“Aunty, we need to talk to you about something.”
Wednesday afternoon, I had just finished a monumental double period with my 12th graders. It was an exciting class, not in the least because each one of my five students was deeply engaged in exploring the concept of First-Past-The-Post voting, using creative ways of breaking it down for their classmates. I walked away feeling euphoric but thoroughly exhausted, looking forward to the one free period I had, ready to lay my head down on the desk for a quick nap.
That’s when I noticed around five children from the 10th-grade class walking towards me, trouble reflected in their expressions.
This particular 10th-grade class was tough on all teachers, and as a young-ish teacher, I didn’t have it any better. I was mentally prepared not to expect any kind of cooperation, especially from the boys, each time I walked in. I am also not good at masking my emotions and ten minutes into class, despair and irritation were writ large on my face. I exercised some level of patience towards most of their antics, and understood, in theory at least, that it was important to be intentional in whatever I said. Of course, I never managed to achieve this, and the relationship I had with them was heavily strained and often hostile. It had me rethinking all my endeavours of kindness and democracy and social justice, wondering if the class only saw me as a pushover teacher they could easily manipulate. Watching these five 10th-grade girls walk towards me, I felt fear more than concern or curiosity.
“What happened?”
“Aunty, I identify as trans, and Ashok was an asshole to me just now.” Reena said. I quietly added that bit of information into my mental Reena file. This was news to me.
“What! What did he do?”
“We were sitting in the classroom having our lunch. Everyone else had gone to play football. Ashok just came inside randomly and asked me about why I had put my pronouns as he/him on my Insta profile.”
Chinmayi piped in. “And we tried explaining it to him, aunty, about Reena being trans and preferred pronouns, and he kept saying, “Just admit you’re a girl and stop lying.”” She paused, as the group felt the pain of the moment.
Rhea continued. “And Reena got upset and we all started arguing, and that’s when he shouted at us and walked out of the classroom.”
My first thought as I listened to them, enraged at the words Ashok had used, was that I was not their class teacher. In the school we were in, the class teacher handled all social-emotional issues and subject teachers were expected to stay in their lane. Reena stared at my shoulder in silence as I wrestled with this professional dilemma, and finally spoke up.
“Aunty, I didn’t know who else to talk to. Jisha aunty [the class teacher] doesn’t even understand what the word ‘trans’ means - how am I supposed to explain that what Ashok did was wrong?” He began to cry.
“Yes aunty, we thought that Jisha aunty would probably talk about how trans-ness is a sin,” Aardra said, as she put a comforting arm around Reena.
I knew all too well what Aardra meant. Jisha was one of the senior teachers in the school and her values were as conservative as they come. Her disapproval extended to nearly every aspect of modernity - sex before marriage, short clothes, gluttony... the Seven Deadly Sins formed the baseline of her principles. Her approach with children was pleasant, but with a strict emphasis on discipline, and absolute respect accorded to a teacher’s presence in the classroom. It made me question how easily she would internalise the idea of queerness, especially from one of her own students.
But I felt stuck (I need to clarify here that being and feeling stuck are two very different things, as I will realise in retrospect). Ashok belonged to a different classroom, and I was only the subject teacher in both. Addressing it directly with Ashok would have meant stepping on several toes, and while I was worried for myself, I also knew that if the situation escalated out of control, Reena would be outed to a whole lot of people that he would probably rather not know about him.
“Reena, who all know about you being trans?” I asked.
“My class knows, aunty. And a few people from other classes. But it’s not like a big secret, I think even the students who don’t know me personally know about it - it’s on my Insta profile after all.”
“What about teachers…?” Reena paused for a moment.
“Only you, aunty.”
I felt the enormity of his words. In a school that prided itself on its child-friendly Montessori-oriented philosophy, fostering a spirit of deep reflection and enquiry among its students, Reena found only one teacher that he felt somewhat safe enough to come out to. Any warmth in thinking that I was the ‘only’ teacher who could help these children, was replaced by the deep shame of our collective failure as an institution.
I was also amazed at how nonchalantly Reena talked about his peers. In my experience, some of the 10th-grade boys were vicious and often made fun of each other in ways that tore at their self-esteem. They would then pass it off as jokes, even though I could see the hurt on their faces when they thought others weren’t looking. I suddenly recalled that when they were younger, Reena had been a target of much of their bullying. It made me marvel at how teenagers could change in the blink of an eye.
“Is Ashok still around?”
“No, he ran off and I don’t know where he is.”
“Okay. I will see what I can do. Maybe have a chat with him before the day ends.” The girls and Reena walked back to their classroom as I headed towards my desk to drop off my books, laptop and wires. When I think about this moment, I regret that I didn’t speak more vehemently about the situation, or support Reena more - at the very least, tell him that he has nothing to prove to anyone and that his identity was only his concern, no one else’s. I wish I hadn’t let my uncertainty in handling the situation show so clearly on my face.
I walked out of the staffroom and towards the toilets around twenty minutes later, still troubled by what I had to do. As I passed by the 10th-grade classroom, I saw Ashok yelling at Reena, loud enough to be heard by the children playing badminton outside one floor below.
“There are only two genders! You’re either male or female! This transgender thing is bullshit and you’re obviously lying.”
“What the fuck, Ashok! This is NONE of your business.” Reena yelled back, his eyes flashing.
“Why are you yelling? You can’t explain anything politely, can you? This shows that you are lying.” Ashok was tall and heavily built, and both his voice and stance made him seem a lot bigger than he was. I quaked a bit as I intervened.
“That’s enough, Ashok.”
Ashok turned around, saw me and instantly brought his hands down to his sides. His voice became softer as he spoke.
“Aunty, I was just trying to understand. What’s wrong with asking a simple question? Reena just has to answer it but she keeps shouting at me. I don’t understand why she has to be so upset.”
When I sat mulling over things in the staffroom, I thought about Ashok’s situation. He had a history of bullying other children in school, especially if they were younger and smaller in size than he was. He was easily disliked - even if he wasn’t bullying someone, his opinions weren’t respected and he was often dismissed among his peers. His parents had moved abroad for work but wanted their only son to receive an ‘Indian’ education. For this reason, he lived with his grandparents, who were too tired to pay attention to his needs, and whose only question during PTA meetings was whether he was one of the ‘top’ students in his class (spoiler alert: he wasn’t). As his subject teacher, I tried my best to compensate for it, by being there for him through his studies and his struggles with social etiquette. He liked me as a teacher and had often confided in me. I knew that everything he did while harassing Reena, was the toxic product of his circumstances. But at that moment, even though I was torn between them, I didn’t care.
“It’s ‘he’, not ‘she’, Ashok.”
“Aunty, what?”
“Reena has said that he is trans. You need to use the correct pronouns.”
“Aunty… you believe in this too?”
“Yes, Ashok. But took me a while to learn it. I have trans friends - even when I couldn’t understand their identity and their pronouns, I knew that this was important to them and I respected it. But let’s talk, no? Come with me. Guys, are you okay?” I looked at the rest of them, and they nodded.
“Good. Head off to the grounds, please? I’ll come see you later.”
Ashok looked like he wanted to sink into the ground and mumbled something about missing the football match. We sat out in the open corridor, devoid of students. He seethed in resentful silence for about ten minutes and proceeded to explain how he had scrolled through Reena’s profile the day before, and that’s when he came across he/him pronouns. “I just thought she had made a mistake, aunty.”
“Well, I know why it looks like he made a mistake, but I think you realise now that he meant to do it, right?” I realised that it would be pointless to correct him on pronouns directly, so I made sure to emphasise ‘he’ as I talked.
“Yes, but aunty, why say it at all? Okay, so you’re ‘trans’ whatever that means. Why does the whole world need to know about it?” His use of air-quotes really irritated me, and I needed a breath before replying.
“Ashok, you say you’re a communist, right? I’ve seen your Instagram profile. Your bio reads, “Workers of the World Unite!” Let’s set aside Reena for the moment. Why is it important for the whole world to know about you being a communist?” I asked, thanking my stars that I still remembered information from two years ago.
“But aunty, look at this horribly unequal world we are living in! Look at how the non-teaching staff are treated in this school. Workers need better rights! This is important to me.”
“Well, maybe, in much the same way, Reena’s sexuality is important to him. And you telling him that he’s lying is just hurtful, and not at all a useful conversation.” Ashok nodded, still seething. I got the feeling that he just wanted the conversation to end, and was willing to sacrifice all his angst if it meant getting away from me. I got up.
“I’ll tell you what…” I took the notebook he held in his hand, opened the back page and scribbled on it. “Here’s my email id. I’m not sure how much you’re ready to hear right now, but I can send you some videos to help figure it out. We can talk a lot more when you have calmed down a bit. All you need to do is reach out.”
I walked back to the staffroom and slumped over my desk, desperately wishing for a magic potion that would refresh my energy levels. It took all of my self-control to not lie down on the cold floor of the staffroom and sleep till next week. I walked over to where Ashok’s class teacher, Reva, sat and took a deep breath.
Reva was one of the few senior teachers in school who reflected kindness and warmth, and I knew, even if she had little idea of queerness, that she would be a good listener. I told her what I had witnessed, and how I intervened. We both later met Reena, and Reva demanded an explanation. I felt terrible for him, but Chinmayi took up the work of narrating the incident from start to finish. Reva did not question either of them once and attentively listened to how he felt. We then sat together to figure out what to do. Reva looked at me.
“Kaveri, you cannot do everything alone. You know that, right?”
“I know that, but sometimes when these kinds of issues occur, I feel so helpless, because so few of us actually try to understand where these children are coming from.”
“Then it's our job to try and educate our peers. Teaching isn't just for children.” She paused. “Jisha needs to know about all of this. She cannot be their class teacher and remain so clueless. And this incident is bound to come out somehow. If it reaches Reena’s parents…”
I shuddered. In the end, we decided to sit with Jisha and talk about it… a decision I remain unsure of because while I felt the importance of it, I knew Reena wouldn’t be comfortable at all. At the end of that long school day, the three of us sat in the empty staffroom and talked for about two hours. We discussed the harassment, and in the process, Reena’s identity. Curling my toes, I explained to Jisha exactly what being trans meant, a cliff-notes summary of LGBTQIA+ identities and the issue of harassment. Being a cis-het woman, it felt awkward to be the person who somehow represented queer issues in the room. But we didn't have queer people on staff. Reva spoke at length about how, even if one cannot understand it, it was Reena’s prerogative to be who he is and no one else has any right to comment, much less harass him about it. Jisha listened to us without a word. Reva must have felt as guilty as I about outing Reena, as she finally added,
“Jisha, I think it would be best to not discuss any of this with Reena or any of the girls that were with her. Wait for her (sorry, him, right Kaveri?) to come to you.”
Jisha, if nothing else, respected seniority, and I knew it made a difference that such an instruction was coming from Reva, not me. She nodded.
I kept a close eye on Reena for the next few months, and luckily, his life seemed to pass without incident. Ashok was given a stern talking-to by Reva and made to write an apology letter to Reena. Jisha, to her credit, did not bring it up with Reena at all, not even during PTA meetings when she met with Reena’s parents.
While there was some progress here (and in the context of schools in general, perhaps we seem radical), how I tiptoed around the issue is something I remain ashamed of. Schools need more structurally built systems of sensitisation to queerness and queer issues, and we are still scratching the surface of sexuality education, something that is deeply insufficient for everything children (and adults!) face today. We need more protective mechanisms in place for marginalised students and need to eliminate much of the bureaucratic bullshit that comes with addressing sensitive issues like harassment. Social justice activism as a teacher looks different: It means that if the perpetrator is a student, it is my job as a teacher to sensitise them, without fearing for my job, or the backlash from their parents and the school. Of course, they need to be held accountable. But punishment externalises that sense of accountability, it shifts responsibility from the child’s inner conscience to a detached, often faceless system that is arbitrary in how it punishes. How does one nurture sensitivity, to feel accountable because you care (and not because you're afraid) in a space like this?
Perhaps beyond all this, teachers need infinite patience born of the belief that things will come around, and that trying to make a difference means that somewhere, something will turn out right. A few months after this tumultuous moment, an unexpected email popped on my screen.
“Hi aunty, this is Ashok. You said you’d send me some videos of LGBTQ-related issues. I’d like to know more and would appreciate it if you could send me something. Thank you.”
