Keynote Address

(Unabridged Version)

Delivered by Julius B. Nathoo

To the CHS-JCCSS Seventieth Anniversary Reunion

Queen’s Village, NY

Saturday, August 9, 2008

 

 

Master of Ceremonies, Your Excellency Ambassador Karran, distinguished graduates of CHS/JCCSS, Principal Deonarine and Ms Deonarine, members of the staff, past and present, my brothers and sisters of America, ladies and gentlemen, including my daughter Barbara and my grandson, Alexander.

 

My friend, Hardutt, remembers a young man of twenty with a twinkle in his eye. What a wonderful way to remember a friend! God bless Hardutt.

 

The 9th of August, the 70th anniversary of your alma mater is come. Even as I announce that to you, I am aware that my great namesake, Juliius Caesar, made a similar statement on the 15th of March more than two thousand years ago. On the morning of that fateful day, on his way to the Roman forum he encountered the soothsayer who had warned him to beware the Ides of March. He said to the soothsayer, “The Ides of March are come!” leading the soothsayer to reply, “Aye Caesar but not gone.”

 

The 9th of August, 2008, like the Ides of March 44 years BCE will never be gone. The 9th of August will be remembered, however, not for treachery and tragedy but for loyalty, brotherhood and camaraderie and great happiness. Celebrations will go on late into tonight, they will be continued in the park tomorrow, and the events of tonight will be immortalzed forever on the website which Rishi Singh so ingeniously created and has so assiduously and meticulously maintained.

By a marvellous coincidence tonight I celebrate my 70th birthday too. And because it is my birthday, I toyed with the idea of doing a Mohamed Ali especially since I have been allotted only ten minutes for the keynote address.

 

You will probablly recall that after Bill Clinton won the Presidency of this great country for the second time, he held a huge celebratory party. The event was carried on national television. Mohamed Ali was invited to make a speech. Trembling and shaking all the way to the podium Mohamed Ali made a speech which I think will go down in the annals of American history as one of the most remarkable speeches ever made. The speech consisted  of only one sentence. Mohamed Ali said: I want to thank all of you for holding this function in my honour!

 

By another marvellous coincidence, Rishi Singh, the administator of your website,  once put on the site a space filler. It was in Latin: a passage from the great epic poem, the Aeneid, written by Publius Virgilius Maro.The poem recounts the adventures of a man called Aeneas who eventually founded the city of Troy. “Fato profugus,” the poet wrote, “Laviniaque venit littora.” (Exiled by fate, he eventually came to the shores of Lavinia). The poet could have written similarly about J.C. Chandisingh, the great educator, who left his own native Trinidad and arrived in Guyana to later become the principal of Corentyne High School , and for all intents and purposes, the founder of that great school. As a matter  of fact, the poet could have written thus about your ancestors who were transplanted from their native land and brought to British Guiana as slaves and indentured servants. Indeed, the immigrant gene being dominant in CHS grads, the poet could have written similarly about you who left your native Guyana to seek your fortunes in foreign lands. Had the poet so written he would have said: “Fato profugi, Americaque veniunt littora.” But he would have had to add “Canadaque, Brittaniaque, Europaque, Africaque, Asiaque – all the world que- for the students of Corentyne High occupy leadership positions all over the globe..

Had Virgil done so, he would have been linguistically and geographically correct. He would even have been historically correct but he would have made a profound philosophical error which I hope to identify before my ten minutes is up.

 

In the good old days we were enthralled by the mellifluous voice of Jim Reeves who sang: there’s a gold mine in the sky far away/ we will find it you and I some sweet day.

Your presence here tonight indicates to me that you have found your gold mine. The value of your gold mine is not measured by the quantity of its ore but rather by its quality. Your gold mine lies not in the bowels of the earth but in the deepest recesses of your heart, beneath your heart throb. Its constituent elements are gratitude and love and compassion. It is these emotions that bring you here tonight to revere the memory of all those who have contributed to the discovery of your gold mine especially those who have died. As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysberg,”it is altogether fitting and proper that we should honour those who gave the last full measure of devotion.” First your selfless parents whose fervent prayers rose daily into the cosmos on your behalf, J.C. Chandisingh, the great educator whose vision enabled your vovage of discovery,  your hardworking and dedicated teachers, all those who accompanied you on your journey either physically or in their thoughts, prayers and good wishes. And especially those who you thought wronged you. Bless them for they were placed in your path to enable your evolution into compassion.

 

To enable your reverence and gratitude, I ask you now to enter into my literary imagination. Let us consecrate this beautiful hall into a shrine and in this shrine let us honour the man who made all this possible, Joseph Chamberlain Chandisngh. I knew J.C. He was my boss as well as my friend. I never knew the weight of the cross he bore until I became principal of my own school. Then I understood the loneliness of command. I understood the awesome challenges of running a secondary school in an essential rural community. I had a lot of compassion for my old boss then. I finally understood why he always seemed so melancholy even when he were having a drink of scotch.

Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to stand as we honour the memory of J.C. Chandisingh, whose prophetic vision delivered all of us from the wilderness of ignorance and sent us to the promised land.

 

Great educator, beloved friend, we bow our heads to you

Divine teacher, gift of God, we bow to you again.

 

I ask you now to do me another favour. Using your literary imagination see all your contemporaries gathered here tonight with the eyes of youth. As Hardutt Chandisingh remembers me. Try to remember the time when you had great dreams about the future, when you saw the wonder in a fairy tale, when in the eloquent words of Ronan Blaize, “rainbows straddled all with ribbons of harmony.”

 

I sometimes play this game with my wife, Celina. I have to confess that the first time I tried it, it did not work. Let me explain. I retired from teaching in 1994. After my retirement, I decided to let my hair down- literally. I decided to grow my hair and cultivate a beard. My beard was looking good- and feeling good- when Celina said to me before leaving for school one morning. (Celina was a school teacher). “Benjie,” she said, “why don’t get a trim and why don’t you shave that hair from your face and look like people?”

I said to her, “Celina, try to see me like the time when you first fell in love with me.”

Her reply was eloquent. She said, “me na able rememba so lang back. Me bin young and stupid.” Mama mia! In fact if I remember correctly, I said,” O me mama.”

Tonight I ask you to remember that wonderful stupidity; only this time we will remember with compassion, not with eros but with agape, not with amor but with caritas, not with mohobat but with daya. Age and the acquisiition of wisdom allow this. Youth have difficulty with compassion. Youth is a wonderful thing ; it is a pity it is lost on the young.

With your permission I would like to bring my wife Celina on the stage.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Celina Rawana Nathoo of the graduating class of 1960.

 

Just over 23 years ago, I died in a motor vehicle accident. I would like to tell you about that accident but unfortunately my time has run out. Suffice it to say that by Divine Grace I was brought back to life and here I am delivering the keynote address at your grand Reunion, thanks to Beauty Rawana Ramotar and Hardutt Chandisingh and the organizing committee who insisted that I deliver this address. What greater honour can a man ask?  

I am having tonight the Wordsworthian experience. Here is what Wordsworth writes:

 

“And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts

A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns

And the round ocean and the living air

And in the blue sky and in the mind of man

A motion and a spirit that impels all things

All objects of all thought and rolls through all things.”

 

Allow me to personalize a little.

 

“therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods

And rivers of Guyana, of Baboojohn and crech

Of Port Mourant and Rosehall and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, well pleased to recognize

In my childhood memories in my beloved Port Mourant

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

 

I know that you are all involved in a great enterprise that has the blessing of Divine Providence. When I spoke to the students of JCCSS earlier this year, assuring them of your continuing love and concern, I concluded with a stanza from Rabindranath Tagore. It is taken from his famous “Gitanjali” the poem with which he dazzled the literary world in 1913. The poem refutes the philosophy of Virgil: we are not victims of fate or puppets of a fickle divinity. We are children of a loving and benevolent Divinity whose dominant emotion is compassion. Here is Rabindranath Tagore:

 

“Thou hast made me endless, such is Thy pleasure

This little flute of a reed Thou hast carried over hills and dales

And breathed into it melodies eternally new.

When Thou commandest me to sing

My heart loses its limits in Joy

And gives birth to utterance ineffable  

Ages pass and still Thou pourest

And still there is room to fill”.

 

God bless you all. Peace to you. Joy to you. Go in love and unity, my children.