Nass­er Khan

Mar­cia Mi­ran­da is a coura­geous can­cer sur­vivor who ab­solute­ly re­fus­es to live life as a vic­tim. When the Sun­day Guardian caught up with the busy and ami­able Mi­ran­da, bet­ter known as "Mar­cy" to those close to her, she had tak­en her cus­tom­ary time off from her role as a talk show host to fo­cus on the Christ­mas sea­son and a rig­or­ous sched­ule of back-to-back per­for­mances.

Of course, with Car­ni­val right around the cor­ner (Feb­ru­ary 11 and 12, 2013), there is not much of a let up. Suf­fice it to say she leads an ac­tive and pro­duc­tive life as a vi­va­cious and ver­sa­tile per­former and ar­tic­u­late ra­dio talk show host.

Mi­ran­da spends much of her time en­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing those who have found them­selves in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion (as can­cer vic­tims), but lack her strength, vi­tal­i­ty and courage.The for­mer teacher, gen­er­al sec­re­tary, BWIA flight at­ten­dant, Miss To­ba­go Queen, she even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to pur­sue her part-time singing on a fuller scale.

There she put to the test her love of per­form­ing, hav­ing at­tend­ed dra­ma and dance class­es un­der the wings of Cyril Col­lier and As­tor John­son. She has graced many a stage both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly spread­ing the cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go. She was ad­judged the So­ca Parang Monarch in 2000 and has been dear­ly re­ferred to as the So­ca Parang queen ever since.

She usu­al­ly per­forms quite a num­ber of hits for Christ­mas sea­son and her so­ca parang mu­sic videos have be­come a tra­di­tion­al "must en­joy" for Christ­mas. Mi­ran­da has been ad­judged fe­male artiste of the year on two oc­ca­sions and sev­er­al oth­er ac­co­lades have been be­stowed up­on her.

One of Mi­ran­da's biggest chal­lenges came in 2004, when she was di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer. Though the di­ag­no­sis brought great feel­ings of tragedy and trau­ma, she ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge as a test of per­se­ver­ance and faith.

She is now a very ac­tive vol­un­teer with the Can­cer So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go where she de­votes time to in­spir­ing oth­er women and shar­ing her gifts of courage and de­ter­mi­na­tion in sur­viv­ing and deal­ing with their can­cer af­flic­tion.

Tell us about your ear­ly years in life. My mom and dad who were orig­i­nal­ly from Trinidad, came to To­ba­go for sep­a­rate rea­sons, met and fell in love, and built a small guest­house and night­club which be­came the fam­i­ly busi­ness and a pop­u­lar To­ba­go des­ti­na­tion for re­lax­ation and en­ter­tain­ment.

I came along, born I mean, on Jan­u­ary 14, one very blessed night at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. As a child and then teenag­er my par­ents' busi­ness pro­vid­ed an at­mos­phere of pure ex­cite­ment and in­ter­est and ac­tu­al­ly be­came one of the pil­lars of my foun­da­tion as I grew in­to the woman that I am to­day.

Our fam­i­ly's night­club La Trop­i­cale, I could safe­ly boast, was the most pop­u­lar on the is­land. Be­sides the very tal­ent­ed To­ba­go en­ter­tain­ers, dad brought en­ter­tain­ers from Trinidad, the wider Caribbean and even as far as Ger­many, so en­ter­tain­ment was top class as I re­mem­ber it.

At what schools/in­sti­tu­tions did you re­ceive your ed­u­ca­tion?

I spent my child­hood at the Scar­bor­ough Ro­man Catholic School un­der the watch­ful eyes of the nuns, priests and oth­er very lov­ing but tough dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ans, then went on to Bish­op's High School in To­ba­go. My fam­i­ly made a de­ci­sion to send me to St Joseph's Con­vent in San Fer­nan­do for per­son­al rea­sons, where I com­plet­ed that part of my sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion.

I re­turned to To­ba­go and at­tend­ed the To­ba­go In­sti­tute of Ed­u­ca­tion where I did my A' lev­els and at the same time had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach a class of school leavers at the in­sti­tu­tion. That was my first role in life ex­plor­ing my po­ten­tial to pro­vide a ser­vice to oth­ers and mov­ing on my path to find­ing my pas­sions.

When and how did you get in­to the busi­ness of en­ter­tain­ing?

I recog­nised my abil­i­ty for the arts, in par­tic­u­lar dra­ma and singing, from way back in pri­ma­ry school. I was a part of the school's choirs and I sang so­los and duets at mu­sic fes­ti­vals all the way through high school. So it came as no sur­prise that I pushed my way in­to the en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness, af­ter all I was blessed with a per­fect fo­rum. I se­cret­ly learnt from the best, as I em­u­lat­ed the styles of many of the ace per­form­ers.

I first per­formed on stage at La Trop­i­cale when I was just 14. I en­tered the na­tion­al Scout­ing For Tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion un­der the very awe­some Hol­ly Be­taudi­er and was a run­ner up. Ever so of­ten I would be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be a guest artiste at the club on a night when there was a huge star stud­ded cast and that helped to boost my con­fi­dence.

So then I joined the na­tion­al air­line BWIA and ob­vi­ous­ly be­came a part of the cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tion with the com­pa­ny. We did some fab­u­lous pro­duc­tions and like most oth­er lo­cal cor­po­ra­tions we, too, had our an­nu­al ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions. Well, that be­came my step­ping stone to the pro­fes­sion­al en­ter­tain­ment are­na.

With a monarch ti­tle un­der my belt, I was en­cour­aged, no, forced to pur­sue my singing at a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el. So in 1995 I re­signed my cushy, se­cure flight at­ten­dant job and took to the stage.

Tell us about some of your top hits or oth­er songs that you would rec­om­mend to our read­ers. I start­ed off with ca­lyp­so, dab­bled with the chut­ney so­ca and oth­er gen­res, but com­fort­ably set­tled in with the so­ca parang are­na.\

I have quite a num­ber of al­bums and sin­gles and would say that as far as ca­lyp­so is con­cerned, Come Fly With Me and Dey Cyah Kill Kaiso would be two of my most pop­u­lar. In the chut­ney are­na my au­di­ences en­joyed Dance Doulahin Dance and Poon­wassie.

In so­ca parang though, it's hard for me to pin­point which would be the clear favourites. Ob­vi­ous­ly Bring Out De Ham stands way out front and I get the feel­ing that Thief­ing Parang Band and Let­ter To Ma­ma al­so are in de­mand based on my au­di­ence re­ac­tions.

I have a bal­lad called Start­ing On Christ­mas Day which, though peo­ple may have heard, they nev­er re­alised that it is my pro­duc­tion.

It's a beau­ti­ful song, so maybe if you can, take a lis­ten some­time.

Who has been the biggest in­flu­ence on your life and how did they?

There've been so many peo­ple that have in­flu­enced my life, that I dare not pull any name out of a hat. There have been quite a few though and they know who they are. They are the ones that have helped me to bring out the best in my­self and oth­ers and those who have en­cour­aged me to know my gifts and share them. Too nu­mer­ous to men­tion!

If you could in­ter­view or dine with any­one, who would it be and why, and what ques­tion would you be ea­ger to ask?

I have this dream of one day sit­ting with Oprah Win­frey, just so I could pull out of her how she man­ages to stay ground­ed in a place where peo­ple usu­al­ly fall prey to delu­sions of grandeur and self­ish­ness.

She is not in­ter­est­ed in plas­tic surgery and has no false se­cu­ri­ties.

She does not do drugs or hard al­co­hol. Iron­i­cal­ly in her ef­forts to be of ser­vice to mankind, she's been chal­lenged in so many ways and yet she en­dures.

Be­ing in the pub­lic eye, what would you like peo­ple to know about you that they prob­a­bly don't know ... what do peo­ple gen­er­al­ly not know about you?

Many peo­ple don't know that post breast can­cer di­ag­no­sis, a woman named Ki­ran Ma­haraj took the risk of putting me to present on air at Heart­beat Ra­dio for Women with very lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence.

I bless her and the day that I start­ed that pre­sen­ta­tion which I do Mon­days to Fri­days as well as Mon­day evenings.

First­ly it was a means of ris­ing out of a pos­si­ble de­pres­sion pit, then I've learnt that I am strong, ca­pa­ble and con­fi­dent and that I can do what­ev­er I set my mind to. More im­por­tant­ly though I have been giv­en the blessed op­por­tu­ni­ty to reach out to both women and men across the world.

Every­thing that I learn I share with my lis­ten­ers be­cause it is my pas­sion to help any­one to bounce back from any per­son­al chal­lenge. We share our frus­tra­tions and cel­e­brate our progress. We women are wise and coura­geous but some­times we need just a hint to be aware of it.

I am awe­some­ly ex­cit­ed too, that so many men have joined our lis­ten­er­ship, so that to­geth­er we can bring laugh­ter and love back in our re­la­tion­ships and in our fam­i­lies and by ex­ten­sion our beau­ti­ful na­tion. We al­so have some of the best mu­sic on ra­dio, that's what our lis­ten­ers tell me!

Tell us about your in­spi­ra­tion to do the type of "work" you do. What would you say and what ad­vice would you give to any­one con­tem­plat­ing a vo­ca­tion such as yours?

I'd like to share this gift with every­one...I have been blessed to make a liv­ing do­ing two types of jobs that I love.

We may not all be able to make a liv­ing this way, but what­ev­er you do, do the best you can–every­one who got to the top had to be­gin at the very be­gin­ning, and "keep on sow­ing your seeds for you nev­er know which will grow (Ec­cle­si­astes 11:6)...per­haps it will."