Eight-year-old Nahla Ram­s­ingh has been play­ing the pi­ano for a year, danc­ing bal­let for the same amount of time and start­ed play­ing the cel­lo just two months ago.

When she was three, her par­ents, Michael and Sal­isha Ram­s­ingh, took her to per­for­mances by the T&T Youth Phil­har­mon­ic Or­ches­tra (TTYP).

Nahla's el­der sis­ter, Alyssa, al­so played the vi­o­lin at the acad­e­my and she even­tu­al­ly fol­lowed her sib­ling, but chose the cel­lo.

Ken­neth Listhrop, founder and mu­sic di­rec­tor of TTYP, is the per­son who made her dream to play the cel­lo a re­al­i­ty and cur­rent­ly she is prepar­ing for cel­lo the­o­ry and prac­ti­cal ex­ams.

Her fa­ther said she was born pre­ma­ture, her ears were very sen­si­tive and the nurs­es cov­ered her in­cu­ba­tor for two weeks to pro­tect her eyes.

He said they no­ticed that Nahla was very sen­si­tive to sound; in mu­sic class she heard notes bet­ter than oth­er chil­dren the teach­ers said. She al­so can­not stay too long in noisy en­vi­ron­ments.

The Raghu­nanan Road Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School Stan­dard Three pupil who lives in Las Lo­mas al­ready knows what she wants to be when she grows up—a mu­si­cian or sci­en­tist.

Her fu­ture mu­si­cal dream is to be on stage with the world-fa­mous cel­list and clas­si­cal mu­si­cian Yo-Yo Ma, her favourite sub­ject is math­e­mat­ics and she wants to go to St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Nahla said "I'm learn­ing to play the cel­lo at the TTYP, my teacher is Ms Wright, my pi­ano teacher is Mr Mark.

"The first time I heard the sound of the cel­lo, I just fell com­plete­ly in love with it and said what if I could try it for my­self.

"I went to an or­ches­tra and heard this song called Can­dle on the Wa­ter from the movie, Pe­te's Drag­on sung by He­len Red­dy and I love play­ing that song.

"I'm 'mad' at my sis­ter be­cause she stopped play­ing. The last time I heard her play­ing in the or­ches­tra, it was beau­ti­ful and I want to know why she stopped."

She said her moth­er asked her why she didn't try danc­ing and she ea­ger­ly said yes.

Nahla said she used to dance at an­oth­er school, but it start­ed to get bor­ing with the same ba­sic moves be­ing taught. There was no as­cen­dan­cy in grades but at the Le Bal­let School, at the Young Women's Chris­t­ian As­so­ci­a­tion (YW­CA) in St Au­gus­tine, it is much bet­ter. She at­tained a dis­tinc­tion in UK cer­ti­fied Bal­let Class Ex­am­i­na­tion.

She al­so likes In­di­an dance be­cause her friend Risa prac­tices the art form in school.

Nahla said she al­so loved to draw, her favourite fig­ures are half-an­i­mal half-hu­mans hy­brids.

She al­so does sculpt­ing with clay and stop-mo­tion an­i­ma­tion—"clay­ma­tion".

Nahla us­es her tablet and apps to do stop-mo­tion an­i­ma­tion, in­spired by watch­ing Lego movies and Stik­Bot an­i­ma­tion on her cell­phone.

Ram­s­ingh said his daugh­ter was very cre­ative and they didn't have to en­cour­age her in terms of the cre­ative arts.

He said Nahla had a very strong com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage be­cause her moth­er im­part­ed that to her.

Ram­s­ingh said as an ed­u­ca­tor she saw the ben­e­fits of ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties and the pos­i­tive re­sults pro­duc­ing well-round­ed stu­dents.

He said some­times the chil­dren were bril­liant aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but can't so­cialise, the var­ied ac­tiv­i­ties al­lowed Nahla to be in dif­fer­ent cir­cles, adapt and make friends.