Category: Features

The Guyana Veteran’s Legion has been recognized as the mother of all veterans organisations because of its exclusive membership to veterans of the two world wars but over the years that had changed when the Guyana Veterans Foundation was formed in 1995. The Legion (then British Guiana Legion) was registered under the Friendly Societies Ordinance as a friendly society on April 26, 1926, according to its current General Secretary, Arno Solomon. He said that the aim of the Legion is to make sure that the memories of the men and…

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With the publication of her singular book, Aftermath of Empire: The Novels of A. K. Heath, Ameena Gafoor has sort of brought Roy Heath back home to his birthplace to be re-discovered, to be reappraised and to be re-appreciated, in a way rescuing him from self-imposed exile and also rescuing his work from obscurity (limited critical response) because Gafoor in this seminal publication was able to place Heath among the forefront of Guyanese Literature (his oeuvre of nine novels is only surpassed by Edgar Mittelholzer and Wilson Harris) by painstakingly…

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By Lakhram Bhagirat “I was young back then and I was very vibrant. I would have done anything for my country and that is what made me go to join the Army and then went to enlist to fight in World War II. But when we were at the airport, them call and said to go back to Base, that the war is off. I was willing to lay down my life for my country because that is what was expected of me,” Benjamin Durant tells me. Although he never…

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At some point in our lives we all would have wondered what Guyana looked like from the sky. We would have wondered if the confusion we see on the ground is visible from over 3000ft above or if our prized architecture would stand out. Well, Photographer Deopaul Somwaru recently took a tour of certain parts of the Coastland from up above. He decided to share some of those images with the Sunday Magazine. Here are some of those images. (Photos by Deopaul Somwaru) (Sunday Times Magazine)

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By Lakhram Bhagirat As a child, I remember the month of October bringing a different kind of competition. It was not the typical competition to see who was more academically inclined or who would perform the best at the annual Inter-House Sports competition but who could buy the most poppies and arrange them in the most intricate designs on their uniforms. It was a competition that both male and female students tried to dominate, but more often than not, it was dominated by the females since they had more space…

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Deepawali, Deepavali, or Diwali is the biggest and the brightest of all Hindu festivals. It is the Festival of Lights: deep means “light” and avali “a row” to become “a row of lights”. Diwali is marked by five days of celebration, which literally illuminates the country with brilliance and dazzles people with joy. The Diwali festival occurs in late October or early November. It falls on the 15th day of the lunar Hindu month of Kartik, so it varies every year. Each of the five days in the festival of…

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In the early days, we would see women with their brooms, buckets and cloths perched on ladders or tables stretching to reach every nook and cranny of their houses to ensure that it is cleaned to perfection, as they prepare for the arrival of Ma Lakshmi. It is believed that the goddess of wealth visits every home that is illuminated with little oil lamps on what is believed to be the darkest night of the year. The festival of Diwali is one that is most-anticipated by the Hindu community, since…

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By Dr Vishnu Bisram Monsoon on the Fingers of God, written by a Guyanese residing in America, is a thoughtful collection of poems relevant to Guyanese and other Caribbean people, the Indian sub-continent, and the UK. This collection of poems revolves around several topics, issues, and places. The collection is laden with a lifetime of experience and a finely honed craft, which the poet Sasenarine Persaud of East Coast brings to bear with full force on his writings. Sasenarine is an essayist, novelist, short story writer, and poet. He was…

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By Lakhram Bhagirat Kwakwani is a picturesque logging community sitting along the Berbice River in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) with a population of just over 6000 residents who are the nicest people you will meet. The journey to Kwakwani is most breathtaking if one takes the bus, but you can also take a boat up the Berbice River to get there. The trip is somewhat of a long one, but with the right company, it can be a very fun one. A colleague and I left Georgetown sometime around 07:00h…

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