I MAKE it my duty to return missed calls and to answer emails. The replies to the emails are burdensome but it is part of the job of being an opinion-maker and public intellectual. I try to read as much as possible of them so I can use my pen to attempt to bring out other dimensions of occurrences that writers hide and in doing create gaps in history.

It is laborious opening all those emails but I have no regrets because I have learnt valuable things about Guyana and its people. I remember a few months ago, a person sent me a correspondence with the title, “Vishnu Bisram is the world’s most educated person.”
You get these weird emails all the time so you have to discard many of them because of the bizarre titles they have. I don’t know why I opened that mail on Bisram but I did. I did not know Mr. Bisram had six doctorates and six Master ‘s Degrees. The person sent me an article Bisram wrote in The Indo-Caribbean of August 12, 2024 titled, “Understanding Diplomatic Immunity as regards Guyanese Diplomats.” Under the column were his qualification which included six Masters and six Doctorates.

Since I have no evidence to reject the mammoth qualifications of Mr. Bisram, I will not go further. But I think it is fair to say that Mr. Bisram is the most educated person in the world in the past 200 years. Scholars do not pursue more than two masters and hardly two doctorates but to have twelve higher qualifications is simply incredible.

It is because of interesting emails like the one on Bisram, I hardly ignore the tons of emails I get. So, I got another interesting one two days ago, informing me that Mr. Glenn Lall’s partner that writes under the penname, Peeping Tom wrote a nasty piece criticising people who write and support the government and ridiculing them as the world’s worst sycophants.

The item was published on September 24, 2024. I have a favourite satire that I have used in my pieces the past 36 years. It tells of the drama of reading the newspapers while having my hot coffee, and as I come across something barefacedly hypocritical, my hands would become unsteady, the coffee falls on my leg and I am severely burned.

Well that happened to me two days ago after I was sent the Peeping Tom column. He was very nasty with people who support the PPP. I quote: “The fawning, groveling, and rhetorical contortions performed by these political footstools defy the standards of human dignity. They smile, nod, and parrot every line dictated by their political overlords.” That hot coffee almost left me paralyzed. Look who is talking?

Those words apply in the most pulsating way to the man who writes under Peeing Tom the past 30 years. This gentleman is virtually a slave to Lall. I simply cannot believe anyone in life can be so sycophantic. And this man has the temerity to call decent people who work for the government as sycophantic.
Peeping Tom is given directions to write the ugliest condemnations of Jagdeo because it has to do with something that Lall feels about Jagdeo. Whatever it is, it seems to be obsession. And the sycophantic Peeping Tom is the conveyor belt.
Now interestingly, this email came two days ago and in last Sunday edition of Kaieteur News, Peeping Tom was summoned by his slave master to go after Jagdeo again. The comical aspect about this vicarious relation between Tommy, the sycophant and Glenn Lall is that Lall is incapable of stringing words together.

I will never forget after the fallout with me and Lall over Lall’s fervent belief that there is apartheid in Guyana that Lall could not pronounce the word, “apartheid.” You learn every day when you live in this country. Imagine the world’s biggest sycophant wrote a column using deplorable sentences to describe government supporters as sycophants.

Here is something about Peeping Tom that I bet the world has never zeroed in on. Peeping Tom avoids my name like COVID-19. I am attacked by all kinds of commentators but Peeping Tom avoids even one word (just one word) of castigation against me. Check the past 20 years right up to today’s date and there is never any mention of me in the columns of this anonymous writer.

How do you explain that I confront many of the atrocities and immoralities this faceless and nameless person puts in his column, but he avoids even an ephemeral glance at me. He never ever takes even a fleeting dig at me. Do you know why? I think you do.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.