The Ram Karram Diaries

Satiricus was in a state of bliss. He was throwing back in his old Berbice Chair listening to the new Radio 89.5 FM. It reminded his of the old days when he was courting Mrs Satiricus. Ahh… those were the days!! Music was always literally in the air, back then. Every home would be blaring the sentimental favourites as you walked the streets and everyone would know the contexts of the songs from the movies they’d all looked at.
His reverie was interrupted by his wife’s niece (five times removed, he reminded himself) Leelawatee with this week’s diary she’d temporarily filched as a free-lance maid. It was Ram Karram’s very thick tome. The man was a scribbler.
Dear Diary,
You would know that I have been troubled this past year. Sorely troubled. It ate me up, as I cried to you, that Ram Autar could become president ahead of me.
Bharet, I hated; but him as president I could understand. He wasn’t a senior counsel like me, of course, but at least he knew his stuff. But Ram Autar!! Oh lord!!! (OK dear diary, it’s just a figure of speech. You know as a Marxist-Leninist I don’t really believe in God.)
But this week I finally told it the way I see it. I feel so liberated, dear diary. For so long I held back thinking that they would consider me for the presidency. I took a lot of insults. They treated me like a small boy: they pretended to forget that I am a senior counsel.
They forget I used to have drinks with the elite big shots in Georgetown. They forget that I read plenty big books and I know plenty big words like “bourgeoisie”. (That was a slip dear diary, a Freudian slip. That was what the old comrades accused me of joining when I bought my Mercedes.)
Anyhow dear diary, I told them that the only way the party can have power is to join up with the PNC. Power Sharing. I was the one who told Janet to cut two years from her term and cut her powers back when the PNC had ‘slow fyaah; mo fyaah’. They called me an ‘appeaser’ then.
The PNC see me as a ‘reasonable’ man. I can knock glass with them after all the curry favour I’ve done in Georgetown. In any ‘power sharing’ they will want to work with me. They know I will give in to them on everything.
This is why the comrades in the ExCo angry with me. But I don’t care! I made a mistake in 1992 when I didn’t take minister work under Cheddi. But my lawyer work was bringing in so much more money, dear diary. I have expensive tastes, you know.
So I am hoping that the opposition will put some more pressure on the government through the Rohee gagging and the GPSU strike coming up. And they will see I am the ‘power sharing’ man who can work with them.
In the meantime, dear diary, I feel so nice and warm inside when my new friend Kiss Soon call me “Mr Ramkarran” and he doesn’t mention my Mercedes anymore. I feel validated.