RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Trinida­di­an 11-year-old Daniel Ra­jku­mar, 11, re­ceived a Sil­ver Award in the “Queen’s Com­mon­wealth Es­say Com­pe­ti­tion 2021” host­ed by the Roy­al Com­mon­wealth So­ci­ety, Eng­land.

Ra­jku­mar is a pupil of Re­form Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School and re­sides in Mara­bel­la and San­gre Grande.

On Oc­to­ber 1, Daniel, in the ju­nior age group was among a to­tal of 25,648 en­tries from stu­dents around the world in both se­nior and ju­nior groups.

Stu­dents were award­ed gold, sil­ver or bronze and cer­tifi­cates of par­tic­i­pa­tion based on their rank­ing in the pres­ti­gious writ­ing com­pe­ti­tion.

Ra­jku­mar en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion in June 2021 where he wrote on the im­pact of COVID–19 on the lives of peo­ple.

His par­ents Cher­ry Ann Ra­jku­mar and Mar­vin Ram­nar­ine sub­mit­ted one of his sto­ries for the com­pe­ti­tion.

Ra­jku­mar, who, at the time was suf­fer­ing from an in­jured left arm, did not at­tend school the en­tire term and his par­ents choos­ing to en­ter him still hoped that Ra­jku­mar would feel a sense of sat­is­fac­tion from sim­ply be­ing a part of the com­pe­ti­tion.

De­spite his in­jury, he would write a lit­tle from time to time as his thoughts flowed. “Writ­ing sto­ries is not very easy. It takes a lot of time and fo­cus,” Ra­jku­mar said.

How did Daniel be­gin writ­ing? His par­ents and grand­par­ents en­cour­aged him to write dur­ing his spare time.

Asked how he feels about his award, Ra­jku­mar replied: “I feel hap­py that I got the chance to be a part of the com­pe­ti­tion. I look for­ward to do­ing much more in the fu­ture. I am very con­cerned about health and safe­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic so I wrote about it hop­ing that oth­ers would be in­spired to feel the same.”

An ex­cerpt from Daniel’s es­say writ­ten on the theme– “What do you miss most dur­ing the pan­dem­ic?”

“Stay in your homes!” tired nurs­es re­mind­ed. “Wear your face­masks, wash your hands and main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing!” they in­sist­ed. “All the hos­pi­tals are filled!” Im­ages of hu­man suf­fer­ing re­placed ad­ver­tise­ments of fit men and women dis­play­ing health and well­ness.”