The Dragon's Voice

by Bunty Avieson

  I come to further appreciate the complexities of rural dating during a Bhutan Observer weekend workshop. Once the business agenda is covered, the staff break out Bhutanese whisky, served with a dollop of boiling water – just enough to warm it up, but not enough to dilute the alcohol – and Needrup offers to reveal his family secrets for night-hunting, which have been handed down through the generations. He strides the length of the conference table, transforming from grave newsroom boss to Vegas entertainer. The rest of the staff obviously have heard these ‘secrets’ before and encourage him with ribald comments. One female reporter says she wouldn’t have let him in if he had come visiting her farm, but another admits she just might have, and everyone hoots with laughter. Needrup starts by paying homage to his two older brothers, who taught him their techniques. He recalls hours spent shivering in bushes while waiting for one or the other.

  Needrup’s tips for ‘night-hunting’ young women who don’t want to throw ash over you

  1.Leave your shoes in the bushes, not at the front door. Everyone in your village knows your shoes and you may have to leave in a hurry so it is stupid to leave them at the door.

  2.Don’t touch the girl with your bare hands because you will startle her. Coming in from outside, your hands will be very cold. Wrap them in the sleeve of your gho or grab a rag and poke her gently with that.

  3.Come early and listen outside to the parents talking. As soon as they fall asleep they will go into the ‘mother of sleep’ and that’s the best time to enter the house. If you leave it an hour or so they will have passed through that ‘mother of sleep’ and be more likely to wake up.

  4.To stop the door from creaking when you open it, urinate on the hinges.

  5.To locate the girl in the row of sleeping bodies, use a torch concealed in the palm of your hand. Angle it so that just a few rays poke through your fingers. Once you find her, join her under the blankets as quickly and quietly as possible.

  6.Keep your clothes on. You may have to leave in a hurry.

  7.Be moderate. Wooden floors can be creaky.

  8.Get the girl to wake you before dawn, otherwise the father might make you marry her.

  I laugh so hard at the practical nature of his tips that tears roll down my face. I ask about romance and the female reporters on either side of me erupt in giggles. Maybe it’s the whisky, or maybe I am hysterically funny; it’s hard to tell. The graphic designer, Sushil, comes from the south and says that night-hunting didn’t happen in his village. He asks if he can undertake an apprenticeship. Needrup says it would have to be soon, as electricity is killing this wholesome rural practice. When Needrup first started night-hunting, he used matches, which required a particular skill to strike a match, locate the girl quickly and then put out the flame, all without waking anybody else. He demonstrates lighting and extinguishing a match with just one hand, and his dexterity is impressive. Then battery-operated torches arrived, which was good, but now that electricity is spreading further into rural areas, the parents tend to stay up later and if a father is suspicious that an extra body has joined the family row, he just has to flick a switch and you’re caught.

  Again I get stuck on this image of the whole family being in the same room, lined up like sardines. Phuntsho tells me sometimes the daughters sleep with a parent on either side. Her tone suggests it is the most natural thing in the world. I try to picture my mum and dad, snoring on either side, while a visitor stops by. Surely not. Needrup confirms that such sleeping arrangements are the toughest challenge. The best way around it, he advises, is to pre-arrange for the young lady to nip outside to use the toilet. That method becomes harder in winter, he says, but not impossible.

  I wake up in the morning with a throbbing head from the whisky and my jaw aching from laughing. It is undoubtedly the most interesting work conference I’ve been to.

  5

  Tashi Pelkhil

  At the end of my first three months, the UN funding finishes, but Phuntsho offers to take it over. She has many more big ideas for the newspaper and thinks I can help her realise them. Public discourse is gaining energy after the launch of a fourth newspaper, Bhutan Today, in October. It is the country’s first daily newspaper, and promises to offer ‘The New Perspective’.

  After a quick family conference we agree we want to stay, but we can’t spend the next nine months in that apartment. It’s hard living with our curtains closed and being woken each morning by a family living illegally in our roof, pounding meat with a mallet at 5 am. Neighbours string raw meat on clotheslines on their balconies to dry in the winter sun, which means that as the afternoon wears on, our apartment starts to smell like an abattoir. Some mornings Kathryn wakes coughing as smoke from the sang offerings, mostly incense which neighbours burn to start the day, seeps through holes in the walls and into her room. And she is finding school life challenging. It’s rowdy and the teachers won’t let her take part in the Dzongkha classes, leaving her on her own to colour in for hours at a time.

  We glimpse an alternative when we are invited for tea at the home of an expat Dutch woman, whose husband is an engineering geomorphologist for the Ministry of Agriculture.

  Cecile and Hans have three children and live at Tashi Pelkhil, a vast estate of about 100 hectares along the Wang Chhu river, just seven minutes from the main street of Thimphu. It is owned by retired army chief General Goenling. Tashi Pelkhil is reached by a discreet little bridge hidden from the road by an ancient wall of mani stones, carved with the prayer Om mani padme hum as a dedication to the spirits of the area. Locals walk around it as a form of devotion. Over the bridge is a small gatehouse, which is manned at night by three or four soldiers, protecting the General and everyone else on his family estate.

  As his four children married and started their own families, the General gave them each a parcel of land. They built a grand two-storey home with high stone walls for themselves, and a more modest house to rent to expat families working for the government or various international aid agencies. The result is an enclave of 13 homes and a bustling multicultural community full of children. There is an Australian woman married to a Bhutanese man, a Danish–Japanese family, plus families from the Netherlands, Uzbekistan and India, as well as the General’s own children and their families. The day we visit Tashi Pelkhil, the children are running wild in an Enid Blyton kind of gang, complete with dogs. They have a river, pear and apple orchards, a barn and a corn patch (guarded by a scarecrow) to explore. Sunflowers grow to three metres tall. The private road is perfect for rollerskating. The General, who is more benevolent grandfather than military man these days, has added a fishpond and a horse, especially for the children.

  We move into the only vacant home and are quickly absorbed into the Tashi Pelkhil community.

  The kids all go to Rosemary’s School, a small school of 17 Bhutanese and expat children run by a New Zealand headmistress married to a Bhutanese businessman. We enrol Kathryn, and each morning she skips off to feed the horse before driving to school with Danish dad Jesper.

  Most days Mal drives me to work in the little Maruti Alto that we rent from the newspaper, then heads off to the food market. As a ‘trailing spouse’ he is not allowed to work, officially. But he knows Bhutan well, having come here regularly either to film or to build. As an architect, he has designed homes and retreat centres for Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in India, Canada and Bhutan. While we are here he designs homes for a few Bhutanese friends. He just doesn’t charge any money.

  The rest of the time he gets around Thimphu. He knows the best stall for lettuce, the grocers who stock butter from Bumthang, and what days the shops are allowed to sell meat, a thorny issue in a Buddhist country. He sometimes bumps into friends he hasn’t seen since filming Travellers & Magicians here five years ago, and catches up on the gossip.

  Like the other families in Tashi Pelkhil, we hire a maid, or, as the expats coyly describe them, a ‘helper’. Dolma wa
lks over the bridge every weekday with the helpers of the other families in Tashi Pelkhil village. In the same way the children have formed their own community, the helpers have theirs. They meet most days for lunch or tea at each other’s homes, bringing babies and gossip. Courtesy of Dolma, Mal knows pretty much what is going on in every other Tashi Pelkhil home and no doubt they know all our business. When Dolma cooks her signature dish of lasagne, taught to her by her previous Swiss employers, word spreads and neighbours turn up uninvited for dinner.

  The helpers also take care of each other. They are part of a Bhutanese underclass, which is illiterate and without citizenship. As non-citizens they are unable to open a bank account. Instead, they operate their own banking collective. Every month they each donate Nu.1,000 (A$27) into a pot, which adds up to Nu.11,000 (A$300). Each month a different woman gets to take home the pot. Dolma says it makes it possible to buy expensive items. Last winter she spent the money on good-quality Korean blankets for her children.

  Our family needs are pretty small, and as a result it can be hard for Dolma to find enough to keep herself busy. One day I find my socks neatly filed according to colour. Another day I discover a small tear in my knickers has been hand-stitched. It’s a bit disconcerting. She fastidiously washes and rewashes all the plastic bags, pegging them on the clothes line next to Kathryn’s toys, which she washes and lines up in a row.

  Dolma becomes like a member of our family, bringing her children with her sometimes and inviting her own friends for morning tea in our garden. Phuntsho is gently disapproving, warning that it isn’t the way to treat maids. ‘Maids stay longer where the bosses are strict,’ she says, recounting stories of maids who were lazy or dishonest, or ran off. But like the other expats, we have trouble with such overt social hierarchy. Phuntsho and I return to the topic often, trying to understand our cultural differences. She tells me, sounding both proud and defiant, that her maid eats the same food as the family and always goes out with them. But when I tell her that Mal often drives Dolma and her friend home rather than let them catch the bus at night, she frowns and I know she doesn’t approve.

  Social hierarchy was one of the ways Zhabdrung Rinpoche established peace among the warring tribes in the 17th century, and it is deeply embedded in the culture. The egalitarian ideals of democracy are making many in Bhutan uncomfortable. Senior journalist Dipika Chhetri writes about it in Bhutan Today:

  Before we looked to the West, with all its new-fangled ideas, we had a reasonable, sensible society. Now, we have all kinds of rights that are not really rights at all, they are just a breach of somebody else’s rights. By what right do we claim the ‘right’ to be equal? We are not equal. If we were equal we would all be a murky mess of insignificant people. Equality is not something to strive for.

  Democracy has arrived in Bhutan without bloodshed, but still the birth is painful. The rapidity of change has left many bewildered. For all the Fourth King’s desire to prepare his kingdom for the new era, in a nine-month period the people voted for the first time, finalised their constitution, and saw a change of monarchs.

  To many Bhutanese it appears that their way of living – valuing consensus and harmony within their communities – is being suddenly put aside. The Fourth King, who had made the country’s decisions and had always been right, wanted the people to take over. They did not want to but, trusting his wisdom in all things, they agreed. Still, it is taking some time to get used to.

  In the lead-up to the March 2008 elections, tensions flared all over the country, from remote villages to crowded apartment blocks in Thimphu. People used to bowing to authority were told they were their own authority. They should make up their own minds, have an opinion and, if necessary, disagree. The newspapers carried stories about how the election was splitting communities, villages and even families.

  In the midst of all this change, confusion abounds about what democracy means. Before the elections a police officer told Kuensel’s Kinley Dorji that a cab driver had objected to being given a speeding ticket, saying, ‘Wait until democracy comes in and I have the right to break the rules.’

  A senior health bureaucrat declared that the struggling public health system, which cannot cope with the number of patients pouring into the Thimphu hospital each day, should be privatised, because that is democracy, somehow confusing the concept with capitalism.

  A distressed farmer asked a government researcher why everyone was suddenly talking about human rights. Did that mean they had been wrong until now?

  For the most part, life in Tashi Pelkhil is idyllic, somehow managing to be both cosmopolitan and sleepy. On weekends Kathryn always has somebody to play with, returning home only when it starts to get dark, or she’s hungry or covered in mud. The life she leads here perfectly fits our romantic view of what childhood should be like.

  One night, however, I’m roused from sleep by the phone ringing beside my head.

  ‘There is a man in my house. Mal must come.’

  The terror in Cecile’s voice brings me instantly awake. I know Hans is away testing soil in a remote forest, a ten-hour drive and then another eight-hour walk away. She is on her own with three young children.

  In less than a minute Mal is dressed and sprinting around the corn patch to her house. The night is surreally bright from a near-full moon, which casts long shadows. I lock the door behind him and from our kitchen watch his torchlight bounce around Cecile’s property.

  Tashi Pelkhil is deserted but thick with the noise of barking dogs. It is like a chain reaction. The neighbours’ dogs – Fatty, Thumper and Lucky – have set off the dogs across the river, who have set off others along the Thimphu Expressway and so on. I imagine all across the city dogs are awake now and going berserk.

  It is nearly dawn when Mal returns. The man has long gone and Cecile has barricaded herself and the children in her bedroom, assuring Mal she will ring at any further hint of trouble.

  Word spreads quickly around the estate, and the next morning all the neighbours congregate at Cecile’s house. She is still shaking as she tells of waking to find a man wearing a balaclava going through the chest of drawers by her bed. Seven-year-old Roos was asleep on one side of her, and baby Abel had just fallen off her breast after his 1 am feed on the other.

  As she sat up, a male voice said, ‘Good evening, madam.’ She says she reacted instantly, launching herself out of bed and screaming at him: ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’ He was polite, she tells us in disbelief. Apologetic, even. Only a Bhutanese burglar would be polite, she says, with a trace of her old humour.

  The rest is mostly a blur. She remembers racing past her other daughter, five-year-old Willjemin, asleep in bed; smashing the glass in the front door, blood on her hands; standing on the front lawn, screaming, ‘There is a man in my house! Help me!’ and her angst when no-one came. Not the family of six from Uzbekistan who live just 10 metres away, or the Indian couple about 30 metres away, or her Bhutanese landlords about 50 metres away. Not us, on the other side of the corn patch. Only the dogs paid any attention. We all feel shamed.

  Cecile is a strong woman, confident and capable, and it’s disturbing to see her so fragile and vulnerable. Every few minutes her face crumples and the tears flow. Then she pulls herself together. She won’t ring Hans. His work is important and he needs to finish what he is doing.

  As the morning wears on, the children go to school and the maids arrive. Cecile’s Bhutanese landlords order bars on all her windows, and in the meantime a carpenter fits lengths of wooden dowel into each window track, stopping them from being forced open. Four police officers come to her house. They take out a large magnifying glass and take it in turns to peer closely at the spot where they believe the intruder climbed in the window. We watch their Sherlock Holmes performance, transfixed. It’s not making Cecile feel any safer, but it does make her smile.

  The intruder stole a Bhutanese amulet and a silk shawl, which he d
ropped on his way down the road. While the crime was petty, it shatters the calm of Tashi Pelkhil, and its effects ripple across the estate. The army guards are in trouble for slacking off on sentry duty when the General is away, and are told to increase their night patrols.

  Roos tells her captivated class that she had a burglar in her bedroom. Other students start sleeping in their parents’ bed, scared the burglar will pick their home next. Jesper orders an expensive alarm system from Denmark. In my sleep I scream out for Kathryn and before Mal’s eyes are open he is out of bed, checking on her.

  We offer Cecile our spare room but she declines. Until Hans returns, she continues to sleep with all three children in her room, the door locked and a chair wedged under the handle.

  All that Cecile can say for sure is that the burglar was a man. Overnight, every man visiting the estate becomes a suspect, and it becomes obvious that every man feels like a suspect. The half-a-dozen Indian workers camping in bamboo huts near the bridge stop meeting our gaze. We used to cheer them on when they played soccer on their Sundays off, but that friendliness dissipates and they keep to themselves. The maids no longer feel safe walking up the road to catch the bus when they work late. Some of the harmony we took for granted has been lost.

  After a couple of weeks, Cecile says she thinks she knows the identity of the intruder, and so does the man in the corner shop across the bridge. They whisper the name of their suspect to each other and both nod. The police, however, find no evidence. Hans returns and life goes on at Tashi Pelkhil, but with a new awareness among residents.