To SEPARATE Certificate

Says, a French scientist Louis Pasteur, (1822 - 1895), Chance favours only the prepared mind. Sometimes, it can be proven wrong. But only in my circumstances.

Soon after the graduation in 2007, my fiancée and I managed to skip the last day of our Choeshay session by his Venerable Yangpoi Lopen Chhimi, to write a history in the pages of our life. 

The main assignment was to insert a good topic in the first chapter of our marriage book: Getting a Marriage Certificate (MC). 

To SEPARATE Certificate

We have been informed that the preparation of an MC demands a minimum of three days. However, based on our repeated petition, the High Court of Samtse favoured us in providing it within a day itself.

Not before we submitted our MC which was barely two days old, the placement orders were out. I have been placed in the Samtse district while my wife Sonam to Mongar.

Fearing that the purpose of producing MC would be defeated, I approached the office of our parent Ministry in Thimphu the very next day. My petition within a minute metamorphosed in favour of me to join Mongar. This made me realize the real muscle of our immature and infantile MC. I thanked the officer for due recognition, credit, and respect paid not to me but to our document for its legal sanctity.

At that time I thought, my MC would have been the youngest in the world to be used for a purpose of placement.    

I submitted a copy to the office of the District Education Officer in Mongar. I was actually already blinded by a belief that no matter how young or old, the MC in its original form does the justice. 

But hearing the order of our placement, my wife and me were thrown into a web of shock and blazed with the fire of disbelief. We were placed separately. The barrel of our MC contained zero bullets because it failed to shoot for the defence. Its strength has declined altogether and therefore seized its capacity to shield us.

My reasons for explaining to the District Education officer proved fatal. His immediate response was: 

“You have provided the legal document as demanded but if two of you are placed together, anyone of you might be a wastage”. 

“Wastage? in what terms”, promptly I rolled him a question.

“Both of you have the same teaching subjects”.  

What does that mean? What a painful justification indeed from a so-called education officer?  Millions of questions hammered my brain. Were we the first couple in the history of placement to have the same teaching subjects?

Then instantly, I gave him a reply in a form of a question: 

“Do you mean to say that we should have opted for a subject marriage? 

How will anyone of us be vestigial if placed together?

The razor-sharpness of my question was many times blunted by his comical riposte. Finally, I surrendered because I could gauge his body temperature exceeding the boiling point (100°C) of water and observed some visible veins of dissatisfaction, annoyance, and anger reddening the screen of his brownish-black face.

I joined the school, although separately. I will not produce a note of obstacles faced after our separation since it is, to many of the world clear and loud.

After working separately in the different school, my wife left for her studies a year later. I applied for a transfer and am placed at Kabesa Middle Secondary School in Punakha. 

2 years later, after successful completion of her studies, the Ministry of Education has immediately placed her at Dechentsemo Middle Secondary School, Punakha to substitute two teachers who also have left for studies. 

Even by now, we are still living separate despite having the marriage certificate. 

That same year I applied for a transfer on the grounds of personal and financial impediments while living separately. I was encouraged when these people in power nodded as I kept on hitting them with the hammer of my personal statements whenever they visited the schools. 

But the very irony is that I was still retained in the same school. My MC, which was now fully 6 years old, lost its legal teeth completely. That document became a certificate to SEPARATE us.

To me, it spoke 2 things: 

1. No matter what legal document you have, as long as you are under Me, I am the BOSS. 
2. As long as you do not have a background, I can manipulate the rules because I am your BOSS.

Hereafter, they may not get disturbed by my transfer application. I am leaving for studies this August. The field of my study (MSc in Science and Technology Education) sounds captivating for me to find ways so that I can flee from the cruel tentacles of these human-octopuses. I am not cursing them but my only and daily WISH is not to see them anymore. 

As I think of it repeatedly, it hurts me morally and emotionally. I cannot forget these people sitting on a high rung, who delivers lip service to serve the TSA-WA-SUM (King, Country, and People) while not even knowing how to manage and handle a handful of people who works within the nation's law and order.    

"More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse" -Doug Larson