Shal­iza Has­sanali

At 89, Ram­das Sook­lal is liv­ing proof that it's nev­er too late to learn and ful­fil your dreams. Sook­lal, who had to leave school at nine, af­ter be­ing at­tacked by a dog, has re­turned to class­es 80 years lat­er, to catch up on his read­ing and writ­ing. A stu­dent of the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (Al­ta) in San­gre Grande, Sook­lal joins 11 oth­er stu­dents every Tues­day and Thurs­day for two hours to read and write.

Sook­lal's class­mates are as young as some of his 25 grand­chil­dren and five great-grand­chil­dren. Paula Lu­cie-Smith is the founder and CEO of Al­ta, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that was cre­at­ed to ad­dress the enor­mous so­cial prob­lem of wide­spread il­lit­er­a­cy in T&T.

Lu­cie-Smith was an­nounced as a lau­re­ate in the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence for 2012, in the field of Pub­lic & Civic Con­tri­bu­tions. Three of Sook­lal's daugh­ters are Al­ta tu­tors, who teach stu­dents who were ei­ther de­prived of school­ing or not aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined to learn.

En­rolling in class­es last year, was, no doubt, one of the most im­por­tant de­ci­sions Sook­lal has tak­en in his life. "It was a lit­tle dif­fi­cult get­ting back to study­ing, but I think I have suc­cess­ful­ly met the chal­lenge. It is tru­ly a new life ex­pe­ri­ence. Learn­ing some­thing new has def­i­nite­ly kept me on my toes," said Sook­lal. Sook­lal is in the sec­ond lev­el of the lit­er­a­cy course. He has to com­plete the third lev­el and a spelling pro­gramme be­fore grad­u­at­ing.

Don't take things for grant­ed

Sook­lal said he wel­comed his sta­tus as a role mod­el and hoped to en­cour­age oth­er el­der­ly peo­ple to pur­sue their long-held as­pi­ra­tions. "Nev­er give up and take things for grant­ed." De­scrib­ing his class as fun and re­ward­ing, Sook­lal said, "It's nev­er too late to learn." His ea­ger­ness to at­tend Al­ta class­es stems from his pas­sion for the Bible.

Sook­lal said Al­ta had im­proved his read­ing and writ­ing skills tremen­dous­ly. "I can now un­der­stand what I read and write." Up­on en­ter­ing Stan­dard Three at Plum Mi­tan CM Pri­ma­ry School, Sook­lal said he had to give up school af­ter he was at­tacked by a dog that chewed off part of his right an­kle.

"That was in 1932. I used to go to school bare­foot­ed, wear­ing shirts made from flour bags. I nev­er owned a school­bag. I held in my hand one copy­book and a text­book. It's not like to­day, where chil­dren have every­thing at their dis­pos­al," said Sook­lal, sit­ting in the liv­ing room of his San­gre Grande, home on Tues­day. The wound, Sook­lal vivid­ly re­count­ed, took three years to heal.

But as Sook­lal was gear­ing up to re­turn to school, he was told his fa­ther Sook­daye Sook­lal, the bread­win­ner in the fam­i­ly, could no longer work, be­cause of an eye ail­ment.

Ed­u­ca­tion dashed

As the sec­ond-el­dest son, Sook­lal, who had just turned 12, was sent to work on a near­by co­coa es­tate and farm, with his el­dest broth­er, Mo­han, to put food on the ta­ble. "Back then, you had to obey your par­ents. There was no ifs or buts. You do as you are told," Sook­lal re­called. Sook­lal said not fin­ish­ing his ed­u­ca­tion hurt him.

"The op­por­tu­ni­ty for an ed­u­ca­tion was dashed from me." Hav­ing turned from stu­dent to farmer, Sook­lal worked his fin­gers to the bone for 15 cents a day, while his broth­er reared live­stock. Sook­lal even­tu­al­ly shift­ed from agri­cul­ture to be­come a bus con­duc­tor, where he met his sweet­heart Rosi­na Sood­een, who he lat­er mar­ried in 1953.

As a con­duc­tor, Sook­lal said, he had to write down the names of bus dri­vers and the routes he worked. "So I main­tained my writ­ing and spelling. But it was not of the best." Sook­lal said his wife en­cour­aged him to buy a par­cel of land at Fos­ter Road, San­gre Grande, for $200.

"Rosi­na was a lit­tle more ed­u­cat­ed than me and had a brain for busi­ness." A carat shed on the prop­er­ty was even­tu­al­ly con­vert­ed in­to a makeshift shop called Stan­dard Cafe, where the Sook­lals sold coals, match­es, sweets, pitch oil and cig­a­rettes to the com­mu­ni­ty to eke out a liv­ing and ed­u­cate their eight chil­dren. "In no time flat, busi­ness start­ed to boom. It showed that you didn't need ed­u­ca­tion to run a busi­ness. All it took was a lit­tle com­mon sense, hard work and ded­i­ca­tion."

Fol­low your heart

Bask­ing in his achieve­ments, Sook­lal said he al­ways want­ed to over­come his ed­u­ca­tion­al hand­i­cap, which oth­er peo­ple his age might sim­ply ig­nore. So, af­ter much plead­ing from his daugh­ter, Meela Heer­ah, one of Al­ta's tu­tors, to go back to school, Sook­lal gave in. On April 28, Sook­lal was one of three stu­dents from Al­ta who read to the pub­lic at the Bo­cas Lit Fest.

Their read­ings told of the hard­ships they en­dured and what de­prived them of an ed­u­ca­tion. They were asked to write about the movie The First Grad­er, a film based on the true sto­ry of Ki­mani Maruge, a Kenyan man, who en­rolled in el­e­men­tary ed­u­ca­tion at 84, af­ter the Kenyan gov­ern­ment an­nounced free uni­ver­sal ed­u­ca­tion for its cit­i­zens. Sook­lal said Maruge in­spired him to fol­low his heart and life­long dreams.