Dear Editor,
I was not there. I was heading towards a time and place of prayer, with people of prayer. But what I did see on the way was grand and inspiring. Because of my personal experience, I venture to share again some more with my brethren across Guyana.
When the car turned the corner into Vlissengen Road, there they were on Saturday last, and there it was. What a sight for eyes that never fail to miss such things, for a heart that welcomes such outpourings of the spirit, of aggregated effort and will. In the gathering midmorning heat, it was this endless sea of pink flowering silently from North to South. It was a continuous wave of women and men, young and old, the spritely and the heavier of feet. Almost solemn; certainly, awesome to and for the soul. They were all light of heart, soaring from deep within with something special. Something like what, I ask? Many things to be sure.
I am sure it was some of the things, and then some more, that were so much a part of my own travels, a little distant now, yet as near and intimately caressing as yesterday. In fact, in just about a month, it would be nine years later. Of intensifying struggle. Of dignified agony. Of the climax of passing. And of the closures that come, and those for which there can never be. Many clad in their brighter shade of pink (pardon begged, if I succeeded in rendering that a tint or two were off-colour), had to be of those memories that are always present, of identifying with battles waged, of faith tested in the harrowing crucibles of cancer. Yet, in the inexplicable indomitable human will that can be so transcendently luminous, there is testimony of faith unaltered, of submission to some greater mysterious being and guiding hand and the fateful hour that comes so remorselessly.
For in the march of many feet, there were many more songs; indeed hymns of praise, that there could be remembrance, stirrings, and association with such a moment on the street, amongst friends and strangers, and in a war fought against a ruthless adversary. For cancers, in all their sickening varieties, can be the embodiment of silent treacheries inflicted on body and mind, on victim and family, and on the survivors, who carry a torch blazing with a powerful pink presence.
Even as I moved on wheels, I was moved by the sight of so many. For they are survivors, too. We all are. And those who are survivors must continue the fight in our own ways, little and in that livid pink that sparkles with the resonance of tales of terrors, of times of trauma, of the tortures that can torment existence in the most unexpected, jarring, and final manner. I should know. I do.
As I passed along, I was blessed with that sight of Guyanese standing in such numbers for something. Something that is a little different from the regular; except that it is never puny in the reflections of the soul, in the whispered callings that creep forward at all hours and in every month of days and the surging recollections that come with them. I urge that the same zeal, the same energy, the same grace, if not still some more, of this individual and collective strength be brought to bear beyond October, beyond breast cancer, beyond the limitations of time and availability and vitality for what troubles, what can intimidate, but what is good and illuminating. Perhaps, even for the atheists and agnostics and others in the midst, a touch too of the godly.
I never think of what could have been. I encourage others – whether walkers or identifiers or simply surrounding soldiers in a noble cause – to be the same way, too. Instead, let it be this way. What was revealed. What was learned. And what and how we must be. Let it be. Oh, let it be that, having walked through those fires, that I will be for the greater good of the greater many.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
