They were as close as three sisters could be.
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With just a year separating them, "we were always tight ... inseparable really", says popular broadcaster and author Indira Naidoo.
A childhood spent moving from country to country after their parents fled the choking grip of Apartheid in South Africa - "we'd lived in five different countries by the time I was 13" - would only tighten the trio's bond.
But as close as they were, each had very different personalities, says Naidoo, who will address the Albury-Wodonga Winter Solstice on Tuesday.
As the eldest, "I was extroverted and bossy", she states.
Middle sister Suraya was "an angel" while the youngest, Manika, "looked like an angel, with her dimples and wide smile, but was easily the naughtiest".
"She was contrary all the time and questioned everything, always wanting to find her own way," Naidoo reflects.
"If the teacher said read this particular book, she'd choose another one.
"There were lots of detentions."
Manika was a "brilliant thinker", says Naidoo, who has also described her sister as a "dark outcast and a clever nonconformist".
"It's what made her such a very good journalist and policy analyst for the Premier of Victoria."
Yet Manika was "generally unsettled", reveals Naidoo, who hosts ABC Radio's Nightlife program.
"She wasn't looking for what most people looked for.
"She saw great pain, great unrest and great injustices ..."
IT COULD have been a scene straight out of Armageddon, Naidoo concedes.
In a week 2000 people had evacuated ABC's Sydney headquarters as the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the country into a wave of lockdowns and border closures at the end of March, 2020.
Naidoo will not forget the drives into an eerily quiet city late at night to host the Nightlife show with producer Dave Prior in an almost-empty building.
"We were 'essential workers'," she laughs wryly.
"No one knew anything about the virus, we were far from vaccination stage and there was a lot of fear at many levels.
"I knew I had to turn on that mic and give comfort to people ... it was a sense that I just had to hold strong."
For many in lockdown, ABC Radio became the only contact with the outside world, according to Naidoo.
"I sat with a nation in grief on a radio show late at night," she says.
"It was an important insight into what our listeners were going through."
NAIDOO knew the lockdown would not be kind to Manika, who was living in Melbourne with her husband and their two children.
The sisters had been in regular contact but Manika's mental health had been deteriorating "even before lockdown".
"She had managed because she swam every day," Naidoo says.
"I knew with lockdown - when all the public pools closed ...
"In those last few months I could see things getting bad."
On the phone, Manika was increasingly "distressed and angry", according to Naidoo.
"I realised, with every phone call, that no matter what message I gave her, every word I said wouldn't matter," she says sadly.
"All I would ever say is 'I love you', which is all you can say."
Manika took her life on May 20, 2020.
"With one phone call my world went dark," Naidoo would write.
Her funeral was reduced to "just 20 wretched souls".
"SUICIDE is a monstrous and overwhelming event to deal with," Naidoo observes.
Grief, no matter its form, is a solitary affliction, she adds.
And this most articulate of women - one who has enjoyed a distinguished 30-year career in journalism - could not find the vocabulary for her grief.
So she walked.
Naidoo walked in isolation, turning to her urban landscape for solace.
She was to find herself drawn to a towering Moreton Bay fig tree overlooking Sydney harbour - it's now become her tree, of sorts.
A connection began to build between the two - one with a fractured heart, the other a centurion offering quiet companionship while asking nothing in return, is the tender description from her new book, The Space Between the Stars.
And as she grappled with her heartbreak, an unnoticed universe of infinite beauty revealed itself ... she began to explore how nature - whatever bits of nature are within reach - can heal us during life's darker chapters ...
On reflection, "it was a real gift of timing" (from her publisher) that Naidoo would embark on writing this book in the devastating aftermath of her sister's death.
Somehow it felt right, "particularly when nature had already been such a comfort for me".
Suicide is a monstrous and overwhelming event to deal with.
- Indira Naidoo
The 54-year-old is no stranger to finding connections to the world around her.
Naidoo is the author of The Edible Balcony (which details a year spent transforming her tiny 13th floor balcony at Potts Point into a kitchen garden) and went on to share this passion for produce with nearby homeless crisis centre, The Wayside Chapel.
The long-standing ambassador for the centre helped establish its award-winning rooftop vegetable garden and wrote a second book, The Edible City, about the endless possibilities of "turning concrete into crops".
IN HINDSIGHT, Naidoo reflects, her youngest sister had struggled with her mental health since her late teens.
Later it didn't seem to stop the utterly brilliant Manika blitzing university, her journalism career and work with the Premier.
"On one level she seemed to be getting on with life; she had a beautiful husband and daughter," Naidoo says.
"But that's (also) when I noticed there was something more serious - she was struggling at a very basic level."
Like many smart, successful people, Manika thought she could handle it herself, Naidoo says.
"She refused to seek mental health support or consider taking medication and that remained her position until she died."
It appeared to Naidoo some of Manika's struggle lay with her perfectionism.
"I think she felt that nothing she ever did was good enough - that she wasn't good enough," Naidoo reveals.
"And no matter how many or how much people tell you otherwise, there was a voice in her head that kept telling her she wasn't enough.
"That was the voice she listened to."
WHEN her sister died, Naidoo knew she did not have the mechanisms to cope with her grief.
"One of the first things I did was reach out to a grief counsellor," she says.
Naidoo agrees shame and stigma still haunts our collective consciousness when it comes to mental health and suicide.
It's one of the reasons she is comfortable sharing her story - to show it doesn't matter how well-loved or how well-educated you might be, anyone's life can be touched by this.
In return hundreds of people have contacted Naidoo to share their own stories of love and loss.
Naidoo believes if anything positive can come out of the pandemic - out of the grief of isolation, of lost rites of passage, of borders closed to families, of not being able to say goodbye to loved ones, of lost lives - it a deeper understanding that "if we don't have our health, we have nothing".
"We need to feel what has been lost and together work to ensure it doesn't happen again," she says.
"Each and every one of us carries some sort of grief.
"Let grief be what unites us."
IT IS in communing with nature that Naidoo has been able to make sense of her own grief.
In the gentle embrace of her tree, she marvels at the winter light "when the sun sits low and soft in the sky" and feels herself carried by the breeze:
"In moments like that, all the heaviness is lifted."
Shine a light
- The Albury-Wodonga Winter Solstice will be held at Albury's QEII Square, June 21 from 5.30pm; the event will be live-streamed on Facebook. Speakers also include Zak Williams and Jo Robinson.
- Do you need help? Lifeline: 13 11 14