RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Amidst the grief of los­ing her grand­moth­er, SEA stu­dent Shrishti Ma­haraj sum­moned up the courage and walked in­to her ex­am­i­na­tion room on Thurs­day, de­ter­mined to make her late granny, Ana­soiah Ma­haraj, proud.

As the first-born grand­daugh­ter in the fam­i­ly, Shrishti shared a close bond with Ana­soiah. It was Ana­soiah who had been in the birthing room when Shrishti was born at the Mam­a­to­to Birth Cen­tre. She taught Shrishti to sew and when­ev­er the fam­i­ly went on out­door ex­cur­sions at the Bam­boo Cathe­dral, both Ana­soiah and Shrishtri stuck to­geth­er.

Ana­soiah fond­ly called her "schol­ar­ship girl” and was ac­tive­ly in­volved in her SEA prepa­ra­tion be­fore the fam­i­ly got COVID-19 and Ana­soiah died on 21st De­cem­ber 2021.

Shrishti, her fa­ther agri­cul­ture econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj, her moth­er Gaytree and her sis­ters Shriya and Shrad­ha were able to over­come the virus.

As they said good­bye to Ana­soiah dur­ing her fu­ner­al on De­cem­ber 30th, Shrishti, a stu­dent of Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, cried for her granny, know­ing she would not be around for any of her life achieve­ments—in­clud­ing SEA.

The fam­i­ly be­came even more con­scious of the risks of the dead­ly virus.

Ma­haraj said when phys­i­cal school re­sumed for SEA stu­dents, they were scep­ti­cal about send­ing Shrishti so they opt­ed for pri­vate tu­tor­ing.

"Prepar­ing for SEA dur­ing the pan­dem­ic was a life les­son for us all, not just for Shristi, when COVID-19 came in­to our fam­i­ly and it was heart-break­ing," he said.

He said in De­cem­ber his moth­er be­gan feel­ing un­well.

"It was a trau­ma­tiz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for all of us in­clud­ing Shrishti. My moth­er wasn't eat­ing, and we de­cid­ed to take her to the hos­pi­tal on De­cem­ber 14th. We called the am­bu­lance, which nev­er came. Her oxy­gen lev­els were low, and I drove straight in­to the COVID test­ing site with her. The nurs­es took charge, and I was not al­lowed back in­to the tent to say any­thing to her, not even to say a prayer," Ma­haraj re­called.

He added: "Com­ing home that day, I had a sick feel­ing in my stom­ach. I kept ques­tion­ing whether I had made the right de­ci­sion leav­ing her there. She had not eat­en.”

While hos­pi­tal­ized, Ana­soiah was robbed of her phone and oth­er per­son­al be­long­ings. She suc­cumbed to the virus six days af­ter she was hos­pi­tal­ized.

Be­fore she died, Ma­haraj said she made a call to her son Mahin­dra, telling him to trust in God.

"If this is God's will, we have to ac­cept it. She was fac­ing the re­al­i­ty of death," Ma­haraj said.

He said the chil­dren were dev­as­tat­ed and fol­low­ing the death, Shrishti's SEA prepa­ra­tion was dis­rupt­ed for a short time.

"We lost that Christ­mas break which we had planned to use to pre­pare Shristi for her ex­am. When we came to Jan­u­ary, we had anx­i­ety about go­ing back to school. Prepa­ra­tions con­tin­ued and we did pri­vate lessons with her school­teacher. We hired two tu­tors—Karen Mo­hammed and Shar­lene Gon­za­les—who worked with her tire­less­ly. She had a strict pro­gramme of SEA prepa­ra­tions and she had one day com­plete­ly off per week," he re­called.

Shrishti now sleeps in her grand­moth­er's mas­ter bed­room. Even though she miss­es her grand­moth­er's em­brace, for now, she is con­tent to stay in the room where she feels her granny's un­break­able bonds of love.