Seven TT students were among the top ten highest scorers in the biology unit I of the June 2023 Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).
Erin Quamina of St Joseph's Convent Port of Spain placed first in the region while Jada Ottley of Bishop Anstey High School placed second. Tying for fourth place were Arun Kavi Ramnarine of Hillview College, and Mark Earl Mahadeo and Sean Aden Sahadath of Presentation College Chaguanas.
Also tied for seventh place were Sudesh Mukesh Ramdath of Naparima College and Erin Newton of St Augustine Girls' High School.
Aeriel J Alexis of TA Marryshow Community College, Grenada placed third in the region, Dondre Donovan Mcfarlane of Campion College, Jamaica also tied for seventh place, and Giselle Michaila Byfeld of Campion College, Jamaica placed tenth.
The CAPE Merit list, which was released on Tuesday, showed TT students dominating the top ten lists of many subjects including French unit I, communication studies, chemistry unit I, physics unit I, physical education and sport, and Spanish unit I which listed only TT students.
On the Facebook page of the Office of the Prime Minister of TT, the PM congratulated the parents, teachers and students in the biology unit.
“Notwithstanding the acknowledged many challenges, something good is happening in many parts of our education system.
“As we congratulate these successes, we continue to strive to do even better across the wide spectrum of educational opportunities available to our students, teachers, and parents.”
The Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) Merit list was also released on Tuesday. (Source: Newsday, November 18, 2023)

​
Author : Professor Angelo Bissessarsingh ( HMG) Virtual Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, (Published by Patricia Bissessarsingh, Nov 7, 2023)
In the first chapter of this three-part series we looked at the religious awakenings of Hinduism under indentureship among the Indo Trinidadians of the 19th century. This consciousness of self and personal doctrine was largely due to the formation of small villages as Sir Louis De Verteuil noted in 1884:
“Many have already availed themselves of the offer, and have thus become permanent settlers. At first they were granted 10 acres of land, worth £10, considered as equivalent to the passage-money. As a rule, a locality is selected, surveyed in lots of five acres, and a settlement is thus formed of Indian immigrants only; and an Indian name is given to the settlement. Thus we have the Calcutta, the Madras, the Barrackpoor, and the Fyzabad settlements. The immigrants are thus encouraged to form small communities, speaking the same language, and having the same habits and ways.”
In these settlements, village life went on much the same way as it had in India for thousands of years. The community council of the panchayat was revived and festivals observed regularly. Divali was not initially foremost among these. It began as largely a family affair among the immigrants since its celebration as a neighbourhood occasion is not mentioned anywhere in the writings of the 19thcentury. The all-important deya was most likely moulded from the earth of the dooryard of the homesteads formed by the Indians in their villages and filled with coconut oil made by themselves from nuts grown on their own land. Phagwa was a much larger concern since its riot of colours and very nature made it a village event.
Divali truly emerged as a large-scale festival in the 20th century, about a decade or so after the end of indentureship in 1917. It began to take on an elaborate dimension with bamboo being split into fantastic scaffoldings wherein thousands of deyas would be placed to shine forth . The sound of bursting bamboo is still something which breaks on the ear and heralds the Divali season and it is a pastime indulged in by all the youths of the community regardless of colour or creed. Deyas were also being mass produced by potters, especially along the Southern Main Road from Chase Village to Chaguanas where they still ply their ancestral trades today. Along the main road and Cacandee Road in Felicity is where the first large community Divali displays began to occur in the 1950s. Anthropologist Morton Klass lived for a while in the area whilst observing the villagers and noted:
“This is a festival of lights said to be in honour of both the goddess Lakshmi and of Lord Rama’s return from the forest. It falls on the thirteenth day of the first half of the month of Kartik or around November, and is one of the most happily and eagerly anticipated of holidays . Every house is cleaned , fresh curtains are hung and special delicacies are prepared. Around each house a display of deyas is set out. During Divali the maximum number of deyas that the family can afford is displayed. The deyas are lighted at sunset and mos of the children and old people remain at home to keep them refilled and burning. There is a service in the Siwala in the evening but few except the most religious attend and most of these for a short time. Most of the younger adults set out and lighted their own deyas go walking through the community to see the display of others.”
Stay tuned for the final installment of this series to find out how Divali emerged from its enclave in the Indo Trinidadian villages to achieve national holiday status and its continued evolution.
Painting courtesy Rudolph Bissessarsingh

​In the first chapter of this three-part series written by historian Angelo Bissessarsingh we are given an insight into the religious awakenings of Hinduism under indentureship among the Indo-Trinidadians of the 19th century.
CHAPTER 1
Hinduism’s Arrival in the West Indies.
Author : Angelo Bissessarsingh.
As a historian and erstwhile anthropologist it never ceases to amaze me at how religious and cultural tolerance manifests itself in Trinidad and Tobago. Almost every schoolchild can recite a basic understanding of the annual Hindu festival of Lights, Divali. They know the elements of the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, bits of the sacred Ramayana and the welcoming of the goddess Lakshmi into the home to ensure a year of prosperity for the family.
There are few communities here where in the Hindu calendar month of Kartik (although the earlier month of Ashvin sometimes encompasses the festival) where the firefly lights of tiny clay deyas do not shine forth on the night of the festival, upholding ancient traditions deeply rooted in our ancestry.
To fully understand the portent of Divali (Deepaavali as the celebration is known in India) one must take a brief look at the roots of Hinduism in Trinidad and Tobago. In 1845 a group of indentured immigrants arrived from India aboard the Fatel Razack as the first of thousands who would flock hither to found a new society in an alien land. With them to the west came the ancient ways of their motherland and Hinduism had arrived. Initially there was no provision for any cultural or religious freedom since the colonial authorities merely envisioned the presence of the Indians as an easily-replenished source of labour bound to fixed contracts. It was only when the eminent suitability of these people for sugar estate work became apparent then financial and land incentives were offered between 1860 and 1880 which resulted in the formation of a permanent peasant class.
It is with this firm establishment that itinerant babajis or pundits began to appear in the villages of their people alongside quaint mandirs with mud walls and carat-thatched roofs. A few of these holy men were real Brahmins but these were in the minority with a large number merely being elevated to piety by having a considerable knowledge of the epics of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Although most of the indentured immigrants were from agrarian classes were from rural stock and formerly bound by the fetters of the caste system, it was noted in 1887 by J.H Collens (in a rather myopic account) that a widespread knowledge of the epics was apparent and this of course was the local origin of the Ramayana readings and Ramleela plays which have characterized Indo -Trinidadian Hinduism ever since:
“It must be acknowledged that the Puranas are a mass of contradiction, extravagance, and idolatry, though couched in highly poetical language. It is, nevertheless, astonishing how familiar the Trinidadian coolies are with them ; even amongst the humble labourers who till our fields there is a considerable knowledge of them, and you may often in the evening, work being done, see and hear a group of coolies crouching down in a semicircle, chanting whole stanzas of the epic poems, Ramayan etc. In the preface of the Ramayan it is stated that he who constantly hears and sings this poem will obtain the highest bliss hereafter, and become as one of the gods.”
It is this spiritual awakening which inevitably led to the introduction of Divali and other Hindu festivals to Trinidad. In the next chapter of this series, we will look at how deyas punctuated the darkness in rural Trinidad as Divali emerged as a national phenomenon.
Photo :Three babas or pundits in Trinidad circa 1894. The permanent settlement of formerly indentured immigrants paved the way for a cultural and religious expansion of their identities hitherto suppressed by the colonial plantocracy.
​(Source:  Patricia Bissessarsingh, Oct 15, 2022)

Congratulations to Ms.Doolarie Ramdath of Rio Claro for her accomplishment in being 1 of the 3 samples from T&T earning a place among the top 50 samples of the World at the 2023 Cocoa of Excellence Competition in Paris.
222 samples were submitted and 3 samples from T&T were successful thus far.
Making Rio Claro proud in 2017 and now 2023.
Best wishes to all winners as we await another stage of judging in early 2024. (Source NewsSauce, Facebook_

BUSINESSWOMAN extraordinaire and recipient of the 2011 Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (ORTT) Helen Bhagwansingh has died.
Bhagwansingh died on Monday morning at 83. She had been ailing for some time.
In a statement, her family confirmed her death and said all stores in the Bhagwansingh’s Group will be closed on Monday.
In 2000 Bhagwansingh was named “Woman of the Millennium” by the TT Chamber of Energy and was the first woman to be inducted into the TT Chamber of Industry and Commerce’s Business Hall of Fame.
Bhagwansingh was the widow of Hubert Bhagwansingh, who died in 2019, and with whom she opened their first hardware store in Port of Spain, followed by many other enterprises in the ensuing years.
Expressions of condolences have been coming in for the astute businesswoman who was fondly called “Mrs B.”
Minister in the Ministry of Education and MP for D’Abadie/O’Meara Lisa Morris-Julian described her as a woman of compassion and steely determination.
Opposition MPs Dinesh Rambally and Barry Padarath expressed condolences on her passing.
Rambally, Chaguanas West MP, said she was a prominent and respected businesswoman and that her contributions and legacy in the business world will be remembered and celebrated for years to come.
Princes Town MP Padarath said the country is poorer with the loss of this business magnate and humanitarian.
Well known for her contributions to many charitable causes, the deeply spiritual Bhagwansingh donated $5 million to establish a trust for diabetes education, research and prevention, after learning that the incidence of diabetes in Trinidad and Tobago was approaching epidemic proportions.
Bhagwansingh, who was born in San Fernando, was revered as one of the most successful businesswomen in TT.
At 11 she left school to join her family’s business, Ramoutarsingh Hardware. She was put in charge of running the bicycle repair department.
In 1969,she and her husband bought the Kay Donna drive-in cinema, Valsayn, which she ran successfully until selling it in 1977.
A call by her father to fill in for a sick employee at a small branch of Ramoutarsingh’s Hardware at Sea Lots paved the way for her to start the Bhagwansingh’s empire.
Within two years, Bhagwansingh and her husband were able to transform the premises, surrounded by a mangrove swamp in an area referred to as the “La Basse,” into a successful business. She then acquired the business from her father, Daniel, and renamed it Bhagwansingh’s Hardware.
This led to an expansion of the business into Chaguanas, Marabella and Trincity.
In 1996 Bhagwansingh’s acquired Dansteel and in 1998 Centrin, turning Bhagwansingh’s into an empire that today employs over 1,200 people, including her four children.
Bhagwansingh was also responsible for the Christmas stars erected on the Laventille and San Fernando Hills. (source: Newsday October 30, 2023)