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.
