One might mull over that when the student calls their teacher an ‘uncle’, it represents an indomitable bond of intimacy or sublime friendship or an unconditional closeness for that matter. But such happenstance to me was kind of a bizarre and quite mystical encounter, especially when we are positioned to a working place that seizes a sizable amount of people’s expectation and reverence in believing to have a frictionless and methodical working system.
I am more than a week old into my new place of posting. And getting stationed in
this habitat has altogether been a mixed blessing.
Picture Courtesy: Click LINK |
While
there was none whom I possibly know in person, there wasn’t any who broke the
virgin of introducing me to the school. I was still pregnant with the hopes that I might
be inducted at least to the working system, let alone sacrificing some time in
introducing me to the entire working family - the students and teachers.
But nothing happened either.
Has
the latter been done, I would not have been greeted as ‘uncle’ by my own
students. Even at this moment, I am in the course of getting myself acclimatized
with the working irregularity of the school. And rather dispiriting is the fact
that I have to drive almost 13 miles diurnal (Thinleygang to Wangdue) - breaking the silence of that mute
dawn and returning home lighting that murky dusk.
But
as the growth and survival have to be natural, time is testing me to fit into
the system through a chain of trial and error mechanisms. At this moment, all I
realized is that when the people around do not smell our presence, at times, we
are in a win-win situation.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small”- Dr. Suess