You don’t choose your parents. And you don’t choose your birthplace. These don’t have to be unfortunate things, though for much of my teenage years I’d been convinced the latter was a hex placed upon me.

I grew up and currently live in Chaguanas, a town in a constant state of indecision

I grew up and currently live in Trinidad and Tobago, in the town of Chaguanas – a town in a constant state of indecision. I went to school there – and I was pumped through a pipeline of Catholicism and sciences. The town is a tangle of power lines and signs dripping with sorrel-red paint. On the sidewalks, rows of decapitated mannequins in bubble dresses and saris held stable by ropes. Vendors dominate the walkways under large umbrellas, selling anything and everything. You could buy a stuffed Pikachu, some flip-flops and a thong from the same merchant. The main road in perpetual gridlock. The aroma of doubles, chadon beni and pepper sauce with car exhaust and gasoline. Narrow hallways of malls act as thoroughfares. The market square a huge open structure – wind coming in one end and rumbling out the other. Yams and eddoes and caraille and watercress. Melons and sweet peppers and scraps of melongene strewn across the floor, pecked upon by posses of blackbirds.

Behind this square used to be the old cinema – a warehouse repurposed with a projector and seats. Matinees had become the natural Saturday pastime. Popcorn bags came in the size of fists, and a giant Lurch-like man sold rice cakes from a satchel. Stray dogs and glowstick salesmen prowled the aisles. One night, after a matinee, I cut across the market square, the darkness only broken by fringes of renewed moonlight. Kept walking, came upon a room where the phantom stench of carite and kingfish entered my senses. The dim yellow glow of the streetlights in the distance, casting crooked shadows on the ground. There was a freezer box, and there was something behind it. Going squish-squish-squish. I didn’t believe in monsters, but when you’re surrounded by shadows in a town like this, you just don’t know. Twenty years later, I’m fairly sure it was a cat. Some stray stockpiling fish guts under a table. But I am also deeply afraid it was a man doing the same thing.

In the moment, I felt overwhelmed. Thinking the British have had it so easy. Unlimited access to knowledge and art

In the opposite direction to the market square is the Lion House – so known for its leonine outcroppings that were once thought to be the guardians of this town. Those familiar with Nobel Prizes and Caribbean literature, namely VS Naipaul, would know this was the eponymous setting for A House for Mr. Biswas. Farther down the road is a faded mural of the ill-tempered author himself. The structure sits like a sore tooth today. Choked with moss. A wild ficus sits sovereign on the verandah. Its arches, inspired by its deceased owner’s memories of Indian temples, now obscured by palisades of galvanised steel. A classic icon from literature, as disregarded as the author disregarded his own birth nation. And there I was, sauntering past it every morning to school.

Sometimes I look back and wonder how I ever took an interest in writing fiction in the first place. Trinidad seemed poised to mould me into anything but a writer. I had to win a scholarship and move out to even dare think of becoming such a thing. My school, being all boys, didn’t regard Literature a worthy subject to take up past the age of twelve. Not coincidentally, our school library was regrettably sparse, with more than half of the selections seeming arbitrary in the guise of diversity – I cannot recall finding a single book of poetry on its shelves. The town’s sole library, nested in the upstairs corner of a dying mall, was similarly scarce. On Saturdays, I ventured out into corners, into nooks, behind pubs and graffitied walls. Every once in a while, I’d come across a lone tarpaulin tent with books lain out on wreckages of tables. Or a seedy secondhand bookstore, raging against the dying of the light. So much of my early book collection looks like it’d been tossed into a piranha pond. Much of my other reading material was distilled from websites and peer-to-peer networks – the post-Y2K internet world was still a frontier and my only method of traversal was a 28.8 kbps modem. Thus, whatever I got, I held on to tightly. A copy of The Gunslinger with half the cover missing. Crime and Punishment, spine so bent it’s lucky a book cannot be paralysed. A pdf collection of Robert Frost poems, each digital page gaudily watermarked.

About twenty years ago, when I was in my fifth form, I set up a personal challenge to see the Sofia Coppola film, Lost in Translation. I’d only skimmed the plot and reviews in movie blogs before spending three hours trying to download a Quicktime file of the trailer. No cinema here would have shown an arthouse movie like that. And we didn’t pay for the movie channels at home. But there was one saving grace – recently, throughout the town, some men had lain pallets against the walls, just a stone’s throw from the taxi stands, and filled them with pirated DVDs. Alas – no Lost in Translation. A depressing reality was closing in on me – no matter what I did, I would never be able to see this movie.

Until one morning I came across a storefront tucked away in a dusty backstreet. It was next to an Indian fabric store, doors decorated with red and gold flourishes, cloths with mandalas. A rusted bicycle against the wall, a hound gnawing on the chain tied to its back wheel. A DVD shop that had access to all the newest screeners– the ones with FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION stamped at the bottom. And there it was, on the shelf. That melancholic image of a slightly wretched and robed Bill Murray sitting on a hotel bed in Japan. I quickly bought it, flagged down a maxi-taxi, raced home, popped it into my PC. And it was one of the most boring movies I had ever seen – also one of the most beautiful. I probably watched that DVD about a hundred times. I even put it on to sleep.

I had my first visit to the UK about six months ago, doing some promotion for my novel, Hungry Ghosts. Naturally, I visited some bookstores. Waterstones, then Foyles, then a few indies. Even the smallest indie dwarfed our major booksellers in Trinidad. And a gloomy wave washed over me as I realised that. In the moment, I felt overwhelmed. Cheated, robbed even. Thinking the British have had it so easy. Unlimited access to knowledge and art. But on the plane ride back, I selected Lost in Translation as my High Life entertainment. And I remembered my hunts through this indecisive town for novels and poetry and DVDs, and how much I savoured them when I finally found them. It’s much simpler today, of course, especially with a good credit card. There’s Netflix and Kindle and Audible and eBay. My internet is much faster, and the world has become much smaller. I can watch and read anything I like now – though somehow it’s hardly as meaningful as the ruined things I acquired twenty years ago. The childhood cinema is now a parking lot. Old hangout spots have become pubs and jewellery stores.

But some things have remained the same. The Lion House still lies in dereliction. And Chaguanas’ sole library is now a will-o’-the-wisp. Both structures left in legal limbo despite innumerable pleas and calls and letters. Leaves this town feeling neglected, flawed and incomplete. Being a writer from such a town, you cannot help but sometimes feel the same way. You don’t choose your birthplace. But I remain here, writing from these gaps, believing it’s a fine place worth writing about. And a place worth fighting for.

Kevin Jared Hosein won the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His first adult novel, “Hungry Ghosts” (Bloomsbury), is out now