Akash Samaroo
Senior Reporter
akash.samaroo@cnc3.co.tt
With a bang and in the blink of an eye, a single bullet plunged this Otaheite family into poverty, depression, and infirmity. Some may say Rakesh Ramkarran was lucky to survive the shot to his head. But since then, he’s had to confront partial paralysis, his brother’s suicide, his father’s abandonment, and his elderly mother’s struggle to care for him on her own.
To think the now bedridden and brain-damaged 33-year-old is lucky to be alive could be subjective. Sitting on a white plastic chair on the ground floor of their wooden home that groans in impending surrender to the strong breeze, Ramkarran’s 58-year-old mother, Okar, sits with her head in her hands. Ramkarran, covered in a white sheet and lying in bed, could only look on curiously with a child-like innocence at her despair. A sink in his forehead not only shows the entry point of the bullet but also explains the brain damage and his inability to speak in complete sentences.
“He was a security guard, and eight years ago, some bandits ambushed him and shot him in the head,” his mother explained. Clutching her heart, Okar wailed, “I have to do everything for him—clean him, bathe him, everything. Sometimes I want to give up on my life, honestly speaking.”
Ramkarran shouted from his bed, “Mummy, I want a sweet drink!” “Just now, just now, you will get some juice,” his mother responded in a tone reserved for a petulant ten-year-old. Okar explained that since Ramkarran was shot, her husband went to a prayer ceremony and never returned home. Leaving behind Okar alone to take care of Ramkarran and the household.
But Okar is disabled as well. She’s been partially deaf for decades, with her hearing progressively worsening. "I tell a million people that how I am here in this position right now, I get fed up, fed up, fed up in life because it’s not an easy thing for one person to go through,” she cried. Only one side of Ramkarran’s body is responsive. She walked over to his badly broken bed to stretch out his arms and legs, as instructed by his doctors.
The mother cannot afford to pay someone for this treatment. “Raise your hand,” she told him, holding the one that still works. “It has no life in it,” he said with a smile. A picture of a fit, smiling, and healthy Ramkarran hung on the wall next to him. Okar said she has to beg for help from family members and others just to get him off the bed. “To take him out from there to carry him by the doctor in the hospital or carry him for welfare is hard, I have to get about three or four fellas to come and lift him out of the bed and tote him out.” In the corner of the house, a broken wheelchair now serves as a seat for miscellaneous household items.
“It real hard; right now I have to get a wheelchair for him, I have to get a bed for him, and I have to get a mattress for him. It real hard,” she lamented. Money is scarce for the mother and son. They both receive disability assistance, but their basic medical needs exhaust the small sums within a week or two of receiving it. Okar showed us her empty fridge before quickly closing it in shame.
“I have to buy medication, I have to buy groceries, and on top of that, I have to find the money to buy pampers for him. Sometimes food and water have no use for me. Once my son’s belly is full, I’m good. I don’t study food, and I don’t study water because life is so hectic,” she said in a loud tone. Due to her hearing loss, she is unaware of how loudly she speaks. And while at times she is somewhat stern in dealing with her son, her bravado could not mask a mother’s tenderness and love. With her voice cracking as she held back her tears, Okar abruptly said, “You know how the clock does tick, right? In case anything happens to me, what will happen to my son? Who will take care of him? Who will take care of him?”
Okar said at the end of this month she is due to have surgery on her affected eardrum. “When I go and take the surgery, what will be his position?” she asked. But their hardships go beyond what can be seen on the ground floor.
Aside from the lack of a bathroom and the broken furniture, the upper floor presents a haunting scene of dilapidation. Now abandoned as the mother has moved her bed next to her son’s in his room on the ground floor, the upper part of the building has a gaping and perilous hole in the centre, covered slightly by green vinyl.
She walked gingerly on the weak floorboards and revealed the real horror of the room. With a picture of the Hindu god Hanuman and a ceramic angel on either side of us, Okar pointed to a ceiling beam and revealed that her other son hanged himself three years prior.
“Right here, right here,” she said with both arms raised and pointing to the spot. “He had a hammock; he cut the hammock rope, put a soft drink case and stood on it,” she explained. “I see my whole life leave and just gone. A little bit again, I would have jumped over the edge,” she said, pointing to the concrete staircase, which was without a handrail. The state of the home is another worry for Okar. She is fearful that the 40-year-old house, which is structurally unsound, will eventually bury them.
“How the house isn’t good, and it has storms and earthquakes, next thing the house comes down on us. Nobody can’t save anybody,” she said defeatedly. The haphazard electrical wiring also poses a danger. “It is a really difficult time in my life, it is hard in my life, and I had a life from before, and now it is different, and I didn’t know my life would have come to this,” Okar cried.
She said she applied for a housing grant in 2023 but is still awaiting a response. Okar tries to supplement their income by selling coconut oil and bhagee, but the mother is running out of hope and energy. She bemoaned the fact that her other children had seemingly abandoned her.
“When you see they marry and go by their house, they are seeing about themselves; they don’t have time for Mama again,” she said. Reluctantly, she is now stretching her hand out to the public for help.
“He needs a mattress, a bed, some pampers, some groceries, and a wheelchair. If I could also get the help to see about the house, I can make it a flat house, so I can roll him around because when he lies down there it is hard to move him,” she explained.
Anyone wishing to assist the disabled mother and son can call Okar at 317-5899 or her niece Anna at 688-2976.