By GHK Lall- The context may unsettle. India-Pakistan cricket in Asia Cup heat; third clash unfolds. The heat of that physical environment, the unrelenting political heat. No one available. None could step forward. Not one man big enough to shake hand extended. Is there not one, even one, only one?
Unwritten orders followed. Some spoken orders should be ignored. For one reason. They dilute human essence; what’s manly, separates men, women, from machines, the monstrous. Simple handshake rebuffed. When that gesture is rejected on sporting fields, a Rubicon is crossed. Instead of rising to the moment, sporting gladiators shrink from it. Small flares lead to big fires, from individual to national. Old memories flicker.
Germans and Allied forces trapped in close proximity in the brutal, lethal trenches of France during World War I at Christmas. The guns went quiet. Carols seared the bitter wintry air. Men at war, reaching for peace. A Black citizen of Guyana offering a rescuing hand to an Indian one during tension, danger. An Indian family opening heart and gate to receive a neighbor from detested enemy camp; there’s the humanity of temporary sanctuary. Americans adopting Vietnamese children after a war that split stateside apart.
When one man cannot find it in himself to lean forward and clasp a hand offered on the field of battle, the field of play, then more than the moment is loss. Something irreplaceably elemental and internal is forever lost. In the Berlin Olympics of 1936, German high jumper Luz Long stood apart and shook Jesse Owens hand. He paid a price for that gesture of decency, integrity, then so rare in the barren wastes of Aryan Germany. Said Jesse Owens, “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler… I would melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the twenty-four-karat friendship that I felt for Luz Long at that moment”. I could never say that better; few, if any, can. Not just say it, but mean it.
From a cricket match waged between the fiercest of rivals. From a time of war fought without an inch given in the killing fields of France. From a time in the fight for individual and national glories in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. From and to the strife lived and the existential difficulties in Guyana. Those are the times that demand that one, only one, be of courageous character enough to break those invisible and often impregnable barriers that are erected by others. Inhuman and artificial barriers that keep shackled and imprisoned behind that barbed line, those mined fortresses of identical thinking. All that results is a corruption of the spirit, a shattering of the mold, out of which man is made. Man was not intended to be mechanical.
Even animals in their terrible natures are often less than robotic, without knowing what that means, and how or why they do so. Some of the things that are intrinsic in the existence of all men and women are what compel them to stand apart and by their actions insist inaudibly that that is not right. And very quietly know that to do the opposite is right at its most sublime.
I write of more than the gracious gesture of a hand shook. I speak of those in the midst of a new era in Guyana, who identify with what is wrong, what is dishonest, what is deficient, and have neither thought nor word that distinguishes them from the nameless, faceless, formless mass. There is sheltering in the crowd; finding comfort in the clamorous energies of the mob craving for blood. To get back, to get even. How different is Guyana, and Guyanese, from the ancient and modern vendettas that are inseparable from the old Yugoslavia, the new carving out of the Middle East, and the perversities that paralyze India and its neighbors?
Voices are found to condemn disrespect. Yet silence reigned when thuggery and hooliganism made repeated appearances just a few short weeks ago. Guyanese must strive to be citizens of principle, or they will be no more than the principal producers of their own self-destruction. When a hand can’t be shaken, when a wrong not called out, when the deceptions about corruption aren’t exposed for what they are, then of what essence are Guyanese constructed? I say the worst of self-deceivers, self-slanderers.
When one cannot break ranks to shake a hand, or step forward and speak well-speak out and speak for or against-then whither Guyana? Of utmost importance, who am I, when I refuse to speak, don’t stand for anything? Other than what enhances my own self-enrichment.
