The glit­ter has been washed from the streets, the last truck has rolled out of Port-of- Spain, the feath­ers are boxed, the flags fold­ed, and the sweet echo of iron and pan now lingers on­ly in mem­o­ry. What re­mains is some­thing deep­er than beads, biki­nis, colours and cre­ativ­i­ty, deep­er than the cui­sine and the gy­rat­ing of near-naked bod­ies, deep­er than the mu­sic, the laugh­ter and the mem­o­ries ... it is iden­ti­ty.

“A Rat­tlesnake, if cor­nered, will be­come so an­gry it will bite it­self. That is ex­act­ly what the har­bour­ing of hate and re­sent­ment against oth­ers is; a bit­ing of one­self. We think we are harm­ing oth­ers in hold­ing these spites and hates, but the deep­er harm is to our­selves”

I have used this in­struc­tive line from The Desider­a­ta here and will use it again in the fu­ture. To­day, I am speak­ing to the peace we all need but strug­gle to find and main­tain.

Smokey, the for­mer bush lawyer and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Lib­er­al Piper Par­ty (LPP), sat down in the mid­dle of Wood­ford Square in his ill-fit­ting suit three sizes too big for him.

Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, whether we care to ad­mit it or not, are an emo­tion­al peo­ple. There are cer­tain things that can rile us up in a split sec­ond, but in the same tim­ing, there is some­thing that can ap­pease and soothe.

The IMF Mis­sions are un­der­tak­en as part of reg­u­lar (usu­al­ly an­nu­al) Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tions. The IMF staff’s pre­lim­i­nary find­ings from its vis­it to T&T were pub­lished last week in its “Con­clud­ing State­ment.” Since the state­ment is ap­proved by the host coun­try pri­or to its re­lease, it does not gen­er­al­ly have any “sur­pris­es”. The state­ment is im­por­tant be­cause it pro­vides an im­par­tial view from an in­de­pen­dent third par­ty. The IMF can on­ly com­ment and rec­om­mend. A gov­ern­ment will de­cide which rec­om­men­da­tion it will ac­cept or ig­nore.

Not for the first time, the Bar­ba­di­an elec­torate has, on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2026, re­turned Mia Mot­t­ley and her Bar­ba­di­an Labour Par­ty to gov­ern­ment with all 30 seats in the House of As­sem­bly. May 2018 was the first time she was giv­en a clean sweep, fol­lowed three and a half years lat­er by the snap elec­tion of Jan­u­ary 2022, and 2026 was the sec­ond time she was be­ing giv­en a clean sweep af­ter an ab­bre­vi­at­ed term in of­fice.

This week­end, the world is dressed in red. Hearts, ros­es, de­c­la­ra­tions of love. Time­lines filled with cou­ple pho­tos and care­ful­ly cho­sen cap­tions. Valen­tine’s Day has a way of mag­ni­fy­ing ro­mance, or the ab­sence of it.

To­day is Valen­tine’s Day, a day to cel­e­brate not on­ly ro­man­tic love, but love in all its forms. Over the years, this cel­e­bra­tion has be­come high­ly com­mer­cialised. How­ev­er, we must not equate love with ma­te­r­i­al ex­pres­sion.

Restau­rants fill with dodgy ser­vice and in­flat­ed prices. Florists thrive. So­cial me­dia be­comes an ex­hi­bi­tion of cu­rat­ed de­vo­tion. Even the chron­i­cal­ly in­dif­fer­ent de­vel­op an opin­ion about love.

Car­ni­val may look like “biki­nis and beads” to­day, but as T&T heads in­to Car­ni­val week­end, we should nev­er for­get the rich his­to­ry be­hind our cel­e­bra­tion. Car­ni­val is root­ed in mem­o­ry and sur­vival. Mar­cus Gar­vey warned, “A peo­ple with­out the knowl­edge of their past his­to­ry, ori­gin and cul­ture is like a tree with­out roots.” And he was right, for when we for­get the mean­ing be­hind our tra­di­tions, they may con­tin­ue, but they slow­ly stop be­long­ing to the peo­ple who cre­at­ed them.

There are some sounds that nev­er leave you. The first roll of a tenor pan in a pa­n­yard. The hum of voic­es un­der gal­va­nize. The smell of oil, sweat and dou­bles mix­ing in the night air of St James. For me, Car­ni­val was nev­er just an event on a cal­en­dar. It was fam­i­ly. It was iden­ti­ty. It was Trinidad and To­ba­go in full colour.