I Love you classes

Few years ago, I was sitting in class 10B. It was a same afternoon like today;warm breeze lulling everybody into a dreamy state. A girl was reading a portion of a story from their textbook. Her soft voice aided the sleepiness that was already stretched out in the class like a big bully. So I gestured with my heavy hands for her to sit down without completing that paragraph she was reading.

With relief written well over her face, She dropped into her seat with a soft thud that startled the boy sitting behind her. He had been dozing off. Too lazy even to shift my gaze, I gestured for that boy to continue reading from where the girl had left. Heavily sedated with sleep, he had never followed the girl's reading so he moved his head frantically like an over-worked pendulum, as if the text would tell him where to start reading from.

Irritation clearly overshadowing my patience, I lazily barked,"I love you." His entire sleepiness went flying with swiftest wings. The boy gave me a shy look. I jerked with realization. Gathering all my teacherly composure,without acknowledging a hint of discomfort I had caused by my unclear direction, I added, "page 97."

His body relaxed as he saw the lines "I love you" in his textbook. So, I wasn't saying that to him, it was the conversation between the two characters in the story I had referred to. That same realization had dawned on all of the sleepy students, who now giggled in full waking.

"What were you all thinking? That I said that to Kezang?" and I let out a huge laugh to hide my own guilt at having put all of them into wide eyed awe.

As Kezang started reading,"I love you..." The mood of the class was like a fresh morning scene, everybody wide awake with soft giggles dancing on their lips.Their sleepiness totally surrendered to the dogs taking naps outside their classroom.

Today, as I sat in class VB, almost dozing off, I remembered this particular incident. Suddenly, breaking the lazy silence, a boy shouted "I love you" and huge laughter followed. I got up with swift alertness, was my memory of that incident so powerful that I could actually make it so loud for this whole class to hear and laugh? But a little boy stood up and explained,"madam this sonam penjor is saying I love you so loudly!" and laughed for another time.

As I began probing why Sonam said that, the whole class buzzed with their explanation while Sonam, the culprit, sat with a guilty look shining through his notorious face.

Another time, another place, in a totally different class, yet another 'I love you' brought alive the whole sleepy class.

Sad song in my Heart

I walk, my eyes sipping
The scenic beauty
Like no other care,
But there is a sad song
A very sad song in my heart.

I laugh, stretch out
The brightest smile
Like I've fondest reasons,
But there is a sad song
A very sad song in my heart.

I talk, tell merry tales
And the people around me
They laugh and make merry,
But there is a sad song
A very sad song in my heart.

Bell? what's that?

A mother might have hundred children yet the experience of leaving home after maternity leave would be equally painfully even on the hundredth time. The point is I joined my workplace after being with my lil kiddo for the last three months. My heart,heavily weighted with the tension of how my son would be at home suddenly jerked hearing 'sorry wai, sorry wai' being played on full volume.

There is a joke that for a teacher, whose life starts with the bell since the PP days would get up from the grave if a bell is rung. But listening to that 'sorry wai' song played instead of the usual 'ting, ting' sound of the bell changed the course of my heart.

I asked my colleague sitting beside me about the song being played and he informed me that there is no bell rung in this school, instead different songs are played each time. Isn't that a refreshing change in our lives!

I walked to my class, my heart swaying to the song, earlier mentioned stress a speck of dust mote flying in the rhythmic tune of the song. Walking back to the staff room, I found myself taking step with the song 'sha ra ra'. It truly proved an incredible first day back to school. Back at home, instead of being tired and dead with tension, I found myself humming the songs earlier played in school and in my 'light-heartedness' landed up cooking dinner as well.

So, now I know, each day, more than the stress of leaving my son behind, I'll look forward to my mood being uplifted,listening to songs while starting the day (otherwise, who has the time to play songs while trying to play the supermom alongside being a good employee at workplace?) and coming back home spreading the peaceful calm restored by the songs played instead of the monotonous clanking of the bell.

"sorry wai, sorry wai' here I go, singing it for the hundredth time today!

For the want of a Babysitter!

For the past few months I spent many sleepless nights juggling between two options: resigning from my job to take care of my kids and getting a babysitter. The former seemed more doable than the latter. But thanks to my ever caring apa, he finally found one babysitter for me.
Whenever I called up my friends and relatives spread around the nook and corner of our country, they would often say,"It's easier to find a stepmom for your kids than a babysitter!" Might have been a joke of a lifetime for them but to me it fueled my sleeplessness more than ever.So, when my apa called up to tell me about a class six dropout who wanted to first visit me to make her decision to come to work for me, it was like blessing sent straight from God's chamber.

The girl came.I thought it was supposed to be other way round, the employee was checking out the employer. But I was so much in need of this girl that I would have gone on my knees to plead her approval. Thanks to my apa, she agreed. But there was a clause to that agreement, she would stay with me for six months and choose to continue working for me only if she finds my household favorable for her. I agreed to all her terms and conditions like any desperate working mother would do.
With that like I said, finally! Now I've a babysitter! Whew! sounds like a huge pressure has been shifted away from my weary brain.

But now that she has officially started living with us, I feel more pressure weights on my shoulder than ever before. To begin with she knows nothing about childcare or cooking. So I spent most of the time running around my kids while she sits in her room, all alone, as if trying to fit in with the furniture around my house. While I still continue with the task of taking care of my kids, I've to frequently call out to her and make pleasant chit-chat so that she is not bored! lest she decide to go back home!and not to forget, I do the cooking too while she stands like a flagpole near the stove.

Every time, she comes face to face with me,she sighs and says," I don't like this place." and I've to play the clown to make her smile. I tell her funny tales to make her laugh. I make variety of dishes to please her palate. She tells me she has never seen some of the dishes I make and instead of being thankful that I am trying to make her feel at home, she throws another deep sigh and adds," I don't like this place!" ( Now I can't ask the government to place me in Thimphu, where my babysitter is gonna enjoy her stay!Sigh!)

Two days from now, I've to return to my workplace and I worry how this girl will do? and that means I would be further bent under the pressure of worrying about my kids being left with a girl who doesn't see anything when BBS is on. I wonder whether she will change the diaper of my lil kiddo in time so that he doesn't get daiper rash. I worry that my lil girl might go hungry because she needs constant coaxing to finish her food. I worry that added to my work pressure I have to worry about my kids and more than all I worry that this girl will continue to say she doesn't like this place and leave us despite the fact that we pay her equivalent to the NWF's wage with free fooding, clothing and shelter (and extra care).

Every night as I go to bed, I feel the humming pain on one side of my head from the stress of taking care of a household with added pressure of ensuring my babysitter feels at home in my house and I know I'll continue to worry what's she gonna decide at the end of six months. Am I not buying this extra headache at the cost of my own sanity? I wonder!

A is for Adultery

“ I don’t ever want to get married,” my cousin, who has just finished her degree from Bangalore and is back home recently, proclaims. This statement is a much thought about option after our hour’s gossip about friends who are unhappily married.
“But who lives happily ever after in reality?” I try to put sense while defending my own status as a wife. Man and woman are two species and they can never think alike, I try to reason out with them thereby explaining the reason for tiffs in marriages.
“Man and woman can never think alike but can’t the society have a united thought when it comes to the extra marital affairs? After all both man and woman who commit them are human beings.” That is a valid statement coming from a twenty-four years old unmarried cousin of mine. But I know where that wisdom comes from. She has already told me the story of her friend at least ten times now.
Pelden was in High School when she met the man of her dreams. Both of them were in the same class. Becoming a mother at ninth standard is not something one plans in life. But it happens owing to fate. Pelden decided to stay back home and raise their love child allowing her High School sweetheart Tshewang to continue his studies. Nine years later, Tshewang is a degree holder from Sherubtse and a proud entrée into the job market while pelden is a stay- at- home mother of two kids.
Pelden dreams of a home in Thimphu furnished with all modern amenities she sees and fancies in the movies while Tshewang’s plan is to set up a new apartment with the woman he has met during the Orientation program. The casual flings in college doesn’t count in his list of adultery but for somebody like my cousin, every girl that Tshewang dated is a thorn that has shredded her best friend’s heart.
One story of a friend leads to more stories about some more friends. I tell them of a neighbor who became my friend.
Tsheten was known as the most despicable woman in our neighborhood. I had gone to town with her, a week after I had landed up in the place. “Is she your friend?” a colleague of mine whom I had met the other day asks me with a dirty look on his face. Later I learnt that statement was challenging my integrity too.But I saw in Tsheten what others had failed to see. I saw the heart of the woman broken many times by her contractor husband who was always on the move with different woman each time. “Initially it broke my heart but with every woman he brought home and with every physical pain he inflicted on me, I hated him more.”
“Why didn’t you opt for divorce?” I asked, although I wanted to add,”instead of becoming like him!” but didn’t since we had known eachother for just a week.
“I am a mother of four kids. How can I deprieve my kids of their father?
And this simple statement had become a mantra for her changed life- a life plunged in the depths of adultery, a revenge she as a woman had taken on her husband.
Having narrated Tsheten’s predicament, how many us would actually lift the blame from her head and place it on her husband who virtually threw her in that dark life? But Tsheten and Tshewang would surely be viewed differently and would become a scapegoat of judgement on two different scales just because one is man and the other is a woman.
"No, I won't marry!" This sounds like the final THE END of a movie and I simply laugh at the conviction of my cousin who would tread the path of marital world sooner or later.