Rinchen and Shefali

I remember it clearly. We were in the 2nd standard when the boys in our class decided to play separately. The girls were still comfortable with their hop-and-catch and ring-a-roses while the boys graduated to cricket and an obnoxious game which they called ‘bombard’. They would pick up the hardest plastic ball, run around and hit each other and by the end of the game, we would all return black and blue.

This is when the conflict began. I chose to keep playing with the girls during recess and the P.T. (physical training) classes. Nafisa, Habeeba, Nisha and Poonam were my friends and they never questioned why I did not part ways with them.

Our P.T. teacher, Mr. Rinchen never asked as well. He would start off the class asking us to form queues according to our houses – Kanchenjunga (Red), Pandim (Blue), Everest (Green) and Jannu (Yellow), followed by a few exercises demonstrated by him, which we would then repeat. The whole thing would take around 10-15 minutes of the P.T. class, after which he would ask us to go and play for the rest of the 30 minutes.

As we would start playing, Ms. Shefali, who taught was geography, would come to the playground, sit next to Mr. Rinchen and share a cup of tea. They would be lost in each other’s eyes and some of us would keep wondering how every time, Ms. Shefali managed to have an off-period perfectly in-sync with our P.T. classes. When we grew up a little, we gathered that at that time, they were having a “love affair” and were in the process of separating from their former spouses.

They both would notice how I would invariably end up playing with the girls. They would share a laugh, look at me and smile approvingly. I would smile back at them, thinking in my head, ‘I know what you’re up to’.

As I grew older, I succumbed to this pressure of being ‘masculine’ and stifled the ‘feminine’ in me. I was horrible at cricket and even terrible at football yet I chose to start playing with the boys. However, after all these years, being on this journey of self-acceptance, I realize how safe I felt while playing with the girls, under the nose of Mr. Rinchen and Ms. Shefali. They probably knew that they were going against the grain and so was I. And it was fine. It was alright.

Happy Teachers' Day Ms. Shefali and Rinchen Sir. (names changed)