The chewing gum girl.

One day after the summer break of 2006, while other students in my class started getting panicky about the final Class XII exams, Dema came to me and said.

“M’aam, I am leaving school.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked stunned. “Maybe,” she shrugged irreverently and said, “I will become a writer.”

In my 13 years of teaching, I have never had a student like her.

I remember her first day in class. After finishing Class XI in a Thimphu school, she walked into my class with a chit from our principal. Not saying anything, she walked to the right corner of the classroom to challenge a male backbencher. I watched as she won over an argument over the corner-boy to vacate the space for her.

She was bold. As expected, complaints started pouring in from fellow-students as well as teachers.

She was a difficult student for teachers, thanks to poor attendance, regularly irregular assignment submissions and her arrogant reasoning peppered with catchy English phrases.

She was sent out of the class by a teacher for the above reasons. But she remained cool and stayed out chewing more gums and writing more poems.

But one morning, she appeared as a Dorji Drolo. The matron had seized her red-handed writing a diary during study time. Without her diary, she thought her life was finished. She became the wrathful deity, but chained and powerless.

When she got the diary back, she looked like as if she had won the world and got her life. She returned to studies.

With autumn and winter came the season of autographs, slam-book signings, break-up letters, photo ops and confessions.

Dema glided past those eventful days like an ancient song. She continued chewing gums, ate the same amount of chilli chops and wrote poems.

She passed the exams in flying colors.

As students came to collect their transfer certificates the next year, they showered me with “thanks” but Dema kept a safe distance as I filled her certificate.

“Madam, I love you,” she said receiving the certificate. She meant what she said as I looked into her eyes that were never ready to give up its dreams.

She taught me that a student is not her textbooks, her secret crushes, or her follies. She is the gift of the past to the future. And as a teacher, I am her co-traveler through a short span of her journey - sharing knowledge, understanding with compassion, and telling that her wings are strong enough to soar.

I heard that Dema is now a radio jockey. Dear Dema, if you are still one, I want to dedicate one song for you as Bhutan celebrates Teacher’s Day tomorrow.