Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti

by Kunzang Choden

  A learned and wise man, the Tsampa realized that spirits in the wilderness were staging illusions to test him. The presence of people in the wilderness is said to disturb the residing spirits, who are said to be very territorial. They create illusions to scare away intruders. The Tsampa tried to will the vision away, saying to himself, “This is a mirage the mind has created, I must dissolve it in my mind,” but a thousand thoughts flashed through the ascetic’s head and he fearlessly got up to intervene. The rolling ball lay as a mass of blood and fur. He knew that one beast had killed the other, but was unsure of who the victim was. He continued to wait, wavering and unsure whether he ought to go any closer to the bodies. Slowly one form disengaged itself from the entangled mass; the massive brownish-gray creature got up painstakingly, shook itself and stood still for awhile before vanishing like a phantom. “Just as I had suspected, a mirage,” thought the Tsampa to himself. But the tiger’s body continued to lie on the ground, twisted and contorted in a pool of blood. The Tsampa let the dead creature lie on the frozen ground in front of his cave for three days before attempting to skin it. To his surprise, there was no longer any blood or even signs of injury on its body. It was a perfect skin. Although the Tsampa refused to elaborate further, everybody who heard the story knew that the spirits must have given the tiger skin to the ascetic as a mark of their submission when they realized that this holy man had transcended all forms of fear.

  Boots for the Migoi

  After repeated gesture the creature hesitantly placed one foot on the hide.

  Mimi Pema was a tanner. He was the only one in his village and one of the few in the entire valley of Tang. He was a big, quiet and dignified man who spoke little. He worked hard and, like most men in the village, he loved his ara—the country liquor every household in Bumthang distilled from its grains. Sometimes he drank a little too much. But Aye Yangchenmo, his wife, did not consider that to be a great vice. “He is not at all like the others when he drinks,” she used to say with obvious pride and affection. “When he has had a little too much he quietly goes to sleep, without ever blabbering or bothering anyone.”

  Day after day Mimi Pema worked at curing and processing hides. First the raw hide had to be soaked in water for days and then the fur had to be scraped off. He had to clean and scrape the hide further after which he pulled and rolled it on to a frame to make it supple and pliable. When the material was softer and more workable he would apply handfuls of shingmar, the oily extract of a certain tree, and knead the hide for days. It was tough work that demanded both skill and patience. Mimi Pema never ceased to be proud of the final product and he loved the clean smooth quality of leather which he fashioned into various useful items.

  People often teased him, saying that his forehead glistened in the sun as he sat on his porch engrossed in his work. Mimi Pema was completely bald; a shiny patch of skin extended upwards from his forehead right down to the nape of his neck. Clumps of gray hair emerged as two bushy patches above each ear. His tiny eyes would twinkle mischievously every time he repeated a pearl of wisdom that he claimed to have learned from his grandfather, “Hairy people are the descendants of monkeys and we bald people are descendants of the nobility.” Choktor, the village clown, had his own theory, “No, Mimi, looking at your size and your baldness you must be descended from the nobility of the gredpo.” From then onwards people playfully called him Mimi Gredpo, or Grandpa Yeti.

  Mimi Pema and Aye Yangchenmo lived in a modest house in Pralang, in the lower Tang valley. They had a perpetual stream of visitors. There were people who would come to ask the old man to do some work or those who came to settle old dues. His services were well sought after: there were hide straps to be made into leather ropes, leather bags to be stitched for the storage of grains and flour and leather soles for boots. Occasionally, he would be asked to cure a whole sheep skin which the women of Tang would drape on their backs as protection against the cold and the constant spilling of water which they transported in open barrels.

  Mimi Pema was flexible about the modes of payment as long as he was paid somehow, sometime. He was rarely paid in cash, for cash was a privilege restricted to the rich. He was often paid in leather. He would cure and stitch a pair of soles for boots and was given an extra one, which he could sell, as payment. Sometimes people gave him grains, butter or meat for services rendered. He was most pleased when a dung, or a bamboo container full of ara, was the form of payment. There were others who would pledge a few days of labor for a pair of leather boots. As a result, although the couple was childless they were never lonely and lived in relative comfort. Their stores and granary were always full, their fields well attended and the stock of firewood never went down below the lower frames of the windows.

  Mimi Pema rarely traveled, but when he did he always had a piece of hide in his hands, which he kneaded as he chanted the Buddhist mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. Aye Yangchen would insist that he carry his prayer beads instead, but the old man preferred the hide saying, “I pray in my mind not with my hands.” This is how he had traveled to Phokpai one year. Every autumn his brother’s family would migrate to the lower feeding grounds in Kurtoi, an old custom that is faithfully followed to this day. This was an annual event that Mimi Pema willingly participated in. He traveled together with everyone on the first day of the journey. They arrived at a large open field in the midst of a dark forest of conifers, situated at the base of the 4,100 meter high Rodong La. On the other side of Rodong La lay the semi-tropical pastures where the cattle would be kept for at least six months of the year. Of course it was Mimi Pema’s genuine concern for his brother that took him on this annual expedition, but the generous flow of ara, which was in abundance, played no trifling role in inciting the old man. He reveled in the farewell drinks that he and his brother shared as they slurred and mumbled their good-byes and words of advice to one another over gallons of the intoxicant. As the rest of the family busied themselves with gathering up the camp and assembling the animals, the brothers sat perched on a boulder in the middle of a marshland, coaxing each other into continuous refills of their “bottomless” cups. The numerous nieces and nephews reprimanded their father and uncle for drinking too much, but they lovingly helped their father as he shuffled along and dragged himself unsteadily after the procession of animals and people. Mimi Pema lay on the boulder with a fixed grin of his face as he watched the departing procession which was soon hidden in clouds of dust, raised by the hoofs of the animals.

  Mimi Pema remembered forcing himself to stay awake in order to get a last glimpse of the procession disappearing into the spruce and hemlock forest. Suddenly he felt a soothing, lulling sensation overtake his entire body. It was as if he was rising into the air like a piece of cotton flitting...flitting...flitting. He was falling into a drunken stupor.

  He had no idea how long he had slept for and when he did eventually wake up his back ached from the hard rock on which he had lain. His sunburned skin felt taut and painful and his chin was wet from the saliva drooling from the sides of his mouth. He opened his eyes and the sun was shining brightly from a deep blue sky. There was total silence all around. He lay there for a while taking in the new sensations and then automatically his hands reached into his gho pouch in search of the hide. He got up with a start when his probing hands failed to find it. He sat up and searched more thoroughly, but it was not there. He stood up in irritation and looked all around for he felt quite lost without the piece of hide. He got off the stone perch and searched in the dwarf bamboo and marsh that surrounded the boulder. There it was, his nice clean hide, in a pool of fetid marshy water soaked thoroughly and discolored by the black murky earth! He picked up the hide and inspected it wondering what to do next when he got the whiff of something dreadful. He was just about to take a closer sniff at the hide, when a shadow fell across his path. He looked up and his vision was blocked by an enormous hulk that had positioned itself in front of him. Involuntarily, he took a few backward steps. What he saw was an animal of some kind st
anding on its hind legs. He tilted his head backwards and found that the creature was staring at him intently. It was a giant hairy man with the features of a monkey . . . what could it possibly be?

  As the last mists of ara lifted from his drugged brain, fear and panic gripped him. This creature must be what the villagers playfully called him. It had to be a gredpo!

  “Never try to run away from the gredpo,” was another piece of advice he imagined he had occasionally heard from his grandfather. “Use skillful means to save yourself.”

  What were his skills? How could he save himself from this enormous potential enemy? “Your strength lies in leather,” his mind seemed to bellow. “Use the leather skillfully.”

  He slowly leaned against the boulder, restraining his old legs that wanted to flee. His heart leapt and hammered wildly in his chest. He was still clutching the hide in his hands. He quietly but repeatedly chanted the holy mantra. All this while the creature seemed mesmerized by the human’s movements. It watched him without blinking. “Why doesn’t it grab me and crush me to death? Why all this waiting? Why doesn’t it trample me under those giant feet?” But the creature was not agitated or ferocious in spite of its menacing gaze. It was absolutely captivated by this man and could not take its eyes off him.

  “Do something quick, before it does something to you,” he kept telling himself. He stood still trying to sort out his confused state. Slowly he reached for the collar of his gho. He felt for the largest needle from among the three that he had stuck there and extracted it. Then he removed the cloth bag with the nettle fibers from his gho pouch. He put one end of a piece of thread in his mouth to wet it; his lips were parched and his mouth was dry, as always, after a “little too much ara.” Somehow his long years of practice got the better of his trembling hands and he managed to thread the needle, even without the help of the saliva necessary to wet and bind the fibers together. Taking a deep breath Mimi Pema looked the creature straight in the eye, but it was standing with its back to the sun and he was dazzled by the bright glare outlining its form. The beady eyes danced with curiosity. He raised his feet on to the boulder and showed the creature his boots. They were the kho lham, the traditional Bhutanese cloth boots that went upwards from the ankle to below the knee and had flat leather soles without raised heels. He then placed one piece of leather on the boulder, pointed to the creature’s feet and gestured for it to place them on the hide. After repeated gestures the creature hesitantly placed one foot on the hide and Mimi Pema slowly but gently with quivering hands began to pull the hide around the enormous foot and stitch the ends together. He had to constantly wipe away beads of sweat that trickled into his eyes. Finally, the giant’s foot was encased in hide. He did the same to the other foot. It seemed pleased with its new acquisitions and pranced about in them. Mimi Pema patiently waited, letting the creature enjoy the boots while it could, for soon the wet hide—which had been stretched to its limit—would dry and contract in the sunlight, binding the feet of the wearer.

  Mimi Pema took to his heels while the creature was still absorbed in admiring itself. It viewed its feet from all directions, pointing them this way and that. By now the old tanner had placed some distance between himself and his potential pursuer when the latter began to follow him. Now he began to run for his life. As he ran he kept looking back over his shoulders at his pursuer. The hide must have started contracting for the creature was limping. There was a bead of sweat on every remaining strand of hair on Mimi Pema’s head as he ran on furiously. His dried throat hurt and he tried to form some saliva in his mouth by smacking his lips as he ran. His heart was pounding madly and he could almost hear his blood rush in his ear. The creature could be seen in the distance, dragging its feet and shuffling in the dust, barely able to move. The pain must have been excruciating because it was moaning with a sound which resembled a whistle. Soon the creature was just a speck in the distance which became smaller and smaller and finally disappeared completely.

  When Mimi Pema reached his home he was trembling uncontrollably and was ashen gray. He couldn’t even take a sip of Aye Yangchenmo’s best ara! He was speechless and disoriented, startling at his own shadow. Something was seriously wrong with the man. When his condition did not change over time the ritual of laku was performed to help restore his spiritual and physical balance.

  Months passed before Mimi Pema was finally able to regain his speech and talk of his encounter. He continued his leather work but responded resentfully when anyone called him gredpo, for he alone knew what a real gredpo was!

  The Unintentional Trap

  Tikchung stood under each pine tree he had selected and studied it. Then he scanned the area around each tree to see how and where they would fall when cut down. He chose three tall trees not too far from each other. These trees would yield perfect planks; not only were they tall but they had long intervals between the branches which spread out systematically almost as if a person had actually measured the spaces. With some luck he could easily get about fifteen to twenty planks from each tree. “I got a hundred planks from a single tree,” Ap Dorji, his neighbor had boasted, some days ago. But Tikchung did not need more than forty planks, three trees would be plenty for his kitchen floor. The rotting floor planks had been the cause of many miseries. His otherwise amiable wife, Pem Choizom, easily worked herself into emotional, theatrical outbursts when the subject of the rotting planks was raised and Tikchung himself had been the victim of many verbal abuses and humiliations. Tikchung winced every time a plank creaked for he knew what was coming, “Aren’t you ever going to change these rotten planks?” she would begin.

  Tikchung would sit in silence impassively, pretending to be otherwise preoccupied. It was of no avail to explain to her that he could not go for planks at the height of the plowing season. Pem Choizom would deliberately mistake his silence for stubbornness, “You stubborn bull! You can’t rely on your stubbornness for too long. If you don’t get the new planks we’ll find ourselves in the ground floor with the animals,” she would scream.

  Of course that would never happen, because there was a layer of rammed earth and layers of bamboo over strong beams that were as good as new. If only Pem Choizom had not been so careless with spilling water on the floor while she worked in the kitchen, perhaps the planks would have lasted a few years longer. As Tikchung continued to sit in silence, pondering over his own thoughts, Pem Choizom tossed the last buckwheat pancake, she had been making at the stove, onto the pile in the basket on the floor. In her agitated state, she missed the basket and it fell on the floor, smack on a rotting plank. Another reminder of the “disgraceful floor” as Pem Choizom put it, would continue to hurt their twenty years of marriage. Tikchung made up his mind as he picked up the pancake from the floor and blew the dust off it. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly.

  “Tomorrow what?” demanded Pem Choizom. She wanted a firmer

  commitment.

  “Tomorrow I will go for the planks.”

  The woman at the stove rolled her eyes, although a faint smile of triumph lit up her sooty face.

  Next day Tikchung strapped his ax to his back and tucked his sword into his belt. Pem Choizom handed him a leather pouch filled with buckwheat flour mixed with the fermented grains of wheat and barley from which the alcohol had not been extracted. He would have to knead the mixture in the leather pouch before he ate the choydam or dough. As he passed the village water spout at the prayer mill he saw that some of the village women had already gathered there to fill their barrels and wash themselves. He could not resist remarking, as he passed the women, “After you are all washed and pretty, the prettiest one may come with me to the forest to help me to get my planks.” There was chorus of laughter, “Shame on you Tikchung. Look back, Pem Choizom is watching you and any way a grown man shouldn’t be afraid to go into the forest alone!” the women teased back.

  With a broad grin Tikchung passed the laughing women and headed up the hill towards the forests. After a few hours of walk he reached the th
ick pine forests and he immediately began to scan around for trees. Once he selected the trees he cleared away the bushes around the trees to facilitate easy swinging of his ax. He considered the options and decided in which direction the trees would fall and then he began to chop at the tree, swinging his ax with practiced ease. The forest rang with the sound of the chopping. The solitary sound gave him a strange hollow feeling and he suddenly felt very alone. He wished he had seriously looked for a companion.

  But what was it doing with his log?

  When the tree trunk had almost been cut through he gave it a final push with his entire weight and the tree fell slowly first and then crashed through the numerous bushes and saplings around it, tharow, thraow and a loud crash, a sound that resounded through the forest. The second and third trees were felled in the same way. Lopping off the branches was easy. He cut the bigger branches into pieces that he could carry home for firewood.The resin from the fallen trees stuck to his hands and he had to stop every now and then to rub butter into the palms of his hands so that the handle of the ax did not stick to his palms. He looked at the massive trees and he could already imagine the planks and the happy smile on Pem Choizom’s face.