RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Can­cer drained their sav­ings, broke their hearts, and cast a shad­ow over their lives, but po­lice con­sta­ble Wazid Khan and his wife, Rashe­da Chadee-Khan, found fi­nan­cial re­lief through their youngest daugh­ter Krys­ta, who won an Ad­di­tion­al Schol­ar­ship in Mod­ern Stud­ies at Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege.

Speak­ing at their South Oropouche home, Chadee-Khan, a breast can­cer sur­vivor, re­flect­ed on how their lives were up­end­ed by her ill­ness.

“When I was di­ag­nosed, it felt like a wreck­ing ball hit our fam­i­ly. Can­cer ate away all our sav­ings, set­ting us back fi­nan­cial­ly for years,” she said.

Re­call­ing the dark­est days of her treat­ment, Chadee-Khan de­scribed her daugh­ter as “moth­er­ly,” of­ten tak­ing on the role of care­tak­er.

“She’s my last born, but some­times I think she’s the first. She would call me to re­mind me to take my med­ica­tion and en­cour­age me to eat. Even when she was away, she moth­ered me from afar,” Chadee-Khan said.

Krys­ta said she was 14 when she was sent to live with her aunt. Her moth­er want­ed to shield her from see­ing the ef­fects of ra­di­a­tion and chemother­a­py.

“My mom’s bat­tle with can­cer taught me the val­ue of re­silience and the im­por­tance of mak­ing every mo­ment count. My fam­i­ly’s sup­port has been my an­chor, and I hope to make them proud as I pur­sue my dream of be­com­ing a lawyer,” she said.

She added, “We try to make mem­o­ries and de­posit them in our mem­o­ry bank be­cause we know how frag­ile life is.”

Krys­ta, a first-year law stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said her fa­ther’s hu­mour kept her afloat on the days she felt like giv­ing up.

“Dad al­ways found a way to make me laugh, even when I want­ed to cry,” she said.

She said her fa­ther, who is a po­lice of­fi­cer, deeply in­flu­enced her de­ci­sion to study law.

“Grow­ing up, I watched my dad stand up for what’s right, and it in­spired me. I hope to change some of the ar­cha­ic laws in our le­gal sys­tem,” Krys­ta said.

She said if she were the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, she would tack­le out­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion and prison re­form.

“Our laws need to evolve to re­flect the re­al­i­ties of mod­ern so­ci­ety. For in­stance, the prison sys­tem should be about re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, not just pun­ish­ment. I want to be part of that change,” she added. 

Asked what the se­cret to her aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess was, Krys­ta ad­mit­ted that her study habits of­ten in­volved late-night cram­ming ses­sions.

“Cram­ming works for me. I can’t study well in ad­vance,” she said with a laugh. Mean­while, her fa­ther said he was re­lieved that she won a schol­ar­ship.

“Fi­nan­cial­ly, it was not an easy road. When my wife was di­ag­nosed, it broke us emo­tion­al­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly. But I tried to make my fam­i­ly hap­py de­spite the pain,” he said. 

He said he al­so wor­ried about Krys­ta’s in­tense sched­ule. “I’d wake up at 3 am to use the bath­room and find her still study­ing. I’d knock on her door and tell her, ‘You need to stop and rest,’” Wazid re­called.

He ex­pressed grat­i­tude for his fam­i­ly—son Adri­an, wife Lystra, and daugh­ter Tiffany—as well as Krys­ta’s teach­ers, Shel­don Ma­haraj and Ja­son Sam­my, and re­tired prin­ci­pal Dex­ter Sakal.