SURREAL SKULDUGGERY

‘Life of a Teacher’
‘Let peace prevail on Earth’-
An eclectic silver jubilee monument
Whispers into the hoary past-
Coalescing present and future.
Mellow willow and mighty cypress
Caress nearby invigorating sky-
Trifling with nature, I let nature be,
Amidst endless intellectual labour,
In daily tryst with erudition and vanity.

Across cryptic time I travel,
In visions of comely snowy peaks,
At picturesque dreams and realities.
Across mesmerizing cocktail parties,
Conquering perjury and calumny,
At remote memories.

Karma reads novels, Dema plays badminton,
Choki qualifies for professional medicine,
Minjur fails to qualify,
Maya excels at sport,
Gyeltshen dies of injury.

In cogitation, I spend the weekend,
Anticipating lectures, experiments,
Toying with innocuousness, malleable as clay,
Transforming lives daily-
To the beat of the drum,
To the unfurling flag of destiny.

Ensconced in classroom beauty,
I ponder Shakespeare and Greek tragedy,
At concert, lascivious chicks, in song and dance,
Cavort and trill to Bollywood melody.

In academic mazes, I trap the unwary child,
I lead the way to rationality and guile,
A peasant child from Lobeysa,
A ranker from Trongsa,
A dropout from Wangdi-
In my magic wand they all meet-
I give patient hearing to their woes,
I sympathize with silent tears.
Dressed in Spartan gho,
A parent arrives in a Mitsubishi,
Speaks in clipped Oxford accents,
Solicits my cooperation,
His child is weak in Mathematics!

At opulent dining tables every night,
Rice, lentils, dry fish quickly consumed,
A mystic romance pervades the gloom-
In dark corners, and in lonely hamlets,
Boys and girls meet,
Unseen, creating their own lives and destiny.
Dorji and Dema flee from school and community,
Far, far away to where life is free.
In lonely unforgiving darkness,
With hostels asleep in baby dreams,
I tiptoe sensuous, dark corridors-
Searching…searching…
After a series of scintillating lectures,
With throbbing head and aching feet,
I rest over zau and Suja,
I remember umpteen teenage faces,
In innocence and docility.
Years hence, transformed to knowledge and evil,
The child smuggles antiques
With strangers on mean Thimpu streets.
Pregnant with unborn, unwanted child,
She needs help urgently-
Broken home, broken marriage, sorrow writ large…

Protracted staff meetings fail to remedy
Campus problems of indiscipline,
Yet finding refuge in gastronomic frivolity,
In a world without a morrow,
In the gullible thoughts of a child
Amidst futuristic dreams of idealism.
With insinuations of violence,
Inebriated with cannabis,
In silent dread, the child-
Incommunicado, statuesque- at the desk sits-
The lecture proceeds at wonted pace,
Touching the usual nitty gritties,
Until I say goodbye, to heave a sigh of relief!