Car­ol Quash

For Nir­mala Ses­narayan, be­ing a good Hin­du woman means be­ing a good wife, daugh­ter, sis­ter, moth­er, and a good per­son in gen­er­al.

“When peo­ple think of Hin­duism, they think of rit­u­als and mur­tis. But Hin­duism is a way of life. From wak­ing up in the morn­ing to the very last thing at night, it is our dai­ly ac­tions that re­al­ly make us Hin­du.

“Yes, the rit­u­als help us have some­thing phys­i­cal on which to con­cen­trate, but our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty–how we re­act to sit­u­a­tions, how we treat our guests or strangers on the street, how we in­ter­act with our fam­i­lies–is what makes us Hin­du,” Ses­narayan told WE mag­a­zine.

But her de­f­i­n­i­tion of Hin­duism goes a bit fur­ther.

“It al­so means stand­ing up for one­self, blaz­ing trails, and hav­ing a voice,” which is some­thing she un­der­stands on­ly too well.

 Ses­narayan was among sev­en teach­ers whom a High Court judge re­cent­ly or­dered the State to com­pen­sate for be­ing un­fair­ly by­passed for pro­mo­tion de­spite hav­ing the re­quired qual­i­fi­ca­tions. It was, how­ev­er, a vic­to­ry that came on­ly af­ter years of re­lent­less strug­gle.

“I be­lieve it is prayer, and my faith cou­pled with my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, that re­al­ly got me through some of those hor­ren­dous mo­ments … be­cause I was nev­er go­ing to give up.”

She en­tered the teach­ing pro­fes­sion in 2004 at the Rio Claro Hin­du School as an as­sis­tant teacher (pri­ma­ry). She did a Bach­e­lor of Ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) in 2010, where she spe­cialised in Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture. But mere weeks be­fore she grad­u­at­ed, she and her fam­i­ly were dealt an unimag­in­able blow.

“My dad (Vikram) was mur­dered in Ju­ly of 2010.”

Ses­narayan said it was as if some­thing in­side her had died that day, too, and her over­whelm­ing grief blan­ket­ed her life. For over a year, she had lost in­ter­est in the things she loved do­ing.

“But Mom en­cour­aged and helped me to pull it to­geth­er be­cause Dad wouldn’t have want­ed that for me,” which turned out to be the source of strength she need­ed for the pro­fes­sion­al strug­gle that lay ahead.

That same year, she ap­plied for a sec­ondary school teach­ing po­si­tion, but the decks seemed to be stacked against her.

“Be­tween 2010 and 2015, I fought re­al­ly hard to get re­assessed and in­to the sec­ondary school sys­tem be­cause I was still work­ing as an as­sis­tant teacher (pri­ma­ry), even though I was qual­i­fied with a de­gree.”

She was even­tu­al­ly as­signed to the St Joseph Sec­ondary School in Curepe as an Eng­lish teacher in 2015, but her up­grade to Teacher 1 did not come un­til 2017, with the cor­rect salary. Ses­narayan was grate­ful, but she de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue the fight for Teacher 3 be­cause she felt she de­served it.

“I was do­ing the work, so I told my­self, ‘It has to hap­pen.’ There I was, dri­ving from Princes Town to Curepe in an old for­eign-used ve­hi­cle, shut­ting down on the high­way by my­self, count­ing pen­nies the week be­fore my next salary. I was singing to make ends meet, pay­ing for my MSc in Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion– spe­cial­i­sa­tion in HR. And I am the el­der of two girls, so af­ter my fa­ther died, a lot of the fam­i­ly re­spon­si­bil­i­ty fell on me. It was a lot.”

She was lat­er in­formed that in or­der to get her Teacher 3 as­sess­ment, she’d have to re­turn to school to com­plete four ad­di­tion­al cours­es be­cause there had been changes in the as­sess­ment pol­i­cy. That’s when she opt­ed to take the le­gal route.

“Then the pan­dem­ic hap­pened, and I mi­grat­ed in 2022. Sev­en months lat­er, I got a call from my lawyer ask­ing if I was still in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing it. I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble, but here we are. And I keep ask­ing my­self, ‘How did I re­al­ly sur­vive this?’”

For as long as she can re­mem­ber, Ses­narayan has im­mersed her­self in her faith and cul­ture. She is a for­mer mem­ber of the youth arm of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture, she worked at Her­itage Ra­dio and 103.1 FM, has host­ed a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes, and has been one of the hosts on the main stage of the Di­vali Na­gar for over a decade. But one of the things she loves most about her cul­ture is singing bha­jans (re­li­gious songs). So much so that it was one of the rea­sons she left the teach­ing pro­fes­sion af­ter 20 years.

The In­di­an clas­si­cal singer told WE mag­a­zine she has been singing since she was four years old, and her fa­ther, a Guyanese crick­eter, was her singing coach.  

“We used to be every­where with him, up and down the is­lands. But when I turned four, he gave up crick­et. He said it was time to set­tle down.

“He taught me my first bha­jan, and I sang it in the tem­ple. And when I was en­rolled in Robert Vil­lage Hin­du School, that’s where my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, faith, and singing ca­reer be­gan.”

She sang on the In­di­an cul­tur­al show Chil­dren of Mas­tana Ba­har and en­tered in­ter-school com­pe­ti­tions. It was at one of those com­pe­ti­tions that she won a schol­ar­ship to study with mu­si­cian Mun­gal Patasar.

“So from age ten, I start­ed do­ing class­es with him un­til I was 20. He is like my sec­ond dad­dy, even till now. I’m very grate­ful to him for see­ing that tal­ent in me.”

She was even a Mas­tana Ba­har fi­nal­ist when she was 20.

“Dur­ing my time at UTT, I had cut back on per­form­ing. Dad en­cour­aged me to re­sume fo­cus on my singing ca­reer and to be true to my­self. That was prob­a­bly one of the last con­ver­sa­tions we had about it.”  

Af­ter her fa­ther’s death, she tried to find a way to ho­n­our his wish­es by stick­ing to tra­di­tion­al singing while mak­ing it palat­able to a mod­ern au­di­ence. In 2012, while singing at a friend’s wed­ding, the mag­ic hap­pened.

“I had hired some mu­si­cians who even­tu­al­ly be­came my band­mates. We launched Nithya in 2016. The tagline was Nithya, the ever­last­ing sound of mu­sic. It was the per­fect blend of mod­ern and tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ments while still be­ing 100 per cent live. We per­formed main­ly at Hin­du wed­ding cer­e­monies.”

Al­though she is now based in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, the band still backs her when­ev­er she per­forms in T&T. She ad­mit­ted that it was a bit of a strug­gle get­ting used to prac­tis­ing her re­li­gion in a dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment when she had just mi­grat­ed.

“In Trinidad, we had our pu­ja rooms, and for me, when I went in there, it was pure sup­pli­ca­tion and sur­ren­der. I knew when I came out of there, I was fine; I was whole. Then I had to recre­ate that in this space.”

But over time, she and her hus­band, Mar­vin Jaimun­gal, have be­come ful­ly ground­ed in their new space. And Ses­narayan con­tin­ues to share her mes­sages through her mu­sic. She re­cent­ly sang at the Di­vali Na­gar in Flori­da and at the in­au­gur­al Na­gar in Cana­da.

“I use my Hin­du up­bring­ing and my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in my mu­sic. I pray when I sing, and I hope that my au­di­ence feels that. It’s part of my life pur­pose to reach peo­ple with my mu­sic. I tru­ly be­lieve that mu­sic is the voice of my soul. I am not per­fect; I still have a lot to learn, but I will fol­low God’s guid­ance and let the mu­sic reach where it must.”