My name is Brandon Sookhai and I’m happy to say I’m almost always the shortest man in the room.
I born and grow Maingot Road, Tunapuna. Growing up, we used to like to play wild games. Swinging from tree-to-tree like Tarzan was the thing, long-time. I was always in hospital, finger break, hand break, some part of my body break. Boy days in Tunapuna was the best.
I used to give plenty trouble in school. Always getting myself in big trouble. Over nothing. Never in class. Like to fight. A lot of short little fellas does be bad and I was. I’m not a troublesome man, though. I change a lot and settle down. I drop out of secondary school in Form Three.
I come from a big family, we all over the place. My father had seven brothers and seven sisters. I have one brother and one sister. I am the oldest. I don’t have a family yet. Probably next ten, 15 years.
When you’re small, especially as a child, people want to advantage you. I learn that the hard way.
What make me settle down is I get fed up of giving trouble. Everybody used to tell me I would reach nowhere in life with the kind of behaviour. As I grew older, and faced (the) outside (world) and know what is hard times, that make me change.
I’m comfortable with the height I am now but when I was growing up, people would say: “You can’t be 16, you can’t be 17, look how small you is!” Same thing does go on still right now. It don’t really bother me now and it never really bothered me growing up. That’s how Trinis is: they like to give talk. So you have to take talk if you want to give talk.
I started bodybuilding July last year. And I’m training for a competition next year. I’m hoping to be a “Mr Trinidad.” Hoping to be.
I train as a bodybuilder four hours a day, six days a week. Just pumping iron, nothing else. Right now I’m deadlifting 200lbs, bench-pressing 150, 160. I lifting weights heavier than me. I push seven times my bodyweight with my legs.
I eat a lot, ten times a day! From five in the morning to 12 in the night. Sometimes, 2 o’clock in the night, I’ll be eating. Depends on how much I eat during the day and how much I train during the past day. I try to eat three-to-four pounds of meat a day. I just burn it off. It’s a very expensive sport.
Bodybuilding teaches you discipline and a lot for life.
The more sleep I get, is the better. Work, train, sleep. That’s pretty much my day, every day. I don’t even get time to watch movies.
The country is going good, it’s just the crime situation. I feel, if they legalise marijuana, it might stop. That is where most of the crime coming from and the guns connected to. Certain parts of the world, marijuana used as a medicine: we could do that here, too!
I am really very happy to say I’m the shortest man in the room. I could go places the majority of people can’t go! Fit in little holes! I could go in a ceiling and walk free!
Being short, I get a lot of attention all over. I’ll be walking through the mall and everybody will be saying: “Wow! He real short!” I like the attention. In bodybuilding, too: they say, “Wow! He real small and he real big! Small AND big!”
A Trini love to party and love to eat plenty, love he belly! Eating is still my thing but partying is a thing of the past.
T&T means a lot to me. We could do kinda whatever we want. It don’t really have no set of laws to say we can’t go in the river and drink. You could go anywhere, anytime. and make as much noise as you want and nobody don’t tell you nothing!
Read a longer version of this feature at www.BCRaw.com