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 clas...