What If God Were One Of Us?

They named her after Durga, the Goddess with ten hands and a reputation that makes her uniquely Bong, or so I believe.

There's something distinctly hazel about how she makes me feel as I walk into the classroom. It's a bit like her hair and her eyes could very well have been black, but she holds them back.. so much so that they fade to brown. Uncertain whether to declare themselves.

Her earrings make me nervous. Rings, that remind me of my childhood.

Thin rings of gold which glitter in the afternoon sun and threaten with how pure she claims to be.

I used to think she's stuffy and organised to a fault. I used to wish she left her seat more, danced more, ran and never stopped. That was before I came to know about the divorce.

Blink and miss. A quiet end to her surname on those immaculate, laminated brown paper covers.

I could think that it's rude of her to sternly push away a classmate who wanted to ask me a question (about how Sports transformed Jesse Owens' life).. just because she had got to me first.

I could scold her or make a moral out of the episode and bore her to death.

I chose to laugh instead. So that I'm with her, on her wavelength.

And so that she laughs too.