REUNION ADDRESS by RISHI SINGH Reunion in New York - Saturday, July 9, 2008 JC Chandisingh Secondary School Ambassador Karran, honored guests, former Principals and teachers, fellow grads of CHS, ladies and gentlemen: I am so happy to be here tonight I feel as happy as drop of dew on a blade of grass. Someone was telling me tonight that recent studies have shown that these high school Reunions are good for your health. They induce a compulsive –obssessive desire to go to the gym and to watch the calories. I know for sure that these reunions are good for the economy - just think of all the spending we did - and according to Syd Latchana, our Wall St guru, our reunion may also have a positive impact on investor sentiments/confidence and he expects the markets to open higher on Monday. My friend Aslim Khan said if we keep the hot air to a minimum we will have found the remedy for global warming. Yesterday along Liberty Avenue, I met some guys who told me that they are hoping to do a reunion that will rival the drama and magnificence of a Corentyne High School reunion. I told them “Send me the pillows that you dream on …”. What that chance encounter tells us is that a CHS reunion is the gold standard against which other reunions are compared. For that reason and in appreciation for all that we are today, I ask for a rousing, reverberating and thunderous round of applause in honor of the father of Corentyne High School – Mr. Joseph Chamberlain Chandisingh. Let’s make no bones about it: We are here to praise Caesar!! So here we are tonight, 650 of us, celebrating the 70th. anniversary of a school 6000 miles away. To put this moment in its true perspective, please allow me to take you back very quickly to the year when it all started 1938. 1938 … It was not the best of times; indeed it was the worst of times and in an epic Dickensian sense. The lingering hardships of the Great Depression combined with a precipitous slump in the price of sugar imposed devastating hardships on the lives of our parents and grand-parents on the Corentyne Coast. The education of teenage children was not a topic that dominated the discourse of the day; in fact it was a matter of studied neglect by the colonial administration and the powerful plantocracy. Both Mr. JC Gibson of Plantation Port Mourant and Mr. James Bee of Plantation Albion would have told you that their’s was not a humanitarian mission. Their own peculiar utilitarian justification of their social responsibility is a reminder that those exercising control are the ones who get to explain reality within the narrow construct of their own self-interest. And I say that with the utmost of charitable intentions, and if it turns out to be an indictment on colonialism, then so be it. The only ray of hope in 1938 was the fact that malaria had been close to eradication along the Corentyne and that CHS opened its humble doors to the first wave of even humbler students. I say “humble doors” because, I am informed by Auntie Sophie from the Class of 1948, the mother of my classmate Glen Beharry, that shortly thereafter, during a heavy storm, the school building collapsed. Mr. Hassan Ally and his group of workers were quickly summoned from the Port Mourant Estate sugar house to raise the school again. Mr. JC Chandisingh vowed there and then that our school will never fall again. It never did. It never will. 1938, therefore, saw the genesis of the school which transformed forever the social landscape of the Corentyne and recalibrated the lives and destinies of all of us here tonight. Because of that school, we were afforded an opportunity to aim for the stars; and now we are set to launch our children and grand-children on a trajectory beyond the stars. For all of us who are here tonight and also those who cannot be here tonight, I say this to you: we the CHS boys and girls of yesterday are the men and women we are today and it was CHS that made the difference. We have earned the right to be happy and proud of our school, proud of our teachers, proud of our friends, and proud of ourselves. We have come a far way and I proclaim this night as the night of our acclamation!! A word at this point about the CHS-JCCSS website. It may not be cutting edge but as far as the quality of its content, we are light years ahead of any other high school anywhere in the world. We accept points of views of all flavors. We understand and accept that for every opinion there is an equal and opposite opinion. We know we are not perfect but we believe that the spirit of man can transcend the flaws of his nature. And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, let us keep faith with those legendary men and women of CHS who have gone before us those who are still among us. Let us remember our obligation to CHS; and let us not forget that CHS is now facing bleak and melancholic times. But make no mistake: tonight we draw a line in the sand as we pledge to leverage our economic credibility and monetize our vast powerhouse of intellectual capital to make sure that CHS does not fall again. As I look at all of you here tonight – my teachers, my classmates, my brothers’ classmates, my students, my friends, my drinking buddies, my eyes grow dim and misty as I remember the friendships, fun and laughter of my high school years just like it was only yesterday and to realize that JC Chandisingh gave us something more precious than an education; he gave us this family – the CHS/JCCSS family. Let him who denies that this is a family, let him stand and proclaim his own apostasy and be condemned by his own villainous ingratitude. Confronted as we are by the prospect of our own mortality it is comforting to know that this family will go on even when we are no longer here. Our loyalty to this family is nothing short of proverbial and a source of wonderment. And so we the CHS family are here tonight from all over the world not just to attend tonight’s celebration but to be the celebration itself. I bid you welcome to this great metropolis of NY and to the 70th. anniversary celebration of our high school. Rishi Singh
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 10:00:53 +0000
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