A Baby in a Backpack to Bhutan: An Australian Family in the Land of the Thunder Dragon

by Bunty Avieson

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  Karma Yangki is worried that I am not seeing enough of Thimphu’s sights and organises a driving tour of the capital. As well as Trashi Chhoe Dzong and the National Memorial Chorten, she wants to show me the Bhutanese Broadcasting Service’s tower, high on the hill above the city. (I’ve seen enough TV transmitting towers in my time so I’m not really keen but don’t want to be rude.)

  It is a favourite parking spot for lovers and when we get there, I can see why. The view across the valley is superb. But it would be a shame if the lovers stayed in the car. What makes this place truly breathtaking is further up the hill, which means a steep walk.

  While I huff and puff, Karma Yangki hoists Kathryn effortlessly into her arms and strides on ahead, her kira billowing about. Hundreds of tall prayer flags flap in the strong breeze. They are made from stiff cotton that is covered in prayers which the Bhutanese believe are carried to the heavens by the wind. Standing in the midst of them is like being surrounded by a vast orchard of tall, skinny trees. The sound of their flapping is so loud that Karma Yangki and I have to yell to each other to be heard. Even so, there is an extraordinary sense of peace and serenity. Each year on a particular date, lamas and monks come here to say prayers and make offerings to the local deities for the wellbeing of all who live in Thimphu. For the rest of the year it’s a popular picnic spot.

  On the other side of the hill is a cluster of small wooden houses and Karma Yangki leads me through a rickety gate. A stooped old lady opens the door, her lined and weatherbeaten face breaking into a broad grin at the sight of us.

  ‘This is Mani Dorji’s mother,’ explains Karma Yangki.

  The tiny two-room house is immaculate – not a skerrick of dust or dirt to be seen. On the walls hang a hot water bottle and a calendar.

  Karma Yangki’s mother-in-law disappears to make us tea. After a few moments a young girl carries it in on a tray. She is concentrating very hard and takes small, careful steps so as not to spill anything.

  The girl is about eight and lives here with the old lady. Her mother was struggling to bring her up on her own in a country village. Mani Dorji’s mother took in the little girl and organised a job for the mother as a live-in cook with a family nearby.

  The little girl lives here, going to school and helping around the house.

  While we chat, the girl stands partly hidden behind the old lady, overcome with shyness. Every time I smile at her, she retreats a little bit further. It is only when we leave that I’m treated to a huge grin, revealing a row of beautiful even white teeth.

  Next stop on our tour is an enormous warehouse on the edge of town where about a dozen women are sitting on the floor, weaving kiras on their backstrap looms. The owner comes to greet us and leads us into his office, which is stacked floor to ceiling with bolts of fabric. Hanging on every wall are beautiful kiras which the owner points to lovingly.

  He is cheeky, flamboyant and wiggles his hips in an outrageously suggestive manner when he walks. He brings out some of his more expensive kiras for us to admire and talks about them with immense passion, discussing at length the colours and patterns.

  The man is gay, no doubt about it. I suggest this to Karma Yangki, curious to see her reaction. She doesn’t seem particularly shocked, just doesn’t know what I am talking about. Bhutan doesn’t have gay men, she says.

  Maybe not, but I have no doubt that man would be perfectly at home on Sydney’s Oxford Street.

  8

  Lady Muck

  The sisters anticipate anything I might desire and have the maids cater to it. They are all so kind that it’s driving me nuts. I’m not used to having servants, and it makes me feel guilty. As they clear away my plates and bring yet more tea I can’t throw the feeling that my grandmother might appear at any time and tell me off for lying around like Lady Muck. An unforgivable sin when I was growing up.

  So I try to help, taking my own dishes down to the kitchen after a meal. It doesn’t work. Either I get shooed away by a giggling maid before I even make it down the stairs or the plates are whisked off me at the kitchen doorway by one of the sisters, her face friendly but disapproving.

  I can’t tell if they are being polite or actually would rather I didn’t go into their kitchen. Heaven knows, it isn’t my room of choice and I strive to spend as little time in my own as possible. But every time they do something for me I hear echoes of my grandmother’s accusing voice.

  I decide that I’m committing a cultural faux pas with my inisistence on appearing in their kitchen and instead sit back, letting it all happen around me. After a meal I leave the dishes on the table and go back to work.

  When I tell Mal about it on his next visit he is horrified and says I have to persevere. The sisters are just being polite and I mustn’t make the mistake of falling into an ‘upstairs downstairs’ kind of arrangement. So often westerners misunderstand Bhutanese generosity – they might offer you their last mouthful or the gho off their back but that doesn’t mean you should take it, he says. Even if the sisters continue to chase me out of the kitchen, the gesture will be appreciated.

  Mal should know. For the past decade he has enjoyed the hospitality of Rinpoche’s people all over the world and is used to being a guest in Asian homes. I watch partly envious and partly horrified at how he slips in and out of life at Taba.

  When he is here he takes over the formal lounge room, commandeers the telephone for film business and merrily leaves his washing out on the landing for the maids. It is clear he feels perfectly at home. I, on the other hand, stay out of the formal lounge room except when the other sisters are with me, try to do my own washing and haven’t quite managed to throw the feeling that I am on my best behaviour.

  He tries to explain the subtleties of Asian hospitality with what he calls his two-week rule. It’s always a dynamic, he stresses, but loosely speaking, if you are staying for less than two weeks then expect to be treated like a special, honoured guest. Be grateful and courteous but accepting of it all. Any longer and it’s up to you to start to become part of the household.

  He explains that the Bhutanese would find it funny that I would try to do the maids’ job – clearing away dishes – when that is what they are paid to do. The same with my washing. Let the maids do their jobs. I must find other ways to help. It’s all about attitude, he says, leaving me more confused than ever. Relax and become part of the family, but don’t for a minute stop trying to help.

  He sees the look of bewilderment on my face and tries to reassure me that any social faux pas I make will be forgiven on the basis that I am a foreigner. But, he adds helpfully, if it’s real and lasting respect I’m after, it would be best if I don’t lose it to start with.

  And then he is gone again, back up the yak trail, the next set of rushes in his hot little hand and a truckload of crises to deal with, leaving me to tiptoe around these wonderfully generous people, terrified lest secretly they think I’m behaving like Lady Muck.

  Eventually I do relax. It’s impossible not to, surrounded by such harmony and happiness. The paper-thin walls echo with laughter and the sound of women calling out ‘ana, ana’, which is their word for ‘sister’.

  Each of them has a different way of relating to Kathryn, and she responds accordingly. She waves back to Karma Yangki, claps with Karma Chokyi, opens her mouth and eyes wide when she sees Renee and Phuntsho Wangmo, and with Wesel Wangmo, she makes a bird-like coo.

  Teaching her to crawl has become a family exercise and everybody is in on it. Her training ground is, naturally, the most popular spot in the house – that much-trafficked patch of floor beside Karma Yangki’s bed. This is where Wesel Wangmo and Karma Chokyi watch TV; where Mani Dorji repairs his suitcase on a leisurely Sunday; and where Karma Yangki threads her wool. It’s also where cousins and friends sit to enjoy a chat, a bowl of cornflakes and sweetened tea.

  In the midst of whatever is going on is Kathryn, face down balancing on her stomach as she tries to co-ordinate her arms and legs. Her adopted
Bhutanese family cheer her on, getting down on all fours to show her how.

  One afternoon I wander down to find Kathryn and Wesel Wangmo, Karma Chokyi and a couple of cousins sitting in a large circle. While Renee and Madonna are trying on the big girls’ jewellery, the sisters have dyed Kathryn’s scalp with henna. She is sitting in the middle of the circle, wearing rows of necklaces and a huge smile. She looks gorgeous and exotic, and I wonder how the hell they managed it. This baby that screams the house down whenever we wash her hair, has been given a henna rinse, without a whimper reaching me upstairs. Amazing!

  Phuntsho Wangmo tells me the family feel a very strong connection with Kathryn, unlike anything they have felt for a baby outside their own immediate circle. And the feeling is obviously mutual. Seeing how they all relate is really quite special.

  Karma Yangki invites me to the best spa and beauty ‘saloon’ in Thimphu and I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon.

  Karma Yangki isn’t as confident about her English as her younger sisters so when we arrive she doesn’t explain much – just hands me a towel and leads me down the corridor to a door marked ‘Ladies’. Inside is a toilet, a washbasin with mirror, two showers and a heavy glass door so covered in steam that we can’t see through it.

  Every surface, including the cold floor, is awash with icy water so we hop from foot to foot while juggling our shoes and clothes, and strip naked. Karma Yangki wipes a corner of the vanity dry and we put our belongings in a pile. A quick shower then it’s through the heavy glass door. The steam room is a cubicle with a bench big enough for two. It is wonderfully, gloriously hot and smells of lemon grass. Within seconds I’m the warmest I’ve been since arriving. It’s heaven . . . for an instant . . . then it’s too hot. I last an embarrassingly short amount of time while Karma Yangki sits and sweats, somehow looking demure even as the perspiration pours off her.

  We move from the steam room to the changing room and back again, enjoying the heat then cooling off. When we’ve had enough, we find that two other women have arrived and we have to wait our turn for the showers.

  We stand on the cold floor, dressed only in our towels, and it doesn’t take long before we cool right down. The water is icy cold under our bare feet. I react by putting on my shoes. Karma Yangki reacts in a way that is so Bhutanese and so Karma Yangki that I feel completely humbled. In the time it takes me to think how annoying it is, she checks behind the toilet door and finds a mop. Without fuss or comment she cleans away all the water. In a matter of minutes the room is more comfortable for me, the two women in the showers and anyone else who might follow.

  Surely it is this generosity of spirit and basic kindness that makes the culture so harmonious.

  Then it’s down the corridor for a bit of a touch-up. Karma Yangki leads me to the ‘saloon’, which is the size of a small bathroom with two chairs side by side in front of a long mirrored counter. A couple of posters for make-up products are taped to the wall. A woman is already having her eyebrows plucked and Karma Yangki takes a seat beside her. I watch from the only available spot, an old-fashioned barber’s chair, which takes up most of the floor space. It’s where the men come for a close shave with a cut-throat razor.

  It doesn’t matter that the seat springs have gone because I don’t stay there long, moving closer to try to work out what they are doing to Karma Yangki and the other woman. The two beauty therapists work in perfect symmetry, taking a long piece of cotton thread and moving it with their fingers in a scissor motion across their clients’ eyebrows. Somehow, each time, they remove a single hair.

  It’s like watching someone do a complicated chopstick manoeuvre, very quickly, only without the chopsticks. And all the while the four women are chatting and laughing, catching up on the latest gossip of Thimphu, like middle-class ladies in beauty parlours all over the world.

  Thimphu’s first ‘saloon’ opened in the 1990s but now there are about twenty of them, offering all manner of beauty treatments.

  After ten minutes or so they are finished and Karma Yangki asks what I think of her newly neatened eyebrows. They are beautifully arched but the skin around them looks pink and painful, as if someone has just pinched her very hard.

  ‘They look sore,’ I say. ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replies.

  We both nod. Of course it hurts. Stupid question. Plucking hairs from your eyebrows always hurts, whether it’s with hot wax, tweezers or cotton thread and a nifty wrist action.

  ‘But they look better, yes?’ she adds with a grin.

  Can’t argue with that. Beauty may be only skin deep but it would seem that the pursuit of it is universal. I feel right at home.

  Brothers Mani Dorji and Tenzin Wangdi take off for a few days to Phuntsoling, the border town eight hours’ drive away where the presses are situated.

  The family company, KMT, is the country’s largest privately owned press. It started out twenty-five years ago printing Buddhist texts from wooden blocks for monasteries. Today it produces everything from colour brochures and writing pads to textbooks, and has interests in trading, stationery, hardware, electricals and electronics.

  Tenzin Wangdi recently represented the brothers in Geneva, accepting an international award for business excellence. As strange as it may seem, this small company of a hundred employees, quietly going about its business in a small town on the edge of this little-known country, was recognised for an award previously won elsewhere in the world by oil companies, space stations, drug companies, shipping lines and airlines. This family is going places. They have lots of plans for future projects, including launching their own newspaper. Where will their business be in ten years, I wonder.

  While the brothers are away, their wives, Phuntsho Wangmo and Karma Yangki, join me one evening in the lounge room.

  Over dinner on our laps, Phuntsho Wangmo asks the plot of the book I’m working on. A dog-eared copy of my second book, The Affair, has been doing the rounds of the family since I loaned it to Karma Chokyi a few days after arriving. I keep seeing it on a table or by a bed in different rooms around the house. I have no idea what they make of it. There is no such thing as a fiction writer in Bhutan. The books published here are about Bhutanese heroes and history, or great Buddhist masters.

  I explain that the new one I am working on is called The Wrong Door and begins when a woman goes to the wrong funeral service. Her appearance is the catalyst for the story that unfolds.

  Phuntsho Wangmo laughs with delighted recognition. It happens all the time in Bhutan, she tells me. They hold many cremations at the same spot, on the same auspicious date, and it is Bhutanese custom to leave money for the family. Often, she says, you turn up to the service, give your money, then realise you don’t recognise anyone. You’re at the wrong service. But you can’t exactly ask for your money back. It is really embarrassing to then find the right service and not have any money left for the family. She laughs and laughs. ‘I like your plot,’ she says. ‘Very Bhutanese.’

  They tell me the story of a woman in Thimphu who is supposed to have murdered her lover’s wife. According to local gossip, she lured the unsuspecting wife to a secluded spot then ran her off the road. She is now living happily with the husband.

  Murder is not entirely new to Bhutan but it is rare. Even so, this kind of premeditated crime is both shocking and unthinkable. The sisters don’t know the people involved but are horrified at the whole sorry saga. (The way they see it, crime doesn’t just happen to other people, it happens in other countries. Like America. Or India. Or that whole alien world brought to them via cable TV.)

  The murder comes just as Bhutan is losing its innocence in other ways. The nation is still reeling from the shock of its first major financial scandal, a group of Thimphu businessmen caught smuggling gold into the country.

  Whether or not crime is increasing, or just the reporting of it, is a constant source of discussion in homes and shops, and in the lively letters page of the national newspaper, The Kuensel, whe
re readers worry about the influence that TV and the internet might be having on their children.

  It’s not that crime is running rampant on the streets. Far from it. But change is happening at breakneck speed and the people are trying to keep up.

  Things I take for granted – and which occurred slowly, over hundreds of years, in other countries – have arrived here in a bewilderingly short space of time. Until the 1960s the Bhutanese lived fruitful and happy lives without money, roads, electricity, telephones, schools, hospitals, a postal service or any visitors from outside. Infant mortality rates were high and life expectancy low (in 1960 life expectancy was just thirty-five years; in 2002 it is sixty-six) but they enjoyed their simple life, travelling everywhere by foot, participating in their unique folk festivals and remaining happily unconnected from the technological changes sweeping the rest of the world.

  For his coronation in 1974, Dragon King Jigme Singye Wangchuck invited foreign visitors and the country’s first hotel was built to accommodate them. The world was given a rare glimpse into this elusive little kingdom with its handsome people in their colourful clothes and strange customs.

  Australia presented the Royal Government with a fleet of Ford Falcons. Before their arrival only a handful of Indian cars had travelled on the kingdom’s first section of newly built bitumen road. One senior Bhutanese bureaucrat who was present for the grand occasion remembers the Falcons fondly. He said a new Rolls-Royce ferried the Indian president to proceedings while the Ford Falcons followed in a majestic processional line, each one carrying a dignitary or an ambassador. The Falcons lasted for years. Mal remembers being driven in one when he first visited the country in the early ’90s. It had been repaired using bits and pieces from all the others.