KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Talia Khan is a ded­i­cat­ed lan­guage en­thu­si­ast and hu­man­i­tar­i­an. She cur­rent­ly serves as a Span­ish in­ter­preter/trans­la­tor at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. She has al­so con­tributed to var­i­ous hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts with the Ryu Dan Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to men­tor­ing and teach­ing ba­sic Eng­lish to Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren.

Khan co-au­thored the re­cent­ly launched book Juani­ta–a bilin­gual chil­dren’s book cel­e­brat­ing the ethn­odi­ver­si­ty of T&T.

 “The idea for our book came from wit­ness­ing first-hand the strug­gles of mi­grant chil­dren while do­ing vol­un­teer work with UWI and UNICEF,” she said. “The chil­dren, re­gard­less of their ages, were at vary­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al lev­els, and they al­so lacked knowl­edge about Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture due to quar­an­tine poli­cies that were in place dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“We want­ed to help them learn Eng­lish and about our coun­try while al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed in lo­cal lit­er­a­ture as the pro­tag­o­nist be­cause we know that one day they will rep­re­sent a very sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of our de­mo­graph­ic.

“We al­so want­ed Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to be­come more sen­si­tised to the mi­grant sit­u­a­tion be­cause mi­grants are not the ‘oth­er’.

Khan’s pas­sion is ev­i­dent. She said, “Trin­ba­go was built by mi­grants, all of our peo­ple are de­scen­dants of West Africans, In­di­ans, Syr­i­ans, Por­tuguese, Venezue­lans, Chi­nese and more who set­tled here for work and oth­er rea­sons. What we are see­ing to­day is his­to­ry con­tin­u­ing to re­peat it­self in the cy­cle of life and once we em­bed this in­to our psy­che we can sure­ly be­come a bet­ter so­ci­ety.”

The 22-year-old worked on Juani­ta along­side three oth­er au­thors, Mus­limah Bilquees Mo­hammed, Rayne Af­fon­so and Jesse Buendía Rag­bir.

“It was one of the most in­spir­ing and em­pow­er­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of my life,” Khan said.

“I felt so proud that we took the leap to­geth­er to do some­thing so coura­geous and im­pact­ful. It en­cour­ages you to want to do even more and em­bark on even more projects be­cause you feel re­as­sured that you have sup­port from peo­ple who un­der­stand your goals and dreams be­cause they want the same things. “We all had very good syn­er­gy as well and the process of writ­ing the book was ef­fort­less be­cause we all pulled our own weight.”

Khan has loved lan­guages ever since she could re­mem­ber. She de­cid­ed to pur­sue such while in Form 3 where she set­tled on her ca­reer path.

 “At the time I was torn be­tween fol­low­ing my class­mates or fol­low­ing my dreams,” she said. “Most of my class­mates had their eyes set on Med­i­cine or Law and a part of me did not want to be the odd one out. There were talks about Med­i­cine and Law be­ing ‘pres­ti­gious,’ ‘sta­ble’, and ‘lu­cra­tive.’ It sound­ed very promis­ing and giv­en my thirst for suc­cess I was al­most con­vinced to take that road, but I changed my mind at the last minute and de­cid­ed to do what I love and trust in the process.

 “In that mo­ment I re­alised that I want­ed my fu­ture to be about my in­ter­nal sense of ful­fil­ment rather than the amount of mon­ey I make and the rep­u­ta­tion I have. Al­though mak­ing mon­ey is al­so very nice too.”

While Khan has nev­er had any neg­a­tive thoughts about her job in re­la­tion to the Is­lam­ic re­li­gion, she has ex­pe­ri­enced neg­a­tive com­ments about both sep­a­rate­ly.

 “I have been told that there are no ca­reers in lan­guages, es­pe­cial­ly not in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she ex­plained. “I have felt hin­dered by neg­a­tive com­ments. I have seen on so­cial me­dia about suc­cess­ful Mus­lim women. I thought that if I were to put my­self out there I too would be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, but I’ve re­alised that I don’t care what any­one says. I am all for Mus­lim women tak­ing risks and em­pow­er­ing our­selves and fol­low­ing our dreams.” Bal­anc­ing work with fast­ing and stud­ies is a chal­lenge she proud­ly em­braces. “The wak­ing up ear­ly, trav­el­ling from Cunu­pia to San Fer­nan­do and back and the lack of sleep has been tak­ing a toll on me but some­how my willpow­er hasn’t been rat­tled,” Khan added.

 “The most im­por­tant thing when bal­anc­ing fast­ing and oth­er tasks is know­ing your pri­or­i­ties but al­so know­ing your lim­its and bound­aries. One good ex­am­ple is that I am ac­cus­tomed to ex­er­cis­ing every evening. I was wor­ried about be­ing able to bal­ance my work­out rou­tine along with my job, time with my loved ones and sleep, but I re­alised that for this month at least I need­ed to make the sac­ri­fice and elim­i­nate my work­outs from my sched­ule un­til af­ter Ra­madan. “This helped my body to feel more en­er­gised, I was less stressed, and I was al­so able to spend qual­i­ty time with loved ones, pray more and sleep enough. This was what worked for me. A small ad­just­ment to my rou­tine.”

Pas­sion­ate about fit­ness, Khan is al­so on a mis­sion to make ex­er­cise en­joy­able and ac­ces­si­ble for women as she works to­wards be­com­ing a cer­ti­fied fit­ness train­er.