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.”