Audrey Young: Finding a House for Mr Biswas

Beyond the secure compound where Chogm took place is an entirely different Trinidad. Photo / AP

At the risk of missing a press conference on the freshly released Declaration of Port-of-Spain: Partnering for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future, I decide to see a bit of Trinidad beyond the actual port and secure compound that houses the Commonwealth summit and associated industry.

But where and how? With time short, it has to have a purpose. Wandering around alone is not advised anyway and driving around the seven famous colonial mansions of Port-of-Spain does not appeal.

The choice of "where" is between Ellerslie Plaza and Chaguanas. But Ellerslie in Port-of-Spain is a shopping mall and there is no guarantee it is open on Sunday.

So Chaguanas it is. It is the birthplace of V.S. Naipaul, the novelist of Indian descent who is a Nobel Laureate.

Just before any big trip somewhere new, I like to read a novel set in the place and finish it there. The Parliamentary Library obliged last week and they fetched the book requested, A House for Mr Biswas.

It turns out to be a treasure, a first edition published in 1961 by Andre Deutsch, acquired by the library the same year with the library card still in the back and only 13 withdrawals in close to 50 years.

With the beautiful book in hand, Chaguanas it is, a mainly Indian town about 20km out of Port-of-Spain. Even if we don't find the house, called the Lion House after the animals that decorate its verandah, it gets me out of the city.

The "how" is simple. Mario, the young taxi driver in cool shades who charged double what he should have to get me to the Chogm opening ceremony two days before, is happy for the work. He has a brand-new, air-conditioned van and in the very short distance to the opening ceremony, he turned out to be pleasant and informed.

He pulls up at the arranged time, as I am giving $1 to a very unhappy woman, I think, in a bright yellow, cling-on garment. He tells me off. "That's a prostitute," he says, then heads out of town.

Then the education by Mario begins: why Trinidad doesn't get storms, why the slums are on the hills, why the sugar cane industry has declined, the bitumen lake nearby, the local KFC's record for the most custom in one day, the proposed aluminium smelter, why the Prime Minister is a puppet of big business, and how there is corruption.

"Transparency International was invited here and they have never left."

We pass the flashing billboard of a plaintive child: "Daddy, stop hitting Mummy."

I hear about the failed coup in 1990 by Islamic radicals, spurred on, he reckons, by a hideous marble statue the Government commissioned that no one liked or understood and which cost $6 million. The perpetrator negotiated an amnesty with the Government and walks free today.

I want to ask about intermarriage but I realise I don't know how to ask the question. Indians are Indians but what do Afro Trinidadians call themselves? Negroes, he says. And there's a lot of inter-marriage. "You wouldn't find a Trinidad being racial."

And are there many whites in Trinidad? A few. "We call them freshwater Yankees."

Mario is the product of a part-Indian father and a Red Negro mother - that means Portuguese and Indian. The children of mixed marriages are called "dougla" and that is what is called a "Trini" word.

There are lots of Trini words, like "tabanka" - the sorrow you feel when your girlfriend leaves you or your wife is unfaithful. "Bakanal" is confusion and "challoo" is a local dish made with a green-stalked plant. He spells out all the names but knows he is getting it wrong.

By now we have made the Chaguanas turn-off on the highway. Mario is a frustrated foodie. He stops at a roadside grocer to point out the unusual items on the stall and goes through recipes in detail, positively salivating over the Trinidad traditional snack of Doubles: a sort of japarti spread with about four different tastes, including challoo, and topped with another japarti, and scrunched up into a pocket to be eaten in the hand. He finds a Doubles stand near a petrol station and buys one.

Mr Goberdhan, the greengrocer, has told us where the Lion House is. It takes 10 minutes to make our way through the Sunday market traffic but we find the big, two-storeyed, white building.

It belonged to Naipaul's grandfather and is said to be the house he based his Mr Biswas book on.

It would have been grand in its day. Now it looks deserted and padlocked.

Lying on the footpath outside is a clean white shirt with a heavily blood-stained collar. Mario thinks it may have been a homeless person's shirt - until he sees how clean it is.

"Sorry to say crime goes on everywhere. I just hope there was no suffering."

An empty Heineken tin is its only company.

Mario wonders if I am disappointed. Not in the least.