By Johnny Coomansingh
My last article published in Caribbean News Global on March 05, 2025, titled: Something in the mortar beside the pestle was the precursor to the present script. This one is about how some people hoard money and who eventually ends up with the money. Such money hoarders eventually drown in the foolish idea that money buys happiness. My understanding from childhood was that ‘happiness is a clear conscience and the joy of just being alive.’ I grew up with little in this world’s goods. However, many individuals, for example, my godmother, saw me, during my childhood, as a way of extracting labour to facilitate her quest for making more money.
I was now a grown man and my preference for home-grown (common fowl) eggs was no exception. Neeta was still raising chickens and invariably had a good supply of these eggs. One day I went up to the village of Sangre Chiquito to ask Neeta for a dozen eggs. To me, Neeta looked pale, weakened, lonely, and possessed of something that I could not nail down. The house was dark, dreary, dank, and lifeless. Her face was sort of painted with white and blue stuff that I couldn’t figure out. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere. She seemed lost.
Some strange thing was happening to her. Indeed she brought out the eggs and set them on the table. After a little chit-chat with her, I took up the eggs to leave. Neeta turned to me and said, “Aye, yuh have six dollars fuh mih fuh dem eggs.” I looked at her and wondered if she really said that. “What? Six dollars?” was my reply. “I thought that you were giving me these eggs.” She continued, “Well, ah have tuh buy crack-corn fuh dem fowl yuh know.” I could not believe this. “Keep those eggs. I don’t want them anymore,” I retorted.
I looked at Neeta my godmother and thought about what she did to me, all my labour as a child, my pain, suffering and struggle in the cocoa field, and all the inconveniences I withstood to help Neeta. In that cocoa field, I was literally experiencing child slave labour; a tiny cog in the wheel of the international cocoa syndicate. Now she wanted to exact a six-dollar payment from me for 12 eggs. What a mean and stingy old lady! Once more, Neeta saw the opportunity to make a few pennies and her focus did not waver. She tried to smile when I was leaving but there was no return smile. I knew that it was the last time I would visit her.
Many moons passed. I had stopped visiting Neeta until one day someone came to me and said that Neeta wanted to see me urgently. I could not have spared the time to go look for Neeta. In fact, I did not acquiesce to her invitation. I reasoned that she knew where I lived and if she wanted to see me she should make the effort. Neeta had a car and she had a chauffeur. Neeta was one to save every molecule of gas. Every penny must be spent to benefit her. Then I heard the sad news. Neeta died.
How Neeta died is a story in itself; somewhat mysterious, and somewhat questionable. The reports about her death are vague, but still provoke much thought. Some say that nothing happens before it’s time. Taking the statement with a ‘pinch of salt,’ Neeta’s death, it seems, happened because she did not get the required medical attention that she needed at a specific moment. The theory bandied about in her immediate neighbourhood is that Quero dilly-dallied to provide the necessary care on the night when Neeta suddenly fell ill.
Rolly, Neeta’s chauffeur and alleged ‘boyfriend,’ told me that he could not understand why Quero dragged his heels to call the ambulance. I heard that Neeta was on the floor frothing. Neeta was plump and a little on the heavy side. Quero did not call the neighbours for help to lift Neeta into his car. Why? Rolly hinted that he felt that there was something fishy about the whole incident surrounding Neeta’s passing. Quero acted as though he could not do any better.
Neeta went into a coma. According to Rolly, Neeta was frothing from the mouth when at long last the ambulance came. Neeta died on her way to the hospital. Rolly wondered if Quero was buying time before he called for help. It is possible that Quero wanted to make sure that Neeta arrived at a point of no return. Did Quero orchestrate the activities surrounding how Neeta died? Did she commit suicide? Was it a homicide? Many are the questions but there are no immediate answers.
Quero’s reluctance to provide the much-needed immediate assistance that Neeta required could have been laced with the ‘opportunity’ to eliminate her once and for all. This was his chance and he wasn’t going to blow it. He was not going to let Neeta’s wealth slip from his grasp. Everything Neeta owned fell into Quero’s lap, the money, the new house, the cocoa estate, the car. It would seem that Quero, Asha, his ‘outside’ woman and their two children would be set for a life of bliss to live happily ever after. This is the type of story that underpins great movies; such intrigue.
They all moved into the newly built mansion; the house that Neeta had hoped to occupy for the rest of her days. Without a doubt, Neeta had all the money and everything she wanted to enjoy a good old age, at least so she thought. So many of us believe that we have our lives in our hands and that tomorrow belongs to us. Neeta didn’t live to enjoy one black cent of her earnings.
The cocoa and coffee beans she stole, and those she struggled to scrape up from the floor of the cocoa field which she converted to pennies, just flew past her. Despite her great wealth, she died in same squalid, old weather-beaten house; indeed, ‘a fool and his money are soon parted.’ The wealth was still there, Neeta just left it. As we all know, we take nothing with us to the grave except our character.
At her funeral ceremony, no tears were shed, and no eulogy given. In the cheapest of coffins she lay in the church, so few in attendance, and Quero was busy to get her into the ground. In the church, I was the only member of her ‘family’ in attendance. In the Saint Francis Roman Catholic Church in Sangre Grande, I just sat there staring at the altar. Without any fanfare, Neeta had come and gone. Like a raindrop on hot asphalt; she just sizzled away.
I could still hear the sound of the huge cold clods of earth that came into contact with the coffin as the gravediggers hurriedly covered up the grave. The few wreaths were quickly laid. Neeta was put to rest and the few witnesses at the graveside quietly walked away. What a life! Neeta, The Cocoa Woman was no more, gone to her eternal rest.
After the dirge, Quero probably wallowed in glee; his ship had come in. His dromedaries have come from afar, laden with gold and silver. He was now monarch of all he surveyed to himself that all would be well from here onwards. He must have reasoned that he could now live it up. The money, the house, the car, and the land were now his, but nature has a way of defying the best of plans. Who knows what lies beneath?
Two years later, Quero felt a sharp pain in his chest while he was cutting grass in the front yard of his mansion. Coronary thrombosis took its toll on Quero. He did not live long enough to really enjoy the money, the house, and the car. Asha and her two little children inherited all what was derived from someone else’s labor. Not only did she inherit the wealth, she inherited all the sentiments that went into creating the wealth, the pain, suffering, and discomfort of others who slaved in the cocoa field; all wrapped up in the bundle of wealth that the Cocoa Woman slaved, stole, struggled, salvaged and sacrificed to acquire.
In my mind, it looked unfair that Asha and her children, without a day of toil and struggle, came into great wealth. Maybe that’s the way the world works. It’s all about the twists and turns of fate. Some people come to the right place at the right time. I keep wondering, did Neeta have any last thoughts as she lay helpless on the floor of her house? What was going through her mind as she studied all she worked for and fought the world to get? Did she have any thoughts at all?
Life is like a passing parade, there are actors, and there are onlookers. After a while, I became an onlooker. Quero and Neeta found their enjoyment, pleasure, and excitement in just hoarding money. They could not care about whom they used, abused, confused, and refused. That was not their business. Their business was to extract as much as they could get from whomever they could. They did not have a clue that life is so much more interesting when others are treated with respect, compassion, and love. There are maxims in the Vedas, two of which all of us would do well to remember: “All accumulation will end in loss. All rising will end in fall.”
As far as I am concerned, Neeta understood life as nothing more than grinding work and a restless, miserable, unstoppable urge to create wealth without taking a moment to smell the roses. All that she sought to smell was the cocoa she harvested. In turn, she also smelled like cocoa mingled with sweat; the cocoa took full control of her. It was in her blood. She did not believe in relaxation. She never travelled. Everything she did was to earn another dollar. Her salvation was money, every cent of it! That was her purpose in life?
In my mind, Neeta emerged as the embodiment of stinginess and greed. It is quite likely that she was born to be a tight-fisted and miserly Cocoa Woman. There was no delay in her metamorphosis. The funny thing is that the chickens are still clucking and scratching around, and of course, laying their precious eggs everywhere in the bushes. Sadly, no one is there to collect the eggs. The cocoa and coffee trees in the Kowlessur Road estate are still growing and producing. Who is taking care of them? (Adapted from my book titled: Cocoa Woman published in 2015).
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