A Baby in a Backpack to Bhutan

by Bunty Avieson

  The women openly joke about sex and nothing seems to shock them. But don’t be fooled, a sophisticated, western-educated Bhutanese man warned me: ‘A westerner might think from the way that they speak that they are experienced and willing, but that is not the case. They are all talk. A western man will get a shock if he misinterprets their conversation for what they might do.’ Living with them I discover this to be true. They can be downright bawdy and laugh about things that would make my genteel mother-in-law blush. But they aren’t at all promiscuous, their dress and behaviour is demure and the protocols of dating are positively Victorian.

  Karma Yangki is renowned within the family for her rude sense of humour and, in particular, her skilful double entendre. She often has the other sisters in hysterics. Unfortunately the play on words doesn’t always work in English and even with an explanation I am left mystified as to why they are falling about on the floor clutching their sides.

  But while the word plays don’t always translate, the humour generally does, and we share much laughter. They can be terribly dry and love to tease and be teased. They are as curious about my social mores as I am about theirs, and we have many fascinating exchanges. Some make me feel inspired and delightfully connected, others leave me feeling completely gobsmacked, like we are from different planets. Tonight’s conversation about childbirth is one of those times.

  The older married sisters tell me about their Bhutanese maid who went into labour here at Taba one day. It lasted twelve hours. ‘Twelve hours,’ say Karma Yangki and Phuntsho Wangmo in awed tones, looking at each other and shaking their heads. The maid screamed so much that they didn’t know what to do. I nod blankly. Twelve hours of screaming sounds kind of normal. I wait for a punchline but it doesn’t come.

  I respond with my most extraordinary birth story, the Tibetan woman I met in Canada who popped hers out while weaving. Five children, just two hours of labour each. ‘Two hours,’ I say in my best awed tone. It is their turn to look blank and I guess they’re waiting for my punchline.

  It turns out that Karma Yangki popped hers out in half an hour. Four babies, half an hour each. (Her other three daughters live with Mani Dorji’s sister in the royal compound, partly because it is nearer to their school and also because of the organic nature of relationships between the Bhutanese. Raising each other’s children is quite common.)

  The sisters had been shocked (and appalled, I suspect) by the maid who carried on and on making so much noise and took forever. And they were completely nonplussed by my story of the Tibetan woman.

  They ask about my experience with childbirth.

  I admit that mine was like the maid’s, except that I had drugs. I add that Mal was there for the whole ten hours, taking Kathryn in his arms the instant she appeared. The first voice she heard was his, whispering quietly in her ear.

  I don’t know what they make of this but it is obviously something because they start to talk rapidly between themselves without translating, which is very rare. Childbirth and bringing up babies is women’s work but they seem delighted at how much Mal engages with Kathryn, changing nappies and doing whatever else is required.

  On the walls around us in the lounge room hang Buddhist thangkas and photos of the four Kings of Bhutan. The monarchy is only in its fourth generation and credited with bringing peace and harmony to the troubled country.

  The current monarch, His Majesty King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, is incredibly handsome, in an old-fashioned, movie-matinee-idol kind of way. He has the feline eyes and high cheekbones of the northern Bhutanese, with a piercing gaze and a sensual mouth. In the photo he wears an orange and yellow checked gho, the colours of the Bhutanese flag. I have seen the same photo on walls in shops, homes and public places.

  The reverence and love the Bhutanese feel for their King is nothing short of astonishing. Well, it is to me, coming from the west and used to the ongoing scandals of Britain’s Windsor family, which are duly reported from one side of the world to the other. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck is as far from that as could be possible.

  The Druk Gyalpo, Precious Ruler of the Dragon People, was educated in English boarding schools but now virtually never leaves Bhutan, being far too busy working for his people. He is both regal and humble. His royal palace is simple and his office just a log cabin in the verdant, pine-covered hills above Thimphu. His attendants, in keeping with tradition, walk barefoot.

  As King he is also head of government but the country is in the process of becoming a democracy and currently drafting its first constitution. He is the driving force, happily lessening his own executive power.

  But what makes the King truly stand apart from other leaders is his attitude, which encompasses a breadth and depth of vision and responsibility not often seen anywhere in the world. His philosophy of Gross National Happiness has earned him respect among leaders all over the world.

  Mieko Nishimizu of the World Bank said at the time of the King’s Silver Jubilee in 1999:

  It is rare to find a nation, today or in the history of our globe, whose people share a clear and dynamic vision rooted in their cultural heritage and common values. It is even rarer to encounter a nation which, by the strength of her conviction, initiates a new paradigm for the transformation of its society . . . that challenges the world to reconsider established methods of measuring change. This unique nation is the Kingdom of Bhutan and the ultimate source of its uniqueness rests singularly in the leadership of His Majesty.

  Not surprisingly, when the sisters talk about their King it is with great reverence and respect. He is an extraordinary man doing great things for their country.

  He also has four wives. This little detail is passed over so quickly that when I’m told, I’m not sure I heard correctly.

  ‘Four wives?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ they nod. ‘They’re sisters.’

  ‘The King married four sisters?’

  They smile at my naivety. I did buy a book on Bhutan before I left Australia but with a baby and a looming book deadline, I’m ashamed to admit I never actually opened it. It’s still in its wrapping in my suitcase.

  They nod but will say no more. The royal family is not a topic for idle gossip. I find out from a smattering of other sources that the King married the four sisters in one huge wedding spectacular in 1988 in front of hundreds of monks and abbots.

  The four Queens are all stunningly beautiful, accomplished and each has her own projects aimed at improving the wellbeing of their people, including child welfare, AIDS prevention, education and women’s rights.

  Marrying four sisters is not so unusual in Bhutan. It is quite common in the poorer rural communities where one bride will marry a family of brothers, or one groom will marry all the sisters. It makes economic sense to set up just one household and also it saves carving up the family farm.

  The King obviously didn’t have such economic concerns. But it explains why the Bhutanese don’t see his multiple marriage as unusual.

  His Majesty had been living with the four sisters for ten years – and had two princes – before he married them. This also isn’t considered much of a big deal. Ironically, while the marriage rate declines in the west, formal weddings are a relatively new phenomenon in Bhutan, copied from their Indian neighbours and pursued only by very modern, middle-class couples.

  Traditionally marriages occur when a couple decide they want to be married. If they agree, then that’s it. They are husband and wife.

  The talk moves on to someone the sisters know who has taken a second wife. They explain that it is perfectly acceptable in Bhutanese society as long as the first wife agrees. Human relationships here are as complicated and convoluted as anywhere and the women are as intrigued as I am by the dynamics that must go on within the household.

  Karma Yangki and Phuntsho Wangmo admit they wouldn’t be happy if their husbands brought home another wife. It doesn’t cause them undue concern because, they say, their husbands just aren’t like that. They ask about Mal. I explain that we a
ren’t married and he would be free to bring home another woman ... but that if he did I would be gone and I might just kill him on my way out the door. They nod emphatically. ‘Same, same,’ they say and we all laugh.

  I ask if they are ever tempted to take another husband and they fall about laughing. Of course it’s possible but who would want two husbands? We shake our heads furiously. Same, same.

  It seems the Bhutanese are not so worried about rules, and their relationships stay amazingly fluid. The crucial thing is that people don’t get hurt. That’s much more important than adhering to some sort of socially acceptable mode of behaviour. The sisters don’t sit in judgment on anyone. It’s just not their way. Karma Yangki mentions a woman in Thimphu who some married men visit. She calls her ‘the mistress’. She has a nice home, cooks a nice meal, makes a fuss of the men and probably sleeps with them. Karma Yangki shrugs. Why should that bother anybody?

  Rinpoche says the Bhutanese share a lack of inhibition, which is refreshing: ‘The non-existence of such inhibition can be a blessing. Other cultures have lost this sense of freedom or openness, in turn possibly making them into sexually repressed societies. So-called sophistication may have made their minds narrow and rigid, depriving them of a source of happiness. Unfortunately, Bhutanese may be learning to have that self-consciousness.’

  Divorce, it seems, is also pretty fluid. Should a couple decide to split, they just go their separate ways. There are laws to ensure a father continues to support his child.

  In poorer rural communities, where often everybody lives and sleeps together in one room, courtships can be especially brief – sometimes just a pre-arranged knock on the window in the middle of the night, while the rest of the family pretends not to notice. There is no shame attached to such dalliances.

  It’s nice if the man is still there in the morning and the relationship continues, but no shame to the woman if his intentions turn out to be only short term. As a result there are many single mothers bringing up children in the villages. But rather than stigmatise them, the community gathers around to help.

  The Queens each have their own palace in the forest-covered hills overlooking Thimphu, and the King maintains his own palace, which is close to them all. How they co-ordinate the marital visits is anyone’s guess and not the sort of thing the sisters are likely to speculate about. I give myself a mental slap and remind myself I am not here for New Idea.

  The extended royal family includes the much-loved Queen Mother (who has her own palace at the other end of Thimphu Valley), the Crown Prince, seven young Princesses, the King’s four sisters and his three aunts, also Princesses. Should you wish to contact any members of the royal family, their personal phone numbers are listed in the front of the telephone book. I guess the Bhutanese don’t make crank calls.

  I gather from the way the sisters speak about the Royals that one’s standing in Thimphu society has a lot to do with how close one is to the royal court. But it isn’t just about social standing. The people genuinely revere their King. Apart from his achievements as a visionary ruler he is renowned as an accomplished Buddhist practitioner.

  The other walls of the room carry a black-and-white photo of the previous three monarchs, looking dashing and dignified, and wearing ever-more elaborate hats. The first King was enthroned in 1907, after a bloody period of civil wars within the country and threats from outside, including violent skirmishes with British troops on the Indian side and the growing influence of China on the Tibetan side. Ugyen Wangchuck was a young but powerful regional leader who developed close relations with the British. He accompanied explorer Francis Younghusband when he invaded Tibet in 1904 and helped negotiate the treaty between Britain and Tibet.

  When the secular ruler of Bhutan died in 1907, Ugyen Wangchuck was elected unanimously by the country’s chiefs and principal lamas, and installed as the first hereditary monarch, the Druk Gyalpo, Dragon King. (While Wangchuk is a common name in Bhutan, the royal family is differentiated by the spelling. They are Wangchuck, with an extra ‘c’.)

  It seems strange to me that more than 100 years after France got rid of its royal family, Bhutan was creating one. The sisters shake their heads. They don’t find it strange at all. Since their inception, Phuntsho Wangmo tells me, the royal family has introduced an era of unprecedented stability and peace.

  The two younger sisters listen to everything that is being discussed but say little. Wesel Wangmo is quite studious, carrying with her a scrapbook of cuttings about His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Her manner is often reserved, so I’m not surprised by her silence. But it seems unlike Karma Chokyi, who loves to chat. When we have dinner she talks constantly – about school, her friends, her family, what she wants to do with her life. To see her so restrained in the presence of her elders is more surprising.

  Karma Chokyi thinks she is about twenty-six but is not too sure. Her mother is a bit vague about her birthday and none of the sisters can agree. This causes huge frustration for Karma Chokyi. One of the middle two sisters, Pema Bidha (Pema Bidder), is doing an intensive seven-year degree course in Tibetan astrology at an Indian university and Karma Chokyi would love to have her chart done.

  ‘Mum tells me to stop asking. She says she had seven children and can’t be expected to remember the birthdays of everyone. I asked my sisters and one remembers it being in summer and another in winter.’

  Sometimes she reads all the star signs in the Indian magazines that sell in Thimphu and tries to recognise herself in one of the twelve personalities described.

  Karma Chokyi, still at school but dreaming of her life after graduation, is misty-eyed and enjoying her first romance. She tells me she likes the Indian idea of marriage, which, like her friends, she has seen in Hindi movies. Indians throw huge wedding ceremonies – the bride wearing an elaborate red and gold sari with lots of jewellery while the man wears a suit and often rides to the ceremony on a white horse. The parties are legendary and, for the really rich families, can go on for days. Some modern Bhutanese couples have chosen to celebrate their union in the Indian manner and Karma Chokyi says it is a custom she too would like to adopt. When the time comes, she adds coyly.

  She is a beautiful young woman, with long black hair that falls past her waist in a most un-Bhutanese fashion. Traditionally they wear it in a short angular cropped bob with a fringe. It’s strange to my untrained eye that the women in the fields wear these short, modern-looking haircuts while Karma Yangki and Karma Chokyi’s style, more typical of Asian women, is actually considered quite radical. Karma Chokyi is sweet-natured, always smiling and vibrant, with lots to say, although she tells me she gets completely tongue-tied with boys who aren’t her cousins or schoolmates.

  One night shortly after I arrived she revealed she would like to be a fashion designer. I couldn’t have been more surprised if she said she wanted to be a train driver. In Bhutan the women have one dress style: the kira. It’s thousands of years old and they are fiercely proud of it. It is worn by the poorest peasant in the field, by the elegant Queens at state functions, and everywhere in between. At home the wealthier women might occasionally wear western-style clothes that have come across the border from India or China, but in public it is always the kira. It’s the law – and a matter of pride.

  I asked if Karma Chokyi meant she wanted to be a fabric designer, creating new designs of cloth for the kira. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head emphatically. ‘I want to design fashion.’

  She disappeared downstairs and returned with a folder, which she shyly pushed across the table. Inside were the most beautifully drawn sketches, each one a work of art. The female figures were elegant and lightly shaded, giving a hint of their form. But it is what they were wearing that left me speechless.

  A traditional kira is floor length and pinned high on the shoulder, worn with an undershirt that has sleeves that extend beyond the fingertips. Barely a millimetre of womanly flesh is exposed. Since arriving in Bhutan I had not so much as glimpsed a female ankle. Karma Chokyi’s
designs showed off bare shoulders and midriffs, with hems that were thigh high. The amount of flesh on display would be at home in an Australian nightclub or on a beach.

  The highly original designs used the traditional woven kira cloth in sexy stylish body-hugging dresses with slashes of fabric and detail. They were utterly fabulous and, ironically, couldn’t be less appropriate in this country. And therein lies her frustration: Karma Chokyi would love to pursue a career in fashion but she doesn’t want to leave Bhutan. As modern and progressive as she is, the pull of the outside world is not strong enough to make her want to leave her family or this unique little kingdom, with all its charm and eccentricities.

  I hear the same from Karma Yogini, her cousin and best friend. The two bright, young twenty-somethings are planning a big celebratory holiday when they finally finish their end-ofyear exams in a few months – and where are they going? Perhaps over the border to cosmopolitan Mumbai to go shopping, see lots of movies and hang out with other young groovy people their age? No. They are very excited about going back to their remote family village and spending time with their poor and elderly grandmother, helping on the farm and sleeping on the bare floor of her traditional Bhutanese home.

  Such are the priorities of the very delightful Karma Chokyi. And the man lucky enough to be courting her is the doctor on Rinpoche’s film, an earnest, handsome man in his early thirties, called Dr Thinley Norbu.

  It was a condition of the Americans on the crew that the production have a doctor of western medicine on set at all times. Enter Dr Thinley Norbu, who trained in India and spends most of the film handing out pills to the foreigners for upset stomachs. From the moment he was hired, he was destined to meet Karma Chokyi. Her family has been involved in every aspect of the film since it was nothing more than a first draft. Karma Yangki and husband Mani Dorji have small on-screen roles. Their cousin Karma Loday is a purchasing officer. Phuntsho Wangmo works with Mal. And an aunt, Phuntsho Dolma, works in the make-up department.