Impressions from Bhutan

Perhaps one reason for floating around this small blue/green ball is that I enjoy riding the currents of life and seeing where I land from day to day. Now I am in Delhi, the air is thick with an oily mix of diesel smoke, water vapor and reverberating sound waves. Delhi rewards people who peer under the grime for its hidden treasures. However, I am in no mood to pick through the garbage, the dust and the heat. Instead I am struggling to simply keep my feet under my body and my wits about me in the chaos. I have been here before but never like this. Yesterday the plane landed from Bhutan and when I stepped out from that glorified aluminum tube a sledge hammer of contrast slammed into the back of my skull.

***

The plane had skirted the edge of the Himalaya and as I watched Everest and Kanchenjunga had drifted by at an even eye level. At the time I failed to grasp that this plane had not simply left an airport in Paro, Bhutan. Instead it had banked sharply to the left and climbed desperately to avoid heavily forested hills on its journey back to earth and the legendary 'real world'.
Crushed between an India swimming in a sea of human contradictions and the raped and pillaged remains of Tibet, Bhutan has managed to delicately engage the modern world. Ultra- modern Hoyt composite bows and aluminum shaft arrows rule the morning archery pitch as men dressed in traditional checkered robes lob their arrows at a target no larger than a tennis ball. The arrows crack into the wood and compete with the distant sound of monks' resonant chants floating down the hills into the valley floor.
"You're welcome to watch." The voice brought to mind a bartender offering a seat to a new customer destined to become a new friend, "We can walk down to the target if you'd like." The arrows whistled with the morning birds down the length of the pitch. Instinctively I paused but again came the disarming smile, "Don't worry, no one will cheat you here." My face had betrayed its hardened skepticism. Five months in India taught to me fear random friendship. Embarrassed, I gestured at the flying arrows and hoped that these missiles might explain away my distrusting face. The laugh came with an unquestionable warmth, "Don't worry, they wont hit us but we can stand back a bit if you'd like."
I managed my first full sentence, "Where did you learn your English?"
"We all study English in school here but I also spent four years in America. I studied public policy outside of Washington DC."
"Did you like the US?"
Instead of an answer I got a raised eye brow and an embarrassed smile.
"Really I'd like to know what you thought."
A nervous giggle preceded the answer, "I didn't really like it. You have a nice country and all but it's a bit crazy."

***

On a hill overlooking the capital city of Thimphu I watched as the sun and shadows danced with the colorful prayer flags. A breeze still smelling of cold snow and high mountain passes tugged at my hair and the flags began to bang and crack in the wind. I felt a pleasant chill pass over my body as I listened to the music of the flags, wind and birds.
Our guide, Sonam interrupted my thoughts, "This flag with the horse in the middle is called a wind horse." In his hand he held a tired piece of yellow cloth, then changing to a different flag he continued on, "and this one is a Tara flag, the long white ones on poles are called mani flags. They are hung after people die."
Just bellow where we stood a cluster of mani flags sang and sent their prays to the valley below, "Can anyone put mani flags up?" I asked.
"Its best if you have a monk consecrate them first but yes anyone can."
I watch the old gray flags and thought of my father. The darker text ran through the gray just like the few remaining strands of black hair had streaked across my father's gray head.

***

Growing up I had looked at a collection of stamps hanging on a wall and asked my mother about the iridescent masks and insects in the little pictures. "Those are stamps from Bhutan. Your father and I went there when you were very little. You probably don't remember." My mother was right of course, I did not remember that they had ever left for Bhutan and at the time I had only the fuzziest idea of what 'a Bhutan' might be. I figured 'a Bhutan' must be some kind of a store where they sold pretty little thing, kind of like a toy store but not as much fun. Thirty years later though, I did remember the stamps and my mother's story. I saw the same stamps in a collection at the national museum dated 1976.

***

It struck me that that Lama's robe looked like an ordered crimson bed sheet as his fingers danced across the rows of butter lamps. He lost count a second time, laughed at himself and then started again. Counting to 108 is no small task even when the object of the count sits perfectly still and in almost neat rows. I had given up electing instead to place my trust in the experts; the Lama and Suzanne. Suzanne counted 105 causing the Lama to rub his shaved head, shrug his shoulders and then fish around in a cabinet for another three lamps.
The small butter lamp house with its glass windows grew hotter as Suzanne and I lit the lamps and started traditional fires for our dead. The Lama's chants rose and fell in volume, his eyes alternately closed in concentration or half open as he paged through his book of indecipherable text. Above us rose the gold statue of Guru Rinpoche and beneath us all lay pinned the left leg of a mighty demon subdued by Songsten Gonpo his massive body held fast and rendered forever immobile by temples from Bhutan to Nepal and through Tibet.