Bhutan Literature

Major (Retd) Namgay (name changed) of Police comes to my office seeking information about the post retirement benefits. He looked too young to retire so out of curiousity I asked him why he wanted to retire so early. He looked at me and said, “ Seniors in my office are getting younger instead of getting older. Some of them were 55 last year but this year when their retirement age is nearing, they are 54. Instead of retiring, they seem to be getting promoted. They keep replacing their falling teeth with gold ones and keep getting prosperous.” He laughs at his own statement and scornfully adds “ they seem to have excluded weekends, Government and public holidays and non-working days from their age. So the younger ones have nowhere to go except retire and find solace elsewhere.”

I laugh with him. I guess many people in civil service and corporations are also getting younger everyday. It proves from the fact that one of the most prioritized shopping items for many Bhutanese going to Bangkok is an anti-aging cream.

Ram Singh wakes up earlier than usual on the day of Vishwakarma. In absence of any other Hindu priest , Ram Singh was given charge to appease Lord Vishwakarma on behalf of NPPF office with Nu. 5000 budget every year.
Ram Singh opens his canteen first to pick up the balloons, ribbons and cello tape and of course all the unsold samosas from his canteen. He calls someone to help him carry his bag while he goes to every chamber and cubicles and mumbles some incomprehensive words to computers, telephones, printers and heaters and stick some vermillion powder on every item he pretends to have prayed for. After the prayer in the office is done, he waits for the staff to arrive with their cars. He looks at the money being placed on the plate which carries vermillion powder. If it is less than Nu. 100, he just put a red mark and prays that the car be prevented from accident for six months. If the offered money is more, he hurriedly sticks some ribbons and balloons and make it look like a cart of some rural Rajasthan. He then prays that it be saved from accidents for a year.
Then the boss’s Prado arrives. He goes round the big car and mumbles many prayers for the SUV and himself. What he prays for SUV is a mystery but for himself, he prays that he may be allowed to run the office canteen for few more years.
When the staff goes to work, they find the Lord’s blessings in the form of samosa from Ram Singh’s canteen. Eating the blessed dry samosa is difficult, so the staff order tea from Ram Singh’s canteen which smells of staleness of the cheap thermos flask.
Ram Singh himself is busy. He counts profit on his office desks, picks his car key and goes to the petrol pump to have full tank.

(This essay was written by a twentieth century essayist whose name I do not know. I found it among popular essays being sent to me by a friend of mine. I thought this is so relevant for Bhutan today, especially at this point of time when people are so confused about being in democratic country. People from villages to students studying abroad seems to discuss politics at every available opportunity. But if we look at some of the discussions, we need to reflect once again whether Bhutanese have actually transcended into twenty first century. If we could ask for rights, maybe we are also obliged for some duty. So I hope this essay "The Rule of the Road" would give many Bhutanese some reflective insights.)


A stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for pedestrians, but she replied: 'I'm going to walk where I like. We've got liberty now.' It did not occur to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled the pedestrian to walk down the middle of the road, then the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everybody would be getting in everybody else's way and nobody would get anywhere.

Individual liberty would have become social anarchy. There is a danger of the world getting liberty-drunk in these days like the old lady with the basket, and it is just as well to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means. It means that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the liberties of everybody must be curtailed. When the policeman, say, at Piccadilly Circus steps into the middle of the road and puts out his hand, he is the symbol not of tyranny, but of liberty. You may not think so. You may, being in a hurry, and seeing your car pulled up by this insolence of office, feel that your liberty has been outraged. How dare this fellow interfere with your free use of the public highway? Then, if you are a reasonable person, you will reflect that if he did not interfere with you, he would interfere with no one, and the result would be that Piccadilly Circus would be a maelstrom that you would never cross at all. You have submitted to a curtailment of private liberty in order that you may enjoy a social order which makes your liberty a reality.

Liberty is not a personal affair only, but a social contract. It is an accommodation of interests. In matters which do not touch anybody else's liberty, of course, I may be as free as I like. If I choose to go down the road in a dressing-gown whoshall say me nay? You have liberty to laugh at me, but I have liberty to be indifferent to you. And if I have a fancy for dyeing my hair, or waxing my moustache (which heaven forbid), or wearing an overcoat and sandals, or going to bed late or getting up early, I shall follow my fancy and ask no man's permission. I shall not inquire of you whether I may eat mustard with my mutton. And you will not ask me whether you may follow this religion or that, whether you may prefer Ella Wheeler Wilcox to Wordsworth, or champagne to shandy.

In all these and a thousand other details you and I please ourselves and ask no one's leave. We have a whole kingdom in which we rule alone, can do what we choose, be wise or ridiculous, harsh or easy, conventional or odd. But directly we step out of that kingdom, our personal liberty of action becomes qualified by other people's liberty. I might like to practice on the trombone from midnight till three in the morning. If I went on to the top of Everest to do it, I could please myself, but if I do it in my bedroom my family will object, and if I do it out in the streets the neighbors will remind me that my liberty to blow the trombone must not interfere with their liberty to sleep in quiet. There are a lot of people in the world, and I have to accommodate my liberty to their liberties.

We are all liable to forget this, and unfortunately we are much more conscious of the imperfections of others in this respect than of our own. A reasonable consideration for the rights or feelings of others is the foundation of social conduct.It is in the small matters of conduct, in the observance of the rule of the road, that we pass judgment upon ourselves, and declare that we are civilized or uncivilized. The great moments of heroism and sacrifice are rare. It is the little habits ofcommonplace intercourse that make up the great sum of life and sweeten or make bitter the journey.

Sometimes in 2006, when the whole country was rushing to pose for new identity card, a class teacher of one of the schools in southern Bhutan received a leave application from one of his students. The first line of the application read, “… since I am suffering from identity card making, I am not able to attend the class today....” The teacher had been used to hearing that his pupils were suffering from diarrhoea, scabies and other diseases but surely not from identity card making.
It sounds funny when we hear it for the first time but when we ponder over his suffering, people are not just suffering from identity card making alone but from many things, especially from the burden of inefficiencies.
Sometimes I wonder how farmers get their job done in the offices. It feels like the offices are there to do people a favour. It works perfectly though if you have connections. This may be the reason why sharchokpas have huge extension of their family lines like banyan trees. Mind you but, many relations are based on who is worth being connected.
So talking about connections, many people get jobs through connection and not selection. Selection interviews are just a drama created to get some nice working lunch which people don’t get to eat at home much. The candidates are selected weeks before interview. The interview would been already done twice before the results are published for the winning candidate. One is done by the father or anyone who is got influential polarity on the phone long before. Of course you need Qualification. But more so, you need Thekalification. Thekal in Lhotsham would mean a push factor. It sounds like motivation theory from some management lessons, doesn’t it?
However, some years ago, a young boy, aspiring to join NRTI was attending an interview. He had a good score. While entering the interview room, he left the doors opens. One of the committee members asked him to close the door. He did. He gave a little harder than a gentle back kick to the door and it closed. He was out.
Then the first democratic election showered upon the people. The result was impressive. Wasn’t it? More than the elections, we are impressed by the kingmakers. There are office politicians, dangerous ones, doing office politics everyday. Its impressive how they can play around people and bosses. I do not feel that our politicians would do us more harm than those lurking behind office cubicles and chambers. It makes me shake like jelly. Bhutan has surely become a breeding ground for cronies. Sadly we have them a lot.
So, like the opening line from the movie Madagascar, we may be lucky to be landing somewhere as a new deomocratic country but we may be crash landing unfortunately.Till then we will able be suffering from not just identity card making but everything....

…this was a story of an old Gomchen called Mentong who came from a remote village. All his life he saved all the money he could by reading scriptures to go on pilgrimage to India. It took three years of saving for him to finally feel his dream become a reality. He was so much excited that he went to Bodh Gaya three weeks before the “Moenlam Chenmo”, the great prayer session actually began.

Permitted within his provision of food and money, he traveled to all the pilgrim sites including Varanasi, Rajgriha, Sarnath and ancient university of Nalanda. Wherever possible, he offered butter lamps and money and he prostrated before each statue as others did. He was taken with surprises by the size of the statues and temples .He gazed at the multistoried buildings and more than the colonies of antlike count of people.

As the Moenlam Chenmo started, the number of people started to swell to the extent that all empty spaces were filled with pilgrims residing in tents and makeshifts huts. There were monks and lamas who in the throng looked like ripe oranges and apples. Never in the life of Mentong did he see such a huge assembly of monks and Lamas. He was filled with so much devotion that he ate tshogs(food and fruit offerings) and duetse(elixir) , given during the meonlam with closed eyes and prayed that he gets another opportunity to come back to this place again next year also.

Soon the moenlam chenmo ended and people started to return to the places they had come from. Most of them had come from the places he had never heard of or even thought that there was anything like he had heard about.

Before he finally bundled up his clothes and the remaining of the provisions, he went round the temples nearby to make his final prayers and prostrations.

As he returned to his own bamboo hut, which was about to fall on its own, he vied upon a small nut like mysterious piece of thing collecting dust just outside his hut. Picking it up, he gazed through it like studying the distant stars with the telescope. There he saw the fire burning inside the frozen water cut into shape, which would melt only when the world perished. He had heard about a very very rare treasure called Chu Shey Mey Shey and the one in his hand now fit the descriptions of it. “Ya lama, this is a Norbu (treasure) Chu Shey Mey Shey”, thought he. “Whose must it be? He wondered . Whosever it was, he would now be taking it. It was his lucky day while it was the owner’s bad luck.

Now he was in great hurry to go. He picked up everything he could in a little time and bundled them into his old bag. He covered his newly found treasure with Khada (ceremonial scarf), and placed it inside the prayer wheel he took everywhere he went. The scriptures inside the prayer wheel had to give place to Norbu now. He placed the scriptures alongside the other scriptures, which was distributed by some rich Jinda, patrons, during the moenlam chenmo, great prayer assembly. Then he walked out suspicious of all the strangers he met on the road. His chest could not handle the excitement of getting such treasure so the heart raced against the usual rhythm of speed.

Once in the bus, he held the prayer wheel very dear and slept holding it and woke many times as it fell out of his grip. He cursed himself many times for letting it happen and going to sleep. Once he reached Phuentsholing, the border town of Bhutan, he was relieved of the fear that the real owner of the Norbu would be coming to claim it. He was so much shocked that no one ever breathed of the lost Norbu. “Maybe the owner didn’t as yet know that it is lost or maybe it fell from the sky with the rain,” he thought.

When he finally reached home, he was ecstatic to see the Norbu Chu Shey Mey Shey. He closed the door, put on the light and unwrapped the treasure. It reflected the light from the lamp and he was unable to sleep that night again. He put it under his pillow and wanted to see what kind of dream he would see. He saw the people trying to snatch his Norbu from him and also heard a voice telling him that the place of the Norbu is not under his pillow but inside the altar with the statues of Buddha, Guru Rinpoche and his manifestations.

Waking up the next day, he wrapped the Norbu in all colors of scarves. He then offered his prostrations and finally putting it on his head and getting its blessings, he placed it in the altar near the statue of Buddha.

The village people came in the afternoon to meet him and also to hear the stories he had to tell them. He told them of his experiences of not finding a forest to relieve himself in times of stomach disorder, having to travel by the three wheeled motor and also of the hugeness and sizes of the temples, statues and other buildings. He told them of his experience of riding a train whose head and tail was impossible to see. Most people were fascinated with the stories of his travel. He told them of the story of the Norbu Chu Shey Mey Shey and how he got it but he never allowed them to see it. He gave a wang (blessing) with it.

The words went round the village that the Gomchen has the Norbu which was very very rare not just in this country but in the whole world. The men folks just teased him to sell it to them or change it for half a dozen milking cow but he refused. He said that even if the whole world was given to him, he still would not change it and let alone selling it off. It had simply become priceless.

Over the years many people came to hear about the Norbu and most exaggerated its power but the faith was such that everyone believed it. There was nothing sacred than the Norbu he had in the world now and let alone the village. So the villagers took his house as more sacred.

One day a group of villagers had come to collect some contribution for the festival. They found that the Gomchen had died that very night in bed. They passed on the message to his relatives who gathered there at his house. They prepared for his funeral rites and also for the cremation. Other village monks were also called and many had gathered for his last session as is always done in the villages. The villagers talked of the Norbu but no one dared put hands on it for fear of being accused by others. Some readily said that the rarity of the Norbu is also associated in possessing it and not all people get to possess it except those who have accumulated so much virtue in their previous lives.

Soon Mentong’s Norbu had been passed on to his Nephew, who was his closest relative alive. The nephew who had come for the funeral of his uncle was given the Norbu in presence of all the villagers.

Nephew unwrapped the khada and to his surprise, the Norbu that they so much talked about was the glass nuts, which the children played and called marble. It was small and the bubble inside was red so the frozen flame covered by the frozen water.

The Nephew however, didn’t let the truth known for it was the matter of faith of his uncle even though it was the fruit of the ignorance. There was no ways that his uncle would have known that there was anything like that. He never had an opportunity to play the glass nuts or marble anytime in his life before nor did he see any children play in the villages he had been. He never had the opportunity to see and know what the real Norbu Chu Shey Mey Shey looked like for the rarity of it never allowed anyone the privilege except in the folklores and scriptures heard from some other people.

Be it any monument or the chorten, it is still stones carved to shapes. It is the faith and devotion that made it sacred. The marble turned into the epitome of faith and devotion and more precious than the actual Norbu Chu Shey Mey Shey. The nephew put it inside a statue of Manjushri, the God of Wisdom, whom he purchased and donated to the village temple dedicating it to his late uncle’s name with all the other things required for one and immortalized him forever. There talked the people then not of the small glass nut but the tale of Norbu Chu Shey Mey Shey and made the faith and devotion of one man the monument, holier than the life itself. There, the lives remain scattered everywhere but faith and true devotion was blessed to few only.