RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

While oth­ers buried them­selves in books, schol­ar­ship win­ner Ri­car­do Jhilmit spent his af­ter­noons im­mersed in foot­ball. Yet, when the re­sults came in, Jhilmit de­liv­ered what his par­ents had hoped for—an Ad­di­tion­al Schol­ar­ship in Cre­ative Arts. Jhilmit trans­ferred from Na­pari­ma Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do to Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege be­cause it was clos­er to his Pe­nal Rock Road home.

“It was the best de­ci­sion I made be­cause when I was at­tend­ing Naps, I would wake up at 5 am and get home af­ter 6 pm, so I had less time to study. Go­ing to Shi­va meant I was home much ear­li­er, so every day I would use the ex­tra time to play foot­ball and bad­minton,” he said.

Teach­ers at Shi­va Boys were sup­port­ive and nev­er mind­ed cor­rect­ing ad­di­tion­al work, he said

“You could call them at any hour, and they were al­ways will­ing to give ex­tra help. Shi­va Boys’ teach­ers were way more un­der­stand­ing and friend­lier. You could go to them with any con­cern, whether or not it was school-re­lat­ed. I nev­er had to do any lessons,” he said.

Jhilmit ex­pressed grat­i­tude to his PE teacher Shel­don Ma­haraj, form teacher Ri­ana Ramjugs­ingh, Caribbean Stud­ies teacher Ja­son Sam­my, Chem­istry teacher Tinisse Ma­habir, and prin­ci­pal Dex­ter Sakal for mo­ti­vat­ing him.

Al­though he was a de­vout Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist at a Hin­du school, Jhilmit said he was treat­ed like fam­i­ly.

De­scrib­ing him­self as a “last-minute bloomer,” he said, “When I go in­to study mode, no­body would see me. I would stay in my room and come out on­ly to eat,” he said.

His par­ents, Anil and Sindy, ad­mit­ted they were con­cerned that he was not giv­ing enough time to his stud­ies but in­stead of pres­sur­ing him to aban­don his ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, they chose to sup­port his pas­sion for foot­ball, trust­ing that he would study hard clos­er to his ex­ams.

Anil said he or­gan­ised week­end road trips for the fam­i­ly so that Jhilmit and his six-year-old sis­ter Is­abel­la would have bal­ance and fun in their child­hood.

He said as a teacher at Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary, he knew from his son’s CSEC re­sults that he could get the job done but re­vealed that he “could not help wor­ry­ing as a teacher.”

He ex­plained, “Any­thing out­side of the class­room was wel­comed be­cause I knew the im­por­tance of that. As a fa­ther, I used to make sure their men­tal health was bal­anced. We went to na­ture sites and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. We played foot­ball to­geth­er with oth­er vil­lagers. We would drop him at the mall to be with his friends and pick him up. We of­fered him recre­ation­al op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause our method was nev­er books alone.”

Jhilmit is now study­ing law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and hopes to spe­cialise in Prop­er­ty law.

Teacher Ja­son Sam­my said this was the first time that Shi­va Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege had achieved six schol­ar­ships. He cred­it­ed team­work among all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Board, the prin­ci­pal, deans, par­ents, and stu­dents for the school’s suc­cess.