When I started my M.Ed in 2011, I had wanted to take a course with Rishma. When I would be at Winter's College for courses after a full day of work, I would wonder what it would be like, as a poet, to work with a teacher who also lived and understood the same medium of expression: I would not have to silence myself and write a certain way all the time. That prospect was infinitely exciting. I couldn't take a course with her, as she was away.
And yet when I wrote up my research, I had my poems intertwined with all the other big words I had used. Perhaps it was the magic, even without spending a single hour in her classes, I learned that it was possible, that I did not have to erase myself in order to do academic work. It has been promised that when the student is ready, the teacher will come. I have been gifted many Dronacharyas in my life, and Rishma is one. The time I was given with her was just a few minutes spent in the hallway of Winter's in front of her photograph. Yet to have lived in a time period as did she, is the learning.
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