Notes From Small Islands

Trinidad and Tobago is inextricably intertwined to the continents of the world. People from four continents came here, Europeans voluntarily as profiteers, wiping out the native population, others by brute force from Africa, indentured labourers from India, alongside Portuguese and Chinese labour. New immigrants from the Middle East and Latin America followed, and continue arriving in waves.

Historically our ties lie with England, as inheritors of the language, education system, Westminster style democracy and instruments of governance such as the civil service and the separation of powers.  Because of our location and the connections with our more recent diaspora we are influenced by the United States of America, a place many of us are familiar with.

Globalisation apart, our people engage deeply with the world from the arts to ISIS. 

It is through the lens of a small island nation that I have engaged with and travelled out to the world, and always returned with a sense of homecoming.

From the time I can remember myself I have been on the move with my parents, firstly around India, then a whirlwind round of Tobago, England, Canada, England, and Trinidad. Books, my other love (apart from journalism) have inspired most of my trips. Yet in meeting people everywhere I have felt that as Virginia Woolf once said: " the common fund of humanity runs deep." We are similar in heart even as we are varied and wondrous in the way we express ourselves in architecture, customs, fashion, art and music. When we travel we see how vast the world is, how little time we have on earth, and how precious it is to engage deeply with other humans in all sorts of ways.