As it happens at any scholarship interview, the questions kept coming at bullet speed. Sonia Sarkar was asked about education policy, the Presidential election and healthcare plans. Would she plan a pre-emptive strike against Iran?
No she wouldn't, said Sarkar, who a few hours later was to learn that she had made the grade, as one of 60 students nationwide chosen for the 2008 Marshall Scholarships, entitling her to a $30,000 annual scholarship.
She handled all those questions with aplomb and then the Johns Hopkins University student was asked one about poetry. "The question about Rabindranath Tagore caught me completely off guard -- although he is my favorite poet and I am an avid reader of his works," she says.
"But nowhere in my application did I even remotely mention this interest. I spoke with the panel about a piece that translates as 'The Year 1400'. Bengali Year 1400 corresponds to our year 1996, and Tagore wrote it as a letter in 1896, looking out into the future a hundred years."
"He greets the new poet who will take his place, and asks about the status of his beloved city. As a great observer of his surroundings, Tagore wrote about the poverty central to Calcutta, and the socioeconomic decline he predicted rings true for me as a resident of Baltimore. I see close parallels in the two port cities, affected by external conditions that now leave many families in a poverty trap."
Sarkar, who was born in Fremont and spent over a decade in Austin, says she entered Johns Hopkins as a biomedical engineering student, but decided on a public health career as she "has been always fascinated by the external factors that impact health outcomes."
"Hopkins has an absolutely stellar public health undergraduate programme, as well as one of the top graduate school programmes in the country," Sarkar, who will graduate with a double major in public health studies and international relations, says.
"During my freshman year I began to attend seminars, presentations, and town hall meetings held by public health professors who were engaged in everything from international health to health policy and management. I instantly fell in love with the field because of the way it engages all of my greatest interests: communications, public service, urban disparities, and health delivery."
Volunteering with Project Health (www.projecthealth.org), which was started by a few Harvard University students over a decade ago, gave her a focus on housing and brought her into contact with people who had uninhabitable housing.
"One of the very first families I interacted with faced several problems: food insecurity, lack of health insurance, and most shocking to me had been unable to move out of a house where lead levels were known to be high," she says. "As a result, the family's young son was being treated in the emergency department and then discharged to a home where the root cause of the problem continued to exist. "
Sarkar's first referral involved helping a grandmother obtain more information on special-education programmes for her granddaughter, according to a Johns Hopkins newsletter. She consulted the database to connect the client with programmes that offered more consistent and comprehensive services than her granddaughter received.
"There are a lot of volunteer opportunities around campus and good organisations to work for, but this programme offered me some hands-on experience in public health advocacy," she said.
She believes her work with the project has helped her create many meaningful relationships with Baltimore families. She now serves on the board of directors for Project Health, and this in turn has led to a great deal of advocacy opportunities: "I have been able to speak at a press conference/rally in Annapolis."
In her application for the scholarship, she wrote of how across the country, more than 6 million families are affected every year by the connection between poor housing conditions and poor health outcomes.
"This year alone, approximately 2.5 million IQ points will be lost among children aged between 1 and 5 years due to lead pipes and asbestos in old homes," she wrote, "while over 20,000 young children will experience stunted growth attributable to their family being on the waiting list for housing assistance.'
She proposed creating a network of housing and health help centers in cities where the federal programme Healthy Homes is currently funded. Among other things, the health centres can help families' access legal aid and housing placements and speed up the process that will help families with extensive diseases get priority services.
She credits her family and Indian-American organisations with giving her confidence to carve out a future for herself. Her father Prabir Sarkar, an electrical engineer, works for Dell; mother Irani Sarkar is a trained physicians' assistant.
"My parents have endowed me with the vision to always dream big, and they act as counterbalances to one another: one of them encourages me to always appreciate what I have right now, while the other is constantly encouraging me to look forward," she says
" My brother Sumeet is a 6th grader and he is also a major influence in what I do I'd like to set an example for him to always aim high and show compassion."
She says she has also been inspired by the families she has worked with at the Clinic, and other volunteers at Project Health. "Living as a low-income family in East Baltimore is physically and emotionally exhausting, yet these families display great strength and can be empowered to overcome the tangled system they live within. Through interacting with them I have learned that one can never work too hard for a good cause. "
And then there is Tagore and Jhumpa Lahiri. "I admire their ability to weave narratives and chronicle societal trends. Tagore was not only a prolific writer but also a great intellectual, and his work has inspired me to always remain curious and seek out solutions."