WATERLOO TEMPLE

Dozens of flags of all colors are planted on the pier, as many offerings from the Indian faithful who come here to make their devotions. Cremations are even regularly performed here. This temple was built by a very pious Indian farmer, Seeda Sadhu, who, in the late 1940s, wanted to honor his gods by dedicating a temple or "mandir" to them, which he decided to build with his own hands on Waterloo beach. But the land belonged to British capital invested in a sugar cane plantation and even though the temple was already fully built, the plantation managers sent a bulldozer to raze it. Without the possibility of building his temple on land, he will rebuild it on the sea, which does not belong to anyone. But to do this, he first had to build a pier. He will spend more than forty years trying to build a jetty on the ocean, transporting the necessary materials, gravel, pebbles, by bicycle, fighting against the tides, applying at low tide the cement that the sea will carry away a few hours later. A perpetual movement to which this Sisyphus of Waterloo would probably have been chained throughout his life, if in 1995, on the occasion of the ^150th anniversary of the arrival of the first Bengali Indians in Trinidad, the National Council of Indian Culture had not decided to give a boost to the construction of the temple. Today, services are held there every Sunday.