Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Sit­ting down for an in-depth in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Pres­i­dent’s Gold Medal re­cip­i­ent and Hillview Col­lege grad­u­ate, Nish­ka Ma­haraj, shared what she’s been up to fol­low­ing her aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess and the chal­lenges she now faces as she con­sid­ers her next steps.

Since Sep­tem­ber of last year, the 18-year-old has been work­ing as a clin­i­cal as­sis­tant and re­cep­tion­ist for her mom Nali­ni Kokaram, al­so as­sist­ing with ul­tra-sound guid­ed biop­sies.

Kokaram is a pro­fes­sion­al ra­di­ol­o­gist and grad­u­ate of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. How­ev­er, de­spite get­ting to spend more time with the doc­tor, she didn’t shy away from the dis­com­fort of what the job re­quired.

“It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly hard but it was an ad­just­ment be­cause I’m not ac­cus­tomed to speak­ing to per­sons in that ca­pac­i­ty to be able to help them. And it has an­gry cus­tomers call­ing...that part is a bit dif­fi­cult...[but] by now I’m pret­ty ac­cus­tomed…” she said.

Aside from sim­mer­ing down vexed cus­tomers over the phone, a high­light of her po­si­tion is that when­ev­er Spi­der-Man is on the of­fice tele­vi­sion, she is all ears—and eyes—for the su­per­hero she is unashamed­ly smit­ten by.

“I don’t know if it was To­bey (McGuire), I want to say it was be­cause he was the more de­pressed Spi­der-Man, where he was feel­ing de­pressed, down and out and then he picked him­self up. And I al­ways used to re­watch that when I was feel­ing sad and be like, ‘Yeah, I gonna do that, yeah, yeah, yeah, me too!’” she laughed.

Last year, Ma­haraj cit­ed a bal­anced life as the “key” to what earned her the Pres­i­dent’s Medal. When asked what that “bal­ance” means to her, she said it was a share of do­ing the work with do­ing things for her­self.

“So, whether that be just do­ing things on my own – I still dance, not com­pet­i­tive­ly any­more, but recre­ation­al­ly – whether it’s just do­ing that for my­self, jour­nal­ing, I do a lot of that…,” she said, adding, “I write so much.”

Un­be­knownst to some, Ma­haraj was in­volved with the Caribbean School of Dance Ltd. She rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try in tap danc­ing in 2019 and 2020, and has done bal­let since she was five, which she de­scribed as the “gate­way drug” to tap dance. Her broth­er, Dha­tri Ma­haraj, al­so did tap danc­ing at one point.

“I think my mom was re­al­ly in­to the arts, and she would watch these old-time men tap danc­ing. And so she got my broth­er in­to it when he was re­al­ly young and I used to watch him dance and I was like, ‘That re­al cool!’” she laughed.

“I just de­cid­ed to join him. He didn’t re­al­ly like it but I did it be­cause I want­ed to be like him a lit­tle bit, even though he’s younger than me.”

De­spite com­ing out of a fam­i­ly of doc­tors, hav­ing re­vealed sec­ond thoughts on do­ing med­i­cine as her ca­reer, she is now res­olute that the pro­fes­sion is what she wants, with her eyes set on plas­tic surgery as a po­ten­tial area of spe­cial­i­sa­tion.

“I like paint­ing, I like cre­ative stuff, arts and crafts was a strong suit back in the day. I guess a small part of plas­tic surgery is hav­ing that cre­ative side of you to be able to re­con­struct some­body’s face. You have to have a cre­ative as­pect of you to know what to do to put it to­geth­er in the right way. So, yeah I think it would be cool,” she said.

Ma­haraj was the top-per­form­ing stu­dent in Busi­ness Stud­ies, Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Arts, Gen­er­al Stud­ies, Lan­guage Stud­ies, Mod­ern Stud­ies/Hu­man­i­ties and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies in the 2023 Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE).

“I know a lot of peo­ple in my life didn’t ex­pect it, but they ex­pect­ed me to do well, and there was just, I guess, the mis­con­cep­tion in their head: Oh, you do good your whole life. You’re gonna do well for CAPE,” Ma­haraj said.

From her ex­pe­ri­ence on the ground, she shared her knowl­edge of “a lot of peo­ple who flopped at CAPE” due to the amount of stress com­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“It was a lot for us to han­dle…and a lot of peo­ple think it came to me nat­u­ral­ly. Peo­ple would be like, ‘Of course, Nish­ka do that,’” she said.

But be­yond the pleas­ant façade of her suc­cess that was apt­ly dis­played across lo­cal me­dia, she re­vealed there were many sleep­less nights and oth­er hur­dles be­hind the scenes while prepar­ing for ex­am­i­na­tions.

“I don’t know if peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly know how much work I put in­to it. [There were] a lot of sleep­less nights, a lot of cry­ing, a lot of fac­ing hard emo­tions and go­ing straight through it…a lot of per­son­al de­vel­op­ment…it was not as easy as me be­ing ‘born smart’” she said.

On the heels of her big win, the Hillview Col­lege grad­u­ate con­fessed to feel­ing the pres­sures of up­hold­ing the lev­el of suc­cess thrust up­on her via na­tion­al ac­claim.

“Every­body has a lot of ques­tions and high ex­pec­ta­tions of me go­ing for­ward. I think, since I got the Pres­i­dent’s Medal, every­body has been ask­ing me: ‘Where do I want to go for uni­ver­si­ty?’;‘When am I go­ing?’; ‘Why am I still in Trinidad?’; and it (the win) just hap­pened like two months ago,” she said.

Thus far, Ma­haraj has done in­ter­views for Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty and Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, and has been ac­cept­ed for en­roll­ment by UWI’s Mona and St Au­gus­tine cam­pus­es.

“I’m just weigh­ing my op­tions right now based on ac­cep­tances,” she said, adding that both her­self and her good friend and for­mer class­mate, Ryk­er Har­richa­ran, who al­so copped the Pres­i­dent’s Medal last year, are con­sid­er­ing stay­ing here, while at the same time still brows­ing for­eign pro­grammes. Their Pres­i­dent Medal wins helped bring Hillview Col­lege se­cure 13 Gov­ern­ment schol­ar­ships. Ma­haraj’s grand­fa­ther, Richard Kokaram, was a for­mer prin­ci­pal of the col­lege.

Asked why she would want to re­main in T&T, she said she was con­cerned about be­ing alone in an­oth­er coun­try with­out the sup­port of fam­i­ly and friends.

“I haven’t trav­elled so­lo be­fore, and al­though yes I could cook and wash my own clothes...it’s just to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent to live on your own away from all fam­i­ly mem­bers. I don’t have any­one in the UK I can fall back on, and then it’s al­so the oth­er side of the world com­pared to Trinidad; so that’s kind of a wor­ry for me,” Ma­haraj con­fessed.

An­oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty she is con­sid­er­ing is com­plet­ing her MBBS (Bach­e­lor of Med­i­cine, Bach­e­lor of Surgery) in Trinidad, trav­el­ling abroad to spe­cialise and re­turn­ing home to prac­tice.

On the top­ic of the fear of fail­ing, she said it stems from pleas­ing the de­sires of her strict but lov­ing par­ents.

“I have been feel­ing a fear of fail­ure for as long as I can re­mem­ber, be­cause...I guess, I just al­ways want­ed to do good to please my par­ents; they want­ed a good ed­u­ca­tion for me,” she said.

Be­sides jour­nal­ing as a way of han­dling the com­plex­i­ties of life and de-stress­ing af­ter a long day at work, she speaks with her friends who felt the same pres­sures of study­ing sci­ence-re­lat­ed sub­jects while aim­ing for schol­ar­ships.

“We all face sim­i­lar pres­sures, so talk­ing to them, they un­der­stand the fear of fail­ing. And we mo­ti­vate each oth­er...I al­so talk to my mom a lot about it, and my dad as well, even my lit­tle broth­er, any­body I could re­al­ly talk to who is a good lis­ten­ing ear,” she said.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er pair of good lis­ten­ing ears that con­tin­ue to guide her through the weeds of life bears a tail and in­spec­tive blue eyes: her pet dog, Bai­ley Doo.

“If I’m do­ing my work, he’ll just stay up and he will be walk­ing around look­ing at me, or he will sleep by my feet. So if I’m feel­ing de­mo­ti­vat­ed, I just look at Bai­ley and say, ‘Okay, I can keep go­ing’. I do not know how to ex­plain it, he just mo­ti­vates me...” she said.

Asked what mu­sic she lis­tens to for mo­ti­va­tion, she said Kendrick Lamar’s Al­right helped her re-es­tab­lish her con­fi­dence in her abil­i­ty but Frank Ocean was her go-to.

“I love that man with every­thing in me! So, I lis­ten to Frank and Tay­lor Swift if I want to wal­low in self-pity, but if I am ready to get back up. I lis­ten to a lot of rap —I think that’s pret­ty sur­pris­ing for a lot of peo­ple,” she laughed.

“And if I want to en­joy the study flow, [I lis­ten] to so­ca; there could be noth­ing wrong with Kes.”

Ma­haraj hopes to par­take in J’ou­vert next year, hav­ing passed it up this year.

“I would love to play mas when I can af­ford it. My friends, a lot of them, played mas this year…and they were say­ing cos­tume prices start­ed about five thou­sand for the women — I don’t have that kind of mon­ey right now. But when I fin­ish my de­gree, I will come back down and play mas,” she said.

How­ev­er, Nish­ka said she fol­lowed the Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions and re­flect­ing on the re­sults of this year’s Road March, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion that Mi­cal Te­ja’s DN.A. took the ti­tle in­stead of Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Car­ni­val Con­tract.

“D.N.A. is amaz­ing…I heard Bun­ji Gar­lin’s song sound­ed like a nurs­ery rhyme (I didn’t come up with that state­ment), but I re­al­ly do agree, and it’s like the same thing over and over. Sor­ry. No of­fence to Bun­ji. I loved his song from last year,” Ma­haraj said.

Un­der­stand­ing the enor­mous suc­cess she’s achieved and of the many young eyes now watch­ing her, she ad­vised teenagers to make the ef­fort, how­ev­er small or large, to suc­ceed.

“For me, per­son­al­ly, I was faced with a lot of ob­sta­cles in my aca­d­e­m­ic and per­son­al life com­ing close to ex­ams. And my ad­vice is not to give up, just keep push­ing through, even if you feel like you don’t have it in you to try again, just make a small ef­fort,” she said.

Asked what ex­act­ly were the ob­sta­cles at that time, Ma­haraj’s eyes glis­tened with wa­ter as she said, “My men­tal health re­al­ly took a toll, so I used to—and hon­est­ly I still face it to this day—get sad, ran­dom­ly. And it was a strug­gle, be­cause some­times you have an ex­am, the date for the ex­am can­not change whether you’re sad, hap­py, or pre­pared or not. I would be faced with feel­ing these emo­tions, sad­ness linked with de­mo­ti­va­tion,” she said.

While be­ing self-re­liant, yet not alone with the aid of her friends in dis­cussing mu­tu­al chal­lenges, she con­fessed to feel­ing like she could not have spo­ken to her par­ents about what was hap­pen­ing in­side of her.

“For this par­tic­u­lar as­pect, it’s not like I could have talked to my par­ents about it be­cause I think the old­er gen­er­a­tions don’t re­al­ly tend to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of men­tal health. They’d just be like: ‘You need to do your work. You have the ex­am to­mor­row’, ‘I have more strug­gles than you. What go­ing on?’” she said.

Doubt­ing any­one would tru­ly un­der­stand her wor­ries, she re­sort­ed to writ­ing, jour­nal­ing the de­tails of her emo­tions to get her­self back in bal­ance.

“To deal with that one…that’s where the jour­nal­ing came in a lot be­cause I felt like I couldn’t re­al­ly talk about it be­cause, I sup­pose, I didn’t think like I could be un­der­stood…” she said.

Fur­ther­more, to move from a state of pain to calm­ness, she would make vlogs of her­self, flush­ing her­self of the sad­ness and frus­tra­tions that would en­vel­op her.

“I got my li­cence right be­fore ex­ams, so I would just go on these lit­tle dri­ves, and then some­times I’d park up and make these vlogs that I’ll nev­er post, but I’ll just talk about how I was feel­ing, cry it out a lit­tle bit, and move for­ward,” she said.

Know­ing what is on the oth­er side of sor­row, and sur­viv­ing it with­out deny­ing its pow­er, Ma­haraj’s lived ex­pe­ri­ence has trans­formed her in­to a men­tal health ad­vo­cate.

“I think a lot of peo­ple make the mis­take of just say­ing, ‘I feel­ing sad, I just gonna bot­tle it up, not gonna think about it, and move on’” she said.

How­ev­er, adamant that this com­mon prac­tice of self-ne­glect leads to a per­son’s emo­tions pil­ing up, she rec­om­mend­ed sim­ply re­leas­ing them.

“At least take in a few min­utes, an hour, to just feel what you have to feel, cry it out, talk it out to your­self, to some­body else…It re­al­ly helped me, be­cause mov­ing for­ward with­out that weight on your shoul­ders…it helps to give clar­i­ty.”