without any noticeable intervention which fool many people – “fools gold” I call it. As they say, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
That is not to say there is no good taking place. As Thoreau, the American writer said, many folks live lives of quiet desperation. The real good is the worker, the mother and family, the multitudes who struggle daily to keep their families intact, the salt of the earth, the “common man and woman”, those who give when they virtually have nothing to give but their labour, heart and soul. The go-train, the factory whistle, the cannon to wake the slaves, exist today, taking many into modern day slavery.
Good deeds and good examples speak for themselves. We will be judged by history and time, whether we do good or evil. Good is its own reward. Folks can’t get enough goodness. You never say, “Oh! that is too much good, I can’t take it any more”.
On the other hand, you look at the pillars of wrong-doing, be it Fascism, Nazism, racism, religious extremism, nationalism, and radicalism, spinning on the axis of greed, corruption, dictatorship and injustice. Trump nation, Putin nation, Kim nation, Ford nation, or simply damnation, come to mind. In the case of Ontario, how low can the Ford Government go? Gutting libraries, health services, education, social services, the disadvantaged, the elderly, low wages, and a threatening climate are increasingly evident.
Where is the money in Ontario government going? What have the voters got in return? Cheap and ready beer at the street corner and speedy roads to drive on to kill people! Is this the change we can look forward to in a Conservative government, if elected in the upcoming Federal elections?
My father used to say “if you make your bed you have to lie in it.” We now have the boomerang effect. The folks who vote these governments into power, be it in Canada or the United States, must take responsibility. Unfortunately, everyone has to suffer the consequences. How can people be so duped?
The answer perhaps can be explained, at least partly, by propaganda. Many folks enjoy fiction – the suspension of disbelief. Propaganda, however, coming in various forms, is the enduring and willing belief in lies! You believe what you want to believe. Good fiction enlarges and enlightens one’s mind, while propaganda “dumbs down” one’s intellect “bigly”, as Trump, the American president would say.
Let us create real good in our world and leave it a better place than we found it. If the creeks don’t rise and the sun still shines I’ll be talking to you.
and cricket
Carolyn Gupte, Love Without Boundaries: The 49-year Partnership of Subhash and Carol Gupte, PDG Publications, pdgpublications@gmail.com, 2018.
A review by Frank Birbalsingh
Only cricket lovers, aged seventy years or more, will probably recall mesmerising feats by the Indian, leg-spin, googly bowler Subhashchandra Pandharinath Gupte, more popularly known as Subhash Gupte, who began his international cricket career in India’s Third Test match against England at Eden Gardens, Calcutta, in December/January, 1951/52, when he returned only modest figures of 18 overs for 57 runs and no wicket. It is worth noting, however, that in the same match, Gupte’s senior teammate Vinoo Mankad bowled 87.5 overs for 153 runs and six wickets, seeming to confirm a special aptitude for spin bowling in Indian cricketers. So it may not be surprising when, seven years later, at Kanpur, in the Second Test against West Indies, in December 1958, Gupte captured nine wickets for 102 runs, and might have broken further records by claiming all ten West Indian wickets in the match, had not Indian wicket-keeper, Naren Tamhane, dropped West Indian batsman Lance Gibbs.
Gupte’s leg-spin acumen was so sharp that some of his admirers believed he could spin a cricket ball even on glass; and in the “Foreword” to his recent book In a League of their Own: 100 Cricket Legends Select their World Eleven, the multi-talented Barbadian all-rounder Sir Garfield Sobers claims that Gupte was a better bowler than the legendary, Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne. Alas, Gupte’s cricketing career was abruptly cut short, at the age of thirty-three, during India’s match against England at Delhi, in December, 1961, when he shared a room with another Indian player, A.G. Kripal Singh, and a phone call was made from their room to a bar maid inviting her for drinks. Although Shubhash acknowledges he shared the room with Singh, he does not believe he should have been punished for a phone call made by his roommate.
Carolyn Gupte’s Love Without Boundaries: The 49-year Partnership of Subhash and Carol Gupte, makes it clear that, although her father Shubhash was a world-famous cricketer, cricket is not the chief concern of her book which equally considers Carol, her mother. As Carolyn confesses: “It is probable that some readers may have expected a story about Shubhash Gupte to be a bit more ‘cricket-centric’ – filled with interviews with the great man himself, along with experts giving in-depth analyses and opinions about his remarkable career. That, however, was never my intention. I chose … to offer a rare glimpse into the very private world of these two very public figures;” for while Subhash excelled at cricket, Carol’s B.A. degree from the University of Manitoba, in Canada, was followed by her own distinguished career as a teacher in her Trinidadian home town of San Fernando, where her father Andrew Clifton Goberdhan, the author’s grandfather, was a former teacher and school inspector. In September 1972 also, a new school named “AC Goberdhan Memorial School (ACGMS) was opened with Carol as “principal, teacher administrator and janitor.”
In Love Without Boundaries Carolyn concentrates exclusively on the love relationship between her parents who first met at an official function for the Indian cricket team during the Trinidad leg of their tour of West Indies, during January to April, 1952; for it is after this tour that Shubhash and Carol conducted what was really their courtship in an orgy of letters sent to each other between Carol’s home of “Five Gables” in San Fernando, Trinidad & Tobago, and Shubhash’s home “Parna Kuti” in Bombay (Mumbai) India; and not until 1957, four years after their correspondence began, does Shubhash propose marriage, prompting Carol to fly to Bombay where the couple were married in a Hindu ceremony at the Gupte home in Bombay, on April first, 1957. Throughout this absorbing saga of her parents’ relationship, the main concession that Carolyn makes to cricket in her book is to divide it into sections titled by terms taken from the game, for instance, “The Run up,” “The Delivery,” “The Follow-Through,” “Retired Hurt,” and “Not Out.”
But the truth is that if not brazenly scoffing at convention, Shubhash and Carol boldly defied it through their marriage between an internationally known, cricket hero from a Marathi-speaking, Hindu family in Bombay and a professionally trained Indian-Trinidadian teacher and educationist from a Presbyterian community in San Fernando, Trinidad & Tobago, in a Hindu ceremony without the attendance of any member of the bride’s own family. So daring was this exploit that were it not for photos both of the marriage ceremony itself, along with other corroborating records, some readers may even doubt it ever happened.
Yet the marriage not only took place, but produced one son, Anil, and daughter Carolyn, author of this book. Shubhash and Carol also lived for some years in the town of Rishton, in England, where Shubhash played as a professional in Lancashire League cricket. Interestingly too, Love Without Boundaries is decorated with handsome photos of family members and friends on pages of thick, glossy paper in many different colours that confirm the aim of the narrative, as less concerned with clear exposition or plain facts than with an almost dream-like reflection or celebration, aided and abetted by regular use of quotations from unknown sources as chapter headings that sustain an almost fairy tale atmosphere, for example: ‘Love has no boundaries. It exists beyond age, or culture or distance. It exists beyond time, and species. Love has no limit and is the root of all beings,” or “Live without regret…Love without boundaries… Laugh without end.”
After a car accident, in 1977, in which Carol suffered serious injury, she bravely continued working until ACGMS closed in March, 2002. On May 31, that same year, Shubhash died from: “complications related to his diabetic condition,” and as the author writes at the very end: “On November 6, 2014 - some twelve years later – Mummy [Carol] quietly joined him [Shubhash] in Heaven – the only place where there are NO boundaries.”