Dear Editor,
I absorb what is going on in Guyana today, and ponder whether we have become an utterly soulless society. Cringeworthy is not a moment anymore, but the texture of a long, unending season. What abominations and barbarisms are going to be thought of next, then implemented? The plight of women is what first comes to mind. They are battered, then mangled, then burnt. It seems that new ways are found, and then experimented with to teach the women in Guyana a lesson. Fingers severed off, a knife stuck in the throat with one fatal thrust, a house set on fire, as if adult children are playing with matchsticks and unconcerned about the lethality of their actions. Liberation has turned women’s homes into concentration camps; the 21st century into the Dark Ages, condemning them to property to be disposed of, according to the whims of those whom they live with in abject terror.
The study of sociopaths has pointed to men who when they were children used to set dogs and cats afire. What is frightening is the thought that we could have many sociopaths in this country with whom we coexist ether unknowingly; or uncomfortably, when suspicions are fueled by their actions. I fear for the women trapped in harrowing circumstances, homes converted into prisons, their days a struggle with terror. This is no way to live. It is a horrible way to die. The soul has gone out of us, and none has been vaccinated. The roads smoothed by pitch and roller have become a cauldron of impatience, on the low end, and a furnace of rage when things blow up and out of control. Too much gas pedal. Too much rum. Too much arrogance, and an abundance of confidence in special connections, and extraordinary applications of the law.
Similar to the deathtrap that is a great many domestic hearths and relationships, the nation’s roads have become a grave health hazard, a graveyard for the speeding who eradicate man and metal that may be in the way. Have heard it said [may have said so myself on occasion] that how we use the roads, and the care and consideration extended, are all a reflection of the civilization that we want to have, the one that is carved out. The physical Roman roads were such a marvel of excellence that some have lasted to this day. Our roads may endure for a time, but how much time do Guyanese have on them, given the rate at which maiming and other depravities proliferate on side street, backstreet, and main street?
This is how the soul of a nation is dissipated one layer at a time, until its core is reached, wrenched out, and then swallowed whole. The way that we communicate with each other has nothing that indicates a tendril of the soulful about it. Savaging has become the cultural norm that inflicts wound after wound on the body civil and the body politic. There is bruising and scarring with words, and when lines are crossed, then the bats come out. We engage in the villainous, incite the scurrilous, and then revel in the murderous. I wonder who owns that one involving bats, and how it will end up. Forget about fish and heads. We have lost our heads, with grisliness and madness roaming at will. From the loudness of the microphone to the brightness of the middle of the road to the darkness of that media, Guyanese display all the swagger of mad men, of which the mobsters would have been proud. Slap down conversations. Outshout opposition. Upend civilization. I recoil from the thoughts of what I do not know. What I do know is that Guyanese have surrendered their souls, and now drift anchorless and ignorant. The soul has gone out of us, and there was not even a fight to hold onto it.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
