Brought with East In­di­ans when they came to Trinidad and To­ba­go from 1845 as in­den­tured labour­ers, the Bha­gavad Gi­ta, a main holy book of Hin­dus, of­fers spir­i­tu­al wis­dom and prin­ci­ples for liv­ing. It re­mains sa­cred to many devo­tees in T&T and across the globe.

Writer and pub­lish­er San­dra Ma­hara­jh-Shah be­lieves that the Gi­ta is uni­ver­sal, reach­ing out to all hu­man­i­ty. She sees her­self as a ves­sel to help de­liv­er the Gi­ta’s teach­ings and val­ues be­yond the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty and will launch a sim­pli­fied trans­la­tion of the text fea­tur­ing coloured pho­tographs of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s lush flo­ra and fau­na, and eye-catch­ing places. It will be the first of its kind, Ma­hara­jh-Shah said.

A Man­u­al for Life–the New Mil­len­ni­um Bha­gavad Gi­ta pub­lished by Ma­hara­jh-Shah’s com­pa­ny Ashoka Pub­li­ca­tions Ltd will be on full dis­play on June 26 from 2 pm at the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi Au­di­to­ri­um, Mt Hope when the book is launched. The pub­li­ca­tion com­mem­o­rates this coun­try’s 60 an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence, Ma­hara­jh-Shah told the Sun­day Guardian.

The book is pre­sent­ed un­der the pa­tron­age of Gu­ru Prasad Swa­mi and High Com­mis­sion­er of In­dia to T&T Arun Ku­mar gives the fore­word. Its scenic pho­tos of sig­na­ture T&T im­ages such as the scar­let ibis, var­i­ous lo­cal beach­es, Paramin—in­clud­ing the new look­out—and the To­co Light­house are by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Afzal Ab­dul.

Writer and publisher Sandra Maharajh-Shah.

Im­ages of Flori­da’s in­vig­o­rat­ing sun­ris­es and re­lax­ing sun­sets by Sarah S Ram­roop are al­so sprin­kled in. Graph­ic artist Zara Mungroo works her mag­ic, blend­ing in scenes of Lord Khrish­na, chil­dren of Ma­hara­jh-Shah’s fam­i­ly and friends who she said rep­re­sent un­con­di­tion­al love, flow­ers which sym­bol­ise love, and an­i­mals which sig­ni­fy God’s pres­ence in all be­ings. They are all meant to cre­ate a mood of re­flec­tion, seren­i­ty and med­i­ta­tion for the read­er.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah stressed the Gi­ta’s tremen­dous worth and mean­ing for all peo­ple and her rea­son for reimag­in­ing the holy book.

“The Bha­gavad Gi­ta is not sig­nif­i­cant to the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go alone but is sig­nif­i­cant to every hu­man be­ing. It is a man­u­al for life for every one of us. The Gi­ta is be­yond re­li­gion, class and creed be­cause in the Gi­ta, the Lord states: I am in the hearts of every liv­ing be­ing. So when we know this, how can we treat oth­ers un­fair­ly or dis­crim­i­nate against oth­ers?

“Hin­dus have one way in which we greet each oth­er. We clasp our hands and say: Na­maste. Na­maste means ‘I bow to that di­vine spark in you’ and it’s not that God on­ly re­sides in Hin­dus, he re­sides in all of us.

“My mis­sion is to spread the love, the trans­for­ma­tion that I ex­pe­ri­enced, through this book,” she said.

At 62, Ma­hara­jh-Shah has lived a ful­ly ac­tive life as a wife, and moth­er of three who start­ed off as a bank work­er and found her­self faced with fi­nan­cial strug­gles af­ter her di­vorce. Her sav­ing grace has been her re­li­gious faith as it al­lowed her to en­gage in char­i­ty work and make cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tions to T&T, while over­com­ing fi­nan­cial stress­es by be­com­ing a writer and start­ing her own pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. She has pro­duced more than 20 colour­ing books with text on top­ics like Di­vali, Phag­wa, Christ­mas, the steel­pan, the his­to­ry of Port-of-Spain, and the his­to­ry of in­den­tured labour­ers.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah’s books have been in­tro­duced in many pri­ma­ry schools through­out the coun­try and one of her most recog­nis­able works is Ah Trin­ba­go Ting: A Se­ries of Word Search Puz­zles De­signed to Ed­u­cate the Read­ers about Our Beau­ti­ful Twin Is­lands Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ashoka Pub­li­ca­tions Lim­it­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, 2013).

Adding to Ma­hara­jh-Shah’s list of suc­cess­es is cul­tur­al work with the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) and an agri­cul­tur­al ex­po at the Di­vali Na­gar site that show­cased hor­ti­cul­ture and hy­dro­pon­ics with a tea and cul­tur­al show. The first of its kind, the agri ex­po led to the launch of Tech Agri Ex­po, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at UWI, the largest dis­play of up-and-com­ing agri-en­tre­pre­neurs in the Caribbean.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah found­ed Women’s Lives Mat­ter in the wake of An­drea Bharatt’s mur­der last year, lead­ing protests in front of Par­lia­ment and a large mo­tor­cade, and part­nered with oth­er NGOs to do talks cre­at­ing aware­ness about gen­der-based vi­o­lence. Re­cent­ly, she joined forces with a mar­tial arts school teach­ing self de­fence to women and where she, too, par­tic­i­pates. The grand­moth­er of one of­ten kayaks and has done rock climb­ing and zip lin­ing. Ma­hara­jh-Shah does not be­lieve in be­ing re­strict­ed by age or gen­der.

She has lived the ex­pe­ri­ences re­ferred to in the holy Gi­ta, pri­mar­i­ly re­gard­ing lack, and could eas­i­ly re­late and be­lieve, hence her pas­sion for want­i­ng to share the “wealth of knowl­edge” the book holds, she said.

“Those of them who wor­ship me with ex­clu­sive de­vo­tion, I car­ry what they lack and pre­serve what they have” is one mes­sage of its scrip­ture she has seen play out re­peat­ed­ly in her life.

She had to re­sign from the bank in Port-of-Spain where she had worked for 19 years to go on bed rest af­ter she de­vel­oped com­pli­ca­tions at the start of her third preg­nan­cy. She and her artist cousin came up with a plan to cre­ate ed­u­ca­tion­al colour­ing books one night and she soon start­ed her pub­li­ca­tions busi­ness.

“My busi­ness start­ed in a bed­room with a man­u­al type­writer and a fax ma­chine which my hus­band had bought for me,” she said.

Find­ing her­self a sin­gle moth­er of three boys and the sole provider af­ter her di­vorce in 1996, Ma­hara­jh-Shah has had to be both re­source­ful and faith­ful to God to keep her­self and her chil­dren afloat. Through all her strug­gles, she notes that she has seen the ben­e­fits of giv­ing from the heart, and not sim­ply to re­ceive.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah re­called hav­ing a vi­sion about 19 years ago when her boys were chil­dren to make a place of wor­ship in her yard at Palmiste, Long­denville, which has Chris­t­ian and Hin­du shrines.

“It’s a place where any­body of any re­li­gion or race can come and wor­ship. I call it the Gar­den of Peace,” she said.

“There are times when we would have these huge pro­grammes here for prayer. I re­mem­ber when kids were hav­ing SEA, we would have the place open and we would have pun­dits and peo­ple could come and pray for their child be­fore the sit­ting of the SEA.”

Af­ter obey­ing the di­vine in­struc­tion, she re­ceived speedy an­swers to her prayers, es­pe­cial­ly when fi­nances would run low; like the time when she found mon­ey on the road with no one around or re­ceived an un­ex­pect­ed pay­ment for her books that a friend had sold for her months be­fore and for­got­ten to give her, or even the time when a par­ent from a kids club she had start­ed sud­den­ly of­fered her a gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion for hav­ing the shrine where SEA stu­dents could vis­it for prayers.

The writer had some unique sto­ries to tell about her grow­ing years. The eighth of ten chil­dren, she was “sold” to her pa­ter­nal un­cle and his wife, who were child­less, for 25 cents be­cause a doc­tor had told her par­ents she had a brain tu­mour and ac­cord­ing to an an­cient tra­di­tion, the on­ly way an ill child could be cured was if some­one “bought” him or her.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah said she was born at a time when peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent felt they had to change their names, re­li­gion and even foods to be ac­cept­ed. She had to some­what ne­go­ti­ate her iden­ti­ty as her moth­er bap­tised them in­to the Ro­man Catholic faith, giv­ing them non-Hin­du first names.

Hav­ing prac­tised Ro­man Catholi­cism in the first part of her life, to­day her great­est men­tor re­mains Sr Ruth Mon­trichard of Ser­vol Life Cen­tre from whom she draws in­spi­ra­tion for her char­i­ty work.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah had a change in re­li­gious di­rec­tion at the age of 16. As her un­cle and aunt were not prac­tis­ing Hin­dus and owned a roti shop, they would en­joy var­i­ous meats that were al­ways fresh from the mar­ket and the on­ly fes­ti­val of the faith she was ex­posed to was Di­vali. She ad­mit­ted she was not al­ways open-mind­ed about oth­ers un­til she be­gan to dis­cov­er the beau­ty of the Gi­ta’s teach­ings af­ter a vis­it­ing rel­a­tive called her out for be­ing a Ma­haraj, a Brah­min (a mem­ber of the high­est caste in Hin­duism) and sell­ing tick­ets for a pork hot dog fundrais­er. His words played in her head and she be­gan to em­brace the teach­ings of the Gi­ta.

Ma­hara­jh-Shah’s jour­ney of love ex­tends be­yond mankind to her coun­try. It is one rea­son why her books of­ten con­vey pa­tri­ot­ic themes.

The tire­less all-rounder re­ceived the Paul Har­ris award for her out­stand­ing so­cial and cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion from the Ro­tary Club of Pe­nal three weeks ago.

“Peo­ple will think I am do­ing a lot, but the idea is that God has put us here for a pur­pose; a high­er pur­pose than just work­ing to pay bills, eat­ing, sleep­ing and en­joy­ing. Peo­ple pray to God for help and He doesn’t come him­self, but he an­swers their prayers through peo­ple like me. So I am re­al­ly noth­ing more than an in­stru­ment for God’s work,” she said.