Fay­ola Fras­er

She lost her home to a fire, watched her broth­er sell his car to fund her ed­u­ca­tion, en­dured pro­fes­sion­al doubt, bal­anced moth­er­hood with acad­e­mia, and lost her great­est cheer­leader just weeks be­fore a ma­jor PhD sem­i­nar. But through every set­back, Dr Suni­ta Co­lai re­fused to let life write the fi­nal chap­ter of her sto­ry, one of re­silience, sac­ri­fice, fam­i­ly, faith, and a lit­tle chut­ney mu­sic.

There are some ti­tles that come with years of hard work, sac­ri­fice and sleep­less nights. Then there are ti­tles that car­ry the dreams of an en­tire fam­i­ly. For Co­lai, the ti­tle Doc­tor is both. Long be­fore the aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences, the re­search pre­sen­ta­tions and the pres­ti­gious let­ters be­fore her name, there was a lit­tle girl with big dreams, a love for In­di­an danc­ing and a fa­ther who sold dou­bles, and if you know any­thing about a proud Trinida­di­an fa­ther, you would know that no achieve­ment is com­plete un­til the en­tire neigh­bour­hood hears about it. For Bal­ram Co­lai, the an­nounce­ment he was wait­ing to make was sim­ple, “My daugh­ter is a doc­tor!” Not a med­ical doc­tor, mind you. But try ex­plain­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween a PhD and an MD to a proud dou­bles­man whose daugh­ter was about to earn the high­est aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, life had oth­er plans.

Dancer who dreamed

of doc­tor­ates

Be­fore she was Dr Co­lai, she was Suni­ta, an In­di­an dancer whose feet were more fa­mil­iar with the rhythms of chut­ney mu­sic than the cor­ri­dors of acad­e­mia. From wed­dings and in­ter­na­tion­al chut­ney shows to per­for­mances on Mas­tana Ba­har, she em­braced the joy of dance and the rich­ness of her cul­tur­al her­itage. At the time, no one could have pre­dict­ed that the same girl who danced across stages would one day stand be­fore in­ter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic au­di­ences pre­sent­ing schol­ar­ly re­search. Per­haps the signs were al­ways there. Af­ter all, per­form­ing be­fore a live­ly Trinida­di­an crowd is ex­cel­lent prepa­ra­tion for de­fend­ing aca­d­e­m­ic re­search. Yet be­hind the mu­sic and laugh­ter, Suni­ta’s jour­ney would be marked by ex­pe­ri­ences that de­mand­ed a very dif­fer­ent kind of per­for­mance: the abil­i­ty to keep go­ing when life seemed de­ter­mined to stop her.

When every­thing went

up in flames

While at­tend­ing Form Six at St George’s Col­lege, Suni­ta faced a dev­as­tat­ing set­back. Her fam­i­ly’s home burned down. Along with the house went her books, new lap­top and the ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources she de­pend­ed on. Los­ing your lap­top, your books, and your home si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly is the sort of ex­am­i­na­tion for which no syl­labus can pre­pare you, but amid the ash­es emerged an ex­tra­or­di­nary dis­play of kind­ness that would for­ev­er change the di­rec­tion of her life.

Her teach­ers at St George’s Col­lege ral­lied around her and pro­vid­ed school uni­forms, books, and es­sen­tial school sup­plies, en­sur­ing she would not miss school or fall be­hind in her stud­ies.

A fam­i­ly’s sac­ri­fice

Be­hind many suc­cess­ful in­di­vid­u­als stands a fam­i­ly whose sac­ri­fices rarely make it in­to the grad­u­a­tion pho­tographs. For Suni­ta, one of those sac­ri­fices came at the hands of her broth­er. When fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties threat­ened her ed­u­ca­tion, he sold his car to help pay her school fees. It was an ex­tra­or­di­nary act of love.

Be­hind Suni­ta’s aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments stood an­oth­er re­mark­able woman, her moth­er. While Suni­ta jug­gled the de­mands of full-time teach­ing, doc­tor­al re­search and moth­er­hood, her moth­er be­came an in­valu­able source of sup­port, help­ing to care for her son and daugh­ter when aca­d­e­m­ic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties de­mand­ed her at­ten­tion. Whether Suni­ta was buried be­neath moun­tains of re­search, prepar­ing for pre­sen­ta­tions or rac­ing against dead­lines, her moth­er helped en­sure that her chil­dren were loved and cared for. While one woman pur­sued her dreams, an­oth­er qui­et­ly helped make those dreams pos­si­ble. Her moth­er may not have writ­ten a sin­gle chap­ter of the dis­ser­ta­tion, but her love and sac­ri­fice were wo­ven in­to every page.

Told she wasn’t good enough to be­com­ing Head of De­part­ment

As Suni­ta en­tered the teach­ing pro­fes­sion, she dis­cov­ered that qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ded­i­ca­tion did not nec­es­sar­i­ly pro­tect a per­son from re­jec­tion. At the very school where she would even­tu­al­ly be­come Head of the Eng­lish De­part­ment, she en­coun­tered pro­fes­sion­al doubt. Some mem­bers of staff open­ly ques­tioned her abil­i­ty, sug­gest­ing that she was not good enough to teach Form Six stu­dents.

But Suni­ta did not re­spond by be­com­ing bit­ter. She re­spond­ed by be­com­ing bet­ter. She con­tin­ued teach­ing, learn­ing, de­vel­op­ing her pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise and prov­ing that an­oth­er per­son’s lim­it­ed ex­pec­ta­tions need not de­ter­mine one’s po­ten­tial. Some­times, the most pow­er­ful re­sponse to those who un­der­es­ti­mate you is not an ar­gu­ment; it is an achieve­ment.

From Trinidad to in­ter­na­tion­al

aca­d­e­m­ic plat­forms

De­spite the ob­sta­cles, Suni­ta’s aca­d­e­m­ic am­bi­tions con­tin­ued to grow. Her re­search jour­ney took her be­yond Trinidad and To­ba­go, pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to present at con­fer­ences in Ja­maica and the Unit­ed States, as well as at on­line aca­d­e­m­ic events. The girl who once per­formed at chut­ney shows was now pre­sent­ing schol­ar­ly work be­fore aca­d­e­m­ic au­di­ences. The stages had changed, the cos­tumes had be­come more pro­fes­sion­al, and the chore­og­ra­phy now in­volved Pow­er­Point slides, the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works and re­search find­ings. But the courage to stand be­fore an au­di­ence re­mained the same.

Even surgery could not com­plete­ly in­ter­rupt her aca­d­e­m­ic com­mit­ments. Just weeks af­ter un­der­go­ing an op­er­a­tion, Suni­ta trav­elled to present at a con­fer­ence.

Heart­break that near­ly

si­lenced her dream

Then came the most painful chap­ter of all. Just two months be­fore her sec­ond PhD sem­i­nar, Suni­ta’s fa­ther passed away. Not in some dis­tant place sep­a­rat­ed from her by cir­cum­stances, but in her arms. The man who had be­lieved in her, en­cour­aged her and dreamed of proud­ly an­nounc­ing his daugh­ter’s achieve­ment was gone.

The grief was over­whelm­ing.

She had imag­ined the day she would com­plete her doc­tor­ate. She had imag­ined his ex­cite­ment, his pride and the in­evitable an­nounce­ment to any­one will­ing to lis­ten. “My daugh­ter is a doc­tor!” She could al­most hear him say­ing it. He would prob­a­bly have told the dou­bles cus­tomers, the neigh­bours, the rel­a­tives and quite pos­si­bly a few strangers who had on­ly stopped to ask for di­rec­tions. She was sup­posed to be the “dou­bles­man’s doc­tor daugh­ter”. Now, the man whose pride would have made the achieve­ment even sweet­er would nev­er wit­ness the mo­ment.

The pain was unimag­in­able. Friends and well-wish­ers sug­gest­ed that she post­pone her sem­i­nar. It was a rea­son­able sug­ges­tion. She had ex­pe­ri­enced a dev­as­tat­ing loss, and no aca­d­e­m­ic mile­stone was more im­por­tant than her emo­tion­al well-be­ing. But Suni­ta made a deeply per­son­al de­ci­sion. She would con­tin­ue. Not be­cause she was un­af­fect­ed by the tragedy, not be­cause she was some­how stronger than grief, but be­cause the dream she had pur­sued was al­so a dream her fa­ther had be­lieved in.

“Even though it was sug­gest­ed that I de­lay my sem­i­nar, I knew I couldn’t. My fa­ther’s lega­cy de­pend­ed on my re­silience, and I re­fused to dis­ap­point his mem­o­ry.”

The fol­low­ing month, she pre­sent­ed.

She car­ried her re­search, her prepa­ra­tion and her knowl­edge in­to that aca­d­e­m­ic space, but she al­so car­ried some­thing no au­di­ence could see - the weight of her grief and the mem­o­ry of the fa­ther who had be­lieved in her long be­fore the world recog­nised her po­ten­tial. He nev­er phys­i­cal­ly en­tered a lec­ture hall with her, but his be­lief echoed through every lec­ture hall she en­tered. Every pre­sen­ta­tion be­came an act of re­mem­brance. Every aca­d­e­m­ic mile­stone be­came a qui­et trib­ute. Every step clos­er to the doc­tor­ate brought her near­er to ful­fill­ing a promise that no longer need­ed to be spo­ken aloud.

Her sto­ry is not one of un­in­ter­rupt­ed suc­cess. It is a sto­ry of painful in­ter­rup­tions, un­ex­pect­ed de­tours, fam­i­ly sac­ri­fices, pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenges and ex­tra­or­di­nary per­sis­tence. It is al­so a re­minder that aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments are rarely earned by in­di­vid­u­als alone.

Per­haps the most heart­break­ing part of this jour­ney is that her fa­ther nev­er got to make his long-await­ed an­nounce­ment. He nev­er got to stand proud­ly be­fore his cus­tomers, per­haps with a bara in one hand and a smile stretch­ing across his face, de­clar­ing to any­one with­in earshot that his daugh­ter had fi­nal­ly done it.

But some­where be­tween the chut­ney stages and con­fer­ence halls, the burnt books and doc­tor­al re­search, the tears and the tri­umphs, his dream be­came a re­al­i­ty. And al­though the dou­bles­man is no longer here to boast, his daugh­ter’s sto­ry now speaks for him.