The Passionates

Wangchuk ran down the wet, grassy lawn that led to his English class. He was dragging along his tattered bag crammed with all sorts of books. He was going to be late, yet again. He realized this halfway along his run and slowed down trying to think of a plausible excuse to narrate to his English teacher, Mr.Thomas. Many such excuses seemed to fight through his already jumbled mind, trying to wriggle through to the seat of decision-making in his brain. He zeroed down on one – that he was summoned to the office to receive a call from his parents. Yes! That seemed believable enough to cover up for him this time.

Wangchuk was a third-year BA English Honours student at Sherubtse College, Kanglung. His parents were in Thimphu, the city where Wangchuk had spent all his childhood and teenage years. Wangchuk was a brilliant student no doubt, but he was also very lazy, and he always had an opinion about everything; he viciously debated with his friends even on the tiniest of issues. He’d care for those issues more than he cared about his friends and in the process he lost them, one after another. He thus survived as a loner.

Outside his class Wangchuk straightened his gho and his face, trying to look natural. He entered in but did not see Mr.Thomas anywhere. He let out a low sigh and approached his desk at the far corner of the class. But he noticed something different – the class was unusually quiet. And then he noticed something else, there seemed to be a new girl in class, she was talking to some of the front seaters at the other end of class, and she was now staring hard at him. He smiled, but apparently, that was a mistake; she continued staring at him as she approached closer.

“I’m Tshering, your new English teacher,” said the young lady as she motioned towards the green board. And sure enough there was her name – Ms.Tshering Lhamo, MA, written in a neat cursive on the board. But Wangchuk still couldn’t believe it. He smiled weakly and put forth another one his arguments, “But Miss, you’re about our age,” he said sheepishly. “So what?” came the reply. “So what…” for the first time in life Wangchuk did not argue any further than that.

A bell went off somewhere and Wangchuk was relieved. As he looked at her disappear into the distance, he knew somewhere in his heart that there would be a story with the lady that he had just met.

The next day Wangchuk was sipping tea at the canteen during recess. His new English teacher walked in, went over to the counter, spoke quickly, and walked towards an empty table with a cold drink in hand. With the air of a prince, Wangchuk picked up his tattered bag and made his way to her table.

“Excuse me miss, I’m Wangchuk. I’m in your English class, third-year Honours. I’m sorry…,” he broke off.

She was staring hard at him again, just like the last time. And then she started, “It’s ok. Hi, I’m Tshering, I’ve just graduated from Australia, and yes, you were right yesterday, I’m about your age. Friends?”

Wangchuk took the outstretched hand and shook vigorously. Soon, they were having a noisy discussion about Oscar Wilde – his masterpiece “The Importance of Being Earnest”, his rebellious streak, and his various run-ins with the law. Wangchuk and Tshering were complete opposites of each other, and yet so like one another.

English classes suddenly livened up with similar discussions between the English teacher and the resident eccentric. Some even took notes of the arguments. But for the chief protagonists, the discussions and arguments signified much more; it had started to seep into their personal lives as well. Wangchuk began to look forward to meet Tshering, thinking of new topics to discuss over tea. Tshering on the other hand had begun to feel the bond growing stronger as well. At first she had shaken it off as one of the many bizarre ideas in her head. It was too complicated. It was definitely against the rules – “no affairs with the students” she had been told by the College Principal. But now that she had gone on this far, she did not care. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Both of them were confronted by the hard truth of present circumstances, beset with the incongruity of their situation.

A week later, sitting on a grassy knoll outside the college on a weekend, the pair was discussing TS Eliot. They seemed to agree with each other’s views this time around. They were reading Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:

“Let us go then, you and I.

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient…”

They looked at each other; there crept a moment of awkwardness clinging on to each breath they took. Tshering was the first to recover. She asked Wangchuk, “Do you believe in soul mates?”

“Yes, I do,” Wangchuk was quick to reply, “I believe that everyone is sent from above to be with someone predestined. I’ll meet mine any day now. What about you? Have you met yours?”

Tshering wanted to say yes, but she suddenly forgot how to speak. She nodded in agreement and said, “I’m not sure,” and continued, “You know Wangchuk, I find you very passionate; you speak with so much fervour and excitement. I believe your soul mate will be really lucky to have someone with so much passion by her side.”

And as soon as she said this, she wished in her heart that girl would be her, and blushed at that thought.

Wanghuck was taken aback. What could this mean?

Some days later, Wangchuk had prepared himself thoroughly to break it to her. He couldn’t hold it within him any longer; he’d burst anytime now with the amount of pressure he was under. After his English class, he asked Tshering to meet him at the canteen at teatime. She agreed; she was unaware of what was coming. But she was well prepared for that eventuality if it ever arose. She had done a lot of thinking herself and could come up with only one solution. If things got too far, she would quit her job. But she also realized that it is not everyday that you meet your soul mate, and she knew what she had to do to find out where their story was headed. Passion seemed to course through her veins as well, as if it had been injected there from Wangchuk’s own.

They met at the canteen. Their usual cup of tea took ages to finish when the noisy squabble was missing from their table. As the twilight spread its arms onto the clear sky, spraying stars in its path, Wangchuk suggested going for a walk. They walked along the rows of pretty houses with small gardens in front.

After a long silence on both sides, Wangchuk spoke, “Miss, I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a while now. I’ve thought this through and I think it is the right thing to do. I really like you, I really do. What you said is right, I have a passion in me no doubt, and this passion drives me to the extent that I’m ready to face all kinds of consequences if we can be together forever. I don’t care for anyone or anything. Do you think I qualify as your soul mate?”

Tears welled up in Tshering’s eyes. She had nothing to say, she would cry if she opened her mouth. She just turned around and ran back to her house. Wangchuk did not follow her. He just stood there in the darkness with his head hung low.

Wangchuk was sleepless the whole night. He shouldn’t have said anything. It was entirely his own mistake, he thought to himself. He cursed himself for being so selfish not to care about Tshering’s feelings.

He got up early the next morning and ran out of his dormitory. He looked in all the classrooms for Tshering. He finally tried the staff room. She was not there, but there was a letter lying on her table addressed to him. He tore it open and read quickly.

“Hey Wangchuk, I’ll be far from you when you receive this. But it is what you said yesterday that made me do this. I’ve quit my job to go away from you, but only so that we can be together for the rest of our lives.”

A small chit fell from the envelope after that. It read:

“Tshering Lhamo, No.5, Reldri Apartments, Thori Lam, Thimphu.

Phone Number: 77613627.”

Wangchuk smiled; it all made perfect sense to him. He thought to himself, “I maybe passionate, but you have more passion that I do, my soul mate.”

Teachers, Babysitters

Teachers form the largest chunk of civil servants in Bhutan. With their huge salaries they take up a sizeable percentage of salaries for civil servants and all this in a time when the state of education in our country is going downhill. It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for exactly what they do – babysit our children!

Yes, that’s right. Let’s pay them by the hour and only for those days that they’re actually in school, not for all the planning time at home or the time that they spend before or after school.

The school starts at 8.30am and ends at 4.30pm in the afternoon with an hour’s lunch break. That is eight hours minus one hour and that comes to seven hours of work. On Saturdays, 8.30am to 1pm; half an hour short of five hours. These are normal official timings.

An academic year begins on 10th February and ends on 18th December, that’s 312 days. Take away two weeks of summer holidays, we’re not going to pay them for their vacations – that comes to 312-14=298 days.

Let’s give them Nu.50 per child per day, so with the average class strength being 30, that works out to 50 X 30 = 1500 per day, and for 298 actual days in school, it comes to 298 X 1500 = 4,47,000.

Now, since teachers get their salaries for all 12 months of the year, Nu.4,47,000 comes to Nu.37,250 a month.

Wait a minute, there’s something wrong here – the highest salary any teacher receives in Bhutan is around Nu.30,000 and the average teacher salary works out to around Nu.18,000, or even less than that.

That works out to 18,000 x 12 = 2,16,000 which divided by 298 days is Nu.725 a day, and that further divided by the 30 children in each class is just Nu.24 per child per day. That is even less than the pocket money parents give their children these days.

Wow, that’s a really inexpensive baby-sitter, and they even educate our kids! Now that’s one hell of a deal!

Not only do they spend five to seven hours a day in class teaching, all the while standing and inhaling chalk dust, they also have to plan those lessons and afterwards, correct the students’ books, day in and day out.

Along with that they have to take part in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities with their students – gardening, cleaning up, dance practice, sports practice, club activities, and in schools which have boarding facilities, they have to supervise morning and evening reading time, their meals, prayers etc.

On top of everything, teachers are expected to be role models for their students. They not only have to behave in the highest levels of civility at all times, they also have the enormous task of imparting value education on to their students.

Here, I’m not even mentioning much about the difficulties faced by teachers who are posted in far-flung villages which are two or three days away from the nearest road head, without electricity and facing severe teacher shortages.

Despite being blamed for the degrading level of our education system, and being chronically underappreciated and overworked, at Nu.25 a day per child, I guess they’re doing more than their money’s worth.

(Adapted from a chain mail circulated in Facebook. The original note can be read here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=666995678863&id=71209634 )

Teenagers and Freedom

Teenagers are adolescents; adolescence is the stage of maturity between childhood and adulthood. The transition to adulthood is generally defined as the time when individuals begin to function independently of their parents.

Looking back, most parents would probably say that parenting a newborn was easy in comparison with parenting a teenager. They knew that this little person depended on them for everything he or she needed to survive – nourishment, shelter, protection - and initially their child readily accepted what they had to give. Now, 13 or 14 years later, that same child retreats into silence, resists their advice and guidance. He/she may react with anger or sullen resentment when parents make these attempts. What happened? What happened is that their child reached the point all children will eventually reach, where they need to step out of the shadow of their parents’ lives and begin to forge their own lives and their own identities.

Does raising a teenager mean parents are no longer needed? Of course not. The reality is that a teenager does need to move away from his parents and out into the world beyond their protection, but he or she also still needs the parents to be there to assist him make this transition smoothly. To successfully parent a teenager means letting go – trusting that their teen, even if he or she makes some mistakes along the way, will eventually make good choices. It means understanding that the way any of us learns to make good choices is by making some bad ones along the way and experiencing the consequences.

However, it doesn’t mean letting go completely. What parents should do is encourage a sense of independence and self-confidence in the child. Teenagers need to be given time, support and guidance by their parents. Teenagers need protection against the dangers that they may face so that they can be prepared for the future. But in order to develop the confidence he or she needs to fully enter the world of adults, a teenager needs to push their parents far away enough to explore his or her capabilities as an individual.

Author Virginia Star once said, “Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.”

Teenagers exist as part of the adult world, but also in an autonomous, self-regulating world of their own creation. There is a wide discrepancy between the two experiences. Adults can never properly know the teenager’s own world. Even if they see what children are doing, they cannot understand the meaning to teenagers of those activities. They’ve forgotten; and perhaps that’s why they so often don’t respect the teenager’s different and unique needs. Adolescents want to feel in control of their lives, and parents want adolescents to know they still make the rules. In these situations, everyone may benefit from the parents focusing their efforts on the adolescents' actions (attending school, complying with household responsibilities) rather than on expressions (dress, hairstyle, preferred entertainment).

The 18th century philosopher Locke observed that “Children are travelers newly arrived in a strange country, of which they know nothing; we should therefore make conscience not to mislead them.”

Parents need to remember that their teenage child isn’t them. They were an individual, with their own specific history and their own insecurities and their own individual needs. So is their teenage child.

Mikhail Bakunin said, “Children do not constitute anyone's property: they are neither the property of their parents nor even of society. They belong only to their own future freedom.”

Parents should not try to stamp their experiences or history on their teenager. It really is a much different world for teens today than it was when their parents were that age. There are stresses and pressures that today’s teens face daily that our parents never dreamed of.

One major change is probably in the amounts of time teenagers spend in activities that their parents never had in their own teenage years and for some, not there even now. These include the facilities like the Internet, MP3 players, Mobile Phones, and everyday issues like parties, hairstyles, and relationships. A major problem for the kids is that they are, in general, far ahead of their parents in terms of the above mentioned issues and activities. There are still 24 hours in the day, but the number of activities a teenager does has increased.

“Perhaps the surest way to tell when a female goes over the boundary from childhood into meaningful adolescence is to watch how long it takes her to get to bed at night," said Hildegarde Dolson.

Teenagers nowadays try to fit more into their lives, and what parents and teachers don’t understand is that the pace of teenagers’ lives has speeded up, and it is not the teenagers not being able to keep up, it is the elderly lot, because their lives have never been so hectic and demanding.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean getting the guts to do the impossible and the appalling. Freedom simply symbolizes the need for our own space to become innovative.

Teens need freedom to learn the right choices and to demonstrate their ability to respond well. And they need the chance to mess up in order to learn this. The central reality is that teenagers get to design their own lives. They are able to explore and think about their choices with a new clarity and understanding, and are therefore able to begin planning a path toward success. Therefore, learning how to be responsible makes it indispensible for teenagers to have that kind of freedom.

William G. Sumner remarked, “It used to be believed that the parent had unlimited claims on the child and rights over him. In a truer view of the matter, we are coming to see that the rights are on the side of the child and the duties on the side of the parent.”

We all hear about personality and character building, but what use is the belief of these ideals if they are not put into active practice? The very essence and core of the heart of personality and character building is having the freedom to pursue that in our own ways.

Nikolay Koloff, Russian novelist and playwright once said, “As you pass from the tender years of youth into harsh and embittered manhood, make sure you take with you on your journey all the human emotions! Don't leave them on the road, for you will not pick them up afterwards!”

It is no secret; rather it is a universal truth that development of personality and character begins in the 'tender teenage years'. Now it doesn't seem realistic or right to withhold a teenager from this freedom that is essential for this process, unless of course, we want a generation who cannot stand on their own two feet.

Sound decision-making is another one of the expectations put upon teenagers. "With freedom, comes responsibility". However, how can responsibilities be taken upon growing shoulders if a teenager is not given the freedom to make his/her own decisions? Part of the process of growing up is learning to assess and deal with risk in a way that doesn't restrict or constrain. The danger of overprotecting teenagers is that they will never learn how to deal with risk because they are constantly being sheltered from the world. The consequence of this will be that they will never become fully independent competent adults.

Author Martha Simmons said, “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” Teenagers will never learn to make good decisions as adults if they have not been given the chance to do so in their teenage days.

Teenagers need freedom to control their lives and to make good decisions about the future. You are the best person to assess your own talents and abilities and know what is, or is not, best for you. But then again, if one has to be constantly led around by one’s teachers and parents, when will one ever learn to think for oneself?

Teenage is a wonderful phase of life; those few crucial years which determine who you become as adults; the days when a person changes into the person he/she’s going to be for the rest of their life. Teenagers should just be careful who they grow into.

Writing for the purpose of pleasure

It has been quite a while since I wrote a post here, the last one was on 29^th September, 2009. This was 508 days ago, or 1 year, 4 months and 21 days, or 72 weeks, or 12,192 hours, or 731,520 minutes, or 43,891,200 seconds, ago!

Well, I didn’t need to be so overly melodramatic about the duration but I kind of need the reminder in such an intense manner; that is exactly how long it has been since I last wrote something for pleasure, and with this post, here I am, trying to get back into it. I made it my New Year’s resolution for this year to get back into the lost habits of reading and writing for pleasure. I guess I can not really call them “lost” habits for I wasn’t in those habits so passionately ever. Sure I read a lot, half of it as a requirement in school and college, and half of it for pleasure. But the reading habit I talk about here concerns mostly books, paperback novels, non-fiction, fantasy…just about anything interesting.

Along with reading I told myself I should get into the habit of writing, writing for pleasure; I mean, this is why I created this blog in the first place. I’ve had this kind of inclination to write many a time, and I hope this time around it stays for good.

Thus, the topic I want to base this post on is about the very art of writing itself. In calling it an “art” I want to lead myself to think that like how all works of art are executed, writing should be more about the idea it is expressing, the fluidity of thoughts in motion, an outlet for emotion. I want to write on this simple premise, writing for pleasure, not for any kind of purpose whatsoever.

I’m faced with this conundrum every time I even remotely think of writing something down – I think of the article that’d shape up in the end, the one who might read it, the impact it would have on him/her, the way it would maybe change someone’s life, make someone laugh, make someone ponder. That way I throw a huge gauntlet of expectations upon myself which I think I can never possibly hope to live up to. And thus that germinating seed of an idea gets smothered under the weight of gargantuan expectations, most of them plain outrageous.

My writing will maybe fade away into the sands of time, maybe stay in this blog on some server for eternity just to be forgotten, it surely won’t be changing anyone’s life, and the fate of the world will never rest upon my written word – this is the reality I need to bring myself to face. I need to tell myself that I should be writing for my sake more than anyone else out there. Out of all the things I could be doing, this is selfishly for myself, I’m doing this FOR ME!

So there you have it, I have a purpose now and what better purpose to write for than me, myself. Folks, it doesn’t get any more selfish than this! I need not have taken such a vile and despicable means of pushing myself to write, but who knows, this guilt trip might just work after all.

Before I end this post, I want to go back to the beginning, the inspiration this time around that made me write again – a post on my Facebook Wall by my high-school English teacher, Ma’am Phuntsho Choiden Wangchuk.

We had been talking about our New Year resolutions and the topic of writing came up. Ma’am Phuntsho used to give us writing assignments which we thought were unconventional – we had never heard of free-writing, where you just pick up a pen and start writing about anything that comes to your mind, no dwelling on any one idea for too long, no need for polished words, just your mind pouring out on paper.

We had heard of journals, I even maintained one each during my 7^th and 9^th grades. But the summer writing assignment she gave us in our 10^th standard was to maintain a journal during our summer break and write about some 20 topics she had hand-picked for us. There was no connection between one topic and the other, no continuity so to say, and it wasn’t a daily diary entry either. Any topic could be written on any day, just that every topic needed to be written on. I remember getting really excited about that assignment; I always loved writing, just never got around to writing on my own, for reasons which have been hitherto mentioned; I loved writing essays in school on topics handed to us by our English teachers, but if I had been asked to write an essay on any topic of my choice I would have given up just trying to choose one topic out of many. But here was a list of topics I could write for fun – a ‘purpose’ of writing ‘for pleasure’. I completed the assignment in much the same excitement as I had started it.

Now, why did I need to mention about this particular journal at all?

Well, there I was, chatting with Ma’am about writing and how I had almost given up on it, and then she told me something that blew my mind away – she told me she still has that journal of mine with her. She went on to say that I write well and I should stick to it, not for anyone out there as much as for myself. And a few days later came the post from her on my Facebook Wall which went:

“ ‘A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.’ - Zinsser

And why did you come to mind when I read this? There was something else he said that reminded me of our conversation.

‘Assume that you are the writer sitting down to write. You think your article must be of a certain length or it won't seem important. You think how august it will look in print. You think of all the people who will read it. You think that it must have the solid weight of authority. You think that its style must dazzle. No wonder you tighten; you are so busy thinking of your awesome responsibility to the finished article that you can't even start.’

And why am I quoting him to you? You know why!!!”

The role of a teacher is not limited within the confines of the classroom, it extends well beyond it into the realms of our daily lives, and this is one such example. I owe Ma’am Phuntsho a lot just for making me write, even if I don’t make it beyond this one particular post. If, God forbid, that should happen, I’ll come back to this post one day and be reminded of the “selfish purpose” for which I should keep writing – to write for myself, to write FOR ME!