-Time in the Pomeroon as a boy did well for him

A few years spent in the Pomeroon as a boy did well for Bhaskar Anand Sharma. It taught him certain values that have shaped his life and remained with him to this day. He lives in Canada now but can vividly recall his roots here in Guyana.

On a visit here recently, Sharma, 65, told the Sunday Chronicle that he will never forget the years he spent in the Pomeroon and that he was very grateful that his mother decided to send him there.

“That’s where I started to appreciate nature-the smell of the morning coffee, the sound of birds that wake you up in the morning and to listen to the baboons when they will send a message that the rain is coming; that very sweet environment. Pandit Persad taught me to read Hindi; I learned all the Hindi prayers. I became like a pandit myself.”

He grew up at Triumph Village, on the East Coast Demerara and was attending the BV Government School where he had a lot of friends. “The boyhood days were so nice and we used to do everything that boys do…ride

donkeys, horses, get away from school.”
His mother found that he was becoming naughty and had friends who were not all that good association and so she thought of sending him to live for a time with his uncle Ramphal Persad in the Pomeroon. “He was a pandit, a very peaceful man. I have not met in all my travels around the world a more peaceful soul and a blessed man than Pandit Persad,” said Sharma.

The environment in the Pomeroon stood in stark contrast to what Sharma was accustomed to, but he eventually came to appreciate it. “That’s where I started to appreciate nature, the smell of the morning coffee, the sound of birds that wake you up in the morning and to listen to the baboons when they will send a message that the rain is coming; that very sweet environment. Pandit Persad taught me to read Hindi, I learned all the Hindi prayers. I became like a pandit myself,” Sharma related.
After a few years, he returned to the city and went back to school where he caught up with some of his old friends. “I never studied (in Georgetown) but I passed all the exams at the time with distinction with the training I received in the Pomeroon,” he said.
Later, while attending the Mon Repos Government School, Sharma said his interest was in school cricket and he began to excel at it. In fact, he said: “I topped the East Coast in scoring in cricket and I was invited to play with an elite group for Guyana at the time.”

Music Interest
In the 1970s, though, Sharma abandoned his interests in cricket after a professor of music was sent to the Indian Cultural Centre by Indira Gandhi. “I left

cricket and went to the Culture Centre which was a great blessing. I got their first scholarship to India and I won the first vocal music scholarship in 1973.”
Sharma went to India and after some years, to Canada where he ended up teaching music. “My career in singing was shaped by what happened in the Pomeroon,” he said. Sharma believes his music is more popular in Trinidad and Suriname than in Guyana itself. He has done about seven CDs so far.
In 1980, he also started publishing the Equality Newspaper in Canada. “We recently celebrated our 33rd year in publishing one of Canada’s grandfathers of Guyanese and ethnic multi-cultural publications. I am very grateful to the Canadian Government for their support in government advertising that sustained the paper.”
Sharma said he is also fortunate to be a member of the ‘Discovery Award Television’, a group that does tourism documentaries around the world. “I brought them to Guyana and we did seven projects namely, My Guyana Eldorado, Guyana New Horizon, Beautiful Guyana, Nostalgic Guyana, My Guyana God’s own country, and a few more.”
Sharma is married to Shivkumarie known as Marie and they have four children Varashani, Pankaj, Vishal, and Nishad (who is now co publisher of Equality News).
He regularly visits Guyana and intends to make a musical contribution to the country through the Ministry of Education.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)