Beyond the Sky and the Earth

by Jamie Zeppa

  song of the river

  truth, love story, remember, again, voice, enemy, friend, forget

  setback, lack, lake, fire, water, mountain, sun, rain

  king, minister, rich, poor, apple, pear

  good morning, good evening, good bye

  A very small announcement on the notice board invites all staff and students to attend the Hindu celebration of Durga Puja in the auditorium. Shakuntala tells me the story behind it, from the Hindu epic Ramayana: Ravanna, the demon king of Lanka, abducts Sita, the wife of the god Ramchandra. Ramchandra worships the goddess Durga for nine days, and on the tenth day is empowered to defeat Ravanna and bring his wife home. Durga is also Kali, the goddess of destruction, smashing the old to make way for the new in an endless cycle of change.

  On the auditorium stage, an altar has been set up with a fierce statue of Durga garlanded with marigolds and silver tinsel. Incense hangs in delicate streamers in the air. There is an offering of milk and honey to the goddess, and then we are given tikka, a smear of red powder on our foreheads. Dil Bahadur is looking unusually somber as he assists with the ceremony on stage. His longish hair has been cut, and he is wearing loose white pants and a white shirt. He ties a piece of colored thread to my wrist, and another student gives me a handful of sweets: these are prasad, the offerings made to the goddess and given back to the worshipers. Tomorrow they will go to the river to immerse the statue, a female student named Gayatri says, and invites me to come along and see. I sit for a while in the auditorium after the other lecturers have left, listening to the songs flowing one into the next without pause, with a tabla and bells as accompaniment.

  Scholars claim that Buddhism developed as a reaction to negative elements of Hinduism, in particular the rigid caste system and the excessive, empty ritualism that had built up over the centuries in India. Hinduism and Buddhism are not wholly separable, however. Most of the Hindu deities turn up in the Buddhist pantheon, and the two systems share many concepts, including reincarnation and karma. Moreover, by the time Buddhism came to the Himalayas, it had picked up many of the practices of Indian Tantrism. Although Durga Puja is more flamboyant than the Buddhist rituals I have seen, its colors more gaudy and its music less somber, the two do not seem fundamentally different.

  Offstage, something is wrong. There is much running off and returning and urgent whispering. Beside me, Gayatri is twisting her handkerchief into knots. “Is something going on?” I ask her. “No, ma’am,” she says, but her face is strained and unhappy.

  The next morning, she appears at my door dressed in a cream-colored salwar kameez, a knee-length dress over loose pyjama pants, her hair freshly washed. At the auditorium, a large group of students is waiting, holding flowers, incense, jugs of milk, a tabla, the statue of Durga, and khukuris, fierce knives, long and cruelly curved. At the college gate, the crowd stops unexpectedly. I am lost in the middle and must stand on tiptoe to see what is happening. What is happening is the older students are having an argument with the principal. It is the first time I have seen authority openly challenged in Bhutan.

  “Principal wants them to put on national dress and they are telling they have to wear their Nepali dress because they are the pundits doing the puja,” Gayatri whispers.

  This is serious—I can see it in the principal’s anger-blotched face and the physical stance of the students, in the number of khukuris catching and throwing the sharp October light. And then there is this: balanced precariously on the wooden fence is the newly appointed administrator of the eastern zone, whose office is ten kilometers away. He is grinning around the cigarette jammed into the corner of his mouth, and he is recording the scene with a sleek new video camera. It seems highly unlikely that he was just driving by with a camcorder in the backseat and decided to stop at the college in the hopes of catching a bit of defiance on tape. A cloud of nebulous fear begins to form in my gut. Don’t be silly, I tell myself, a bit of resistance to authority is to be expected. This is a college, after all. In Canada this would be nothing. But this is not Canada, and the video camera makes me very uneasy.

  The crowd breaks up, and the students return to their hostels to change their clothes. Since the dress law does not apply to foreigners, I go back to the auditorium and wait. It occurs to me that I could slink off, go back home, stay out of it. But no, I will not. These are my students, and they invited me to go with them. Besides, I am too curious to stay at home. They return wearing ghos and kiras that have been put on in haste, bunched up and tied loosely. When I see Dil’s dragging on the ground behind him, I realize it is not haste but defiance.

  The group moves silently forward, out of the gate, down the road past Pala’s, and as soon as we have turned the corner, the students begin to sing. Gayatri says the song is devotional, but the voices are too loud and khukuris are flashing everywhere. At the river, the statue is immersed in the rushing white water, and milk and flowers are poured over it. Dil and his friends clamber up and pose for photos on boulders above the river, shouting and raising their fists in the air. Beneath the singing, the ringing bells, and the wild, joyous rhythm of the tabla, the whole celebration has this antagonistic undertone. When it is over, the men and women separate into two circles and sit at the side of the road. The men talk urgently in Nepali, the women wait for them to be finished. Annoyed with the segregation, I get up to return to campus. Down the road, I am joined by a senior student named Rajan.

  “Rajan, can I ask you what’s going on?”

  “Oh, now the puja is over,” he says, “and we will all eat—”

  “No, no,” I interrupt. “I mean: What. Is. Going. On.”

  He is silent for so long that I think he will not tell me. Then he says, “You know, ma’am, they did not want us to have our puja.”

  “Who didn’t? The principal?”

  “Not only the principal. They—the northern Bhutanese.” And he tells me that there is trouble in Bhutan, between south and north, Nepali and Drukpa. “They don’t want us to be Nepali anymore,” he says. “We have to wear their dress and speak their language. We can no more be who we are.”

  The others catch up with us, and we walk in silence.

  The campus is oddly still. The students return to their hostels, and I go home, wondering about Rajan’s comments, and how long the alleged trouble has been bubbling beneath the appearance of calm, wondering about that videotape and who arranged for it and how they knew there would be a confrontation at the gate, and what will happen. It strikes me that I may be on that videotape, and I wonder if I will be implicated in what is happening, whatever it is.

  The Situation

  And now there is a Situation. This is how the students speak of it. This situation, they say. The situation is serious. Sometimes they speak of the Problem, which calls to mind the Irish Troubles, but I can’t believe that things will go that far in tiny, peaceful, quiet Bhutan. Aside from a few oblique comments in the staff room, none of the lecturers speaks of the incident at the college gate. But overnight, there is a physical division between the students. They change places in the classroom: north sits with north, south with south. I talk to Shakuntala about it. We are in her dining room, drinking lemon tea. We often sit here until late at night, talking and working and laughing. On her walls are portraits of students she has drawn, pencil studies of leaves and flowers and ferns, photographs of chortens and prayer flags. I feel nostalgic, looking at her work, as if that Bhutan is already over. I cannot shake this feeling of dread. I tell her about the video camera at the gate and the flashing khukuris, and the separation in class of northern and southern. “The thing is,” I say, “why do they have to make dress into such a big deal? If the Nepali students want to wear Nepali dress for a Hindu puja, let them.”

  But Shakuntala doesn’t agree. “It’s not such a big thing to ask,” she says. “To wear your national dress when you leave the campus.”

  “But it’s a religious custom,” I say.

  “Still, it’s not much to ask,” she say
s. “No one is saying they couldn’t have their puja. No one is saying they couldn’t be Hindu anymore, that they all had to become Buddhist. They were just being asked to obey the dress law.”

  Not a dress code but a dress law. “I understand that it’s to preserve Bhutan’s culture, but shouldn’t it be voluntary? How will it ever work, otherwise?” I say. I don’t say, “What about the other cultures and traditions that exist in Bhutan? What about preserving them?” I am caught between two ways of seeing, two possible interpretations, unable here to have faith in either one.

  I study the next issue of Kuensel, looking for some mention of a Situation, but there is nothing. I want to hear more directly from the students, but the atmosphere on campus has grown increasingly oppressive. Fear and anger pinch their faces, and they answer my questions elliptically. No one will give me a full explanation. I want someone to start at the beginning, I want someone who can complete a sentence, who can say it straight out: here is what’s been happening, here are the two sides, now make of it what you will. I feel that I have come into the theater during the second act. I don’t want to get on stage with the actors, I only want a summary of what has happened so far, but everyone seems afraid of saying too much. The only agreed-upon facts I have on the Situation so far are these: the Nepali students resent having Drukpa dress and etiquette imposed on them. The government feels that this imposition is necessary for Bhutan’s survival. But there must be more to it than this.

  There must be more to it than this because there are night patrols on campus, room checks each evening. When the students come to visit, they speak so softly I often can’t hear half of what they say. Sometimes, one stands at the window, watching, while the others talk. There are spies now, they say. They have to be very careful. Some southern students have received pamphlets, they tell me, calling for the southern Bhutanese to rise up and demand their rights, demand democracy.

  “But do you think Bhutan is really ready for democracy?” I ask. “What do you think is necessary for a country to be a democracy? ”

  They do not know, they whisper. They haven’t thought about it.

  “But how can you support something you haven’t thought about?” I demand.

  They look alarmed at my rising voice and shake their heads frantically. They cannot talk about these things here.

  They do not come to visit me in mixed groups anymore. Even Nima and Arun come separately. “Where’s Nima these days?” I ask Arun. Studying. Busy. Don’t know, miss. I feel I can ask Nima anything, but he is a terrible source of information. He spends most of his time in the library reading religious books. When I ask what’s happening, he says, “The Nepali students don’t want to wear national dress.”

  “Oh, Nima, even I know that! What is really going on?”

  “I don’t know, miss, and I don’t want to know. Buddhism teaches us not to get involved in politics. It distracts us from the real things.” He has more important things to think about: he has been helping one of the Dzongkha lopens translate a Buddhist book into English, and he is trying to decide if he should become a monk after he finishes class XII.

  “But Nima, there must be values in Buddhism that people could apply to politics. Like tolerance and seeking the truth. Didn’t the Buddha say to question everything? Wouldn’t that help get to the bottom of things? ”

  “Yes, miss, but I don’t think we can apply Buddhism to politics. Look what happened to Tibet. And Sikkim also.”

  I am chilled by this. I know full well what happened to Tibet but nothing about Sikkim beyond the Fantomes’ mention of tragedy. I make a mental note to find out.

  The whispered drifts and snatches grow more distressing. I hear that some students at the National Institute of Education in southern Bhutan have been arrested for writing pamphlets. I hear they have been tortured in prison. Tortured? I ask the students who bring this news. Surely not tortured? This is a Buddhist country. They look at each other and shake their heads at my naivete. I will remember their looks later when I find in my Sharchhop grammar book a section entitled “Punishment,” which contains translations of “to torture, torture instruments, to slap, whip, fetters/chains.”

  I hear that one of those involved has committed suicide in detention. I hear that two British teachers at the institute have fled the country. I hear they were also involved. I hear they helped write a pamphlet. I hear they were not really involved, they only edited the grammar. I hear that all foreigners will have to leave the country because of them. I hear this is just a rumor. I hear a hundred different fleeting whispered stories but I do not hear anyone talking openly. Without talk, nothing will be explained or understood, solved or learned. I want to write it on the sides of mountains, across the autumn sky. TALK TALK TALK.

  Each week in the library I search the newspaper for some mention of the Problem, but each week there are only the usual development reports and farming news: irrigation workshop held, World Food Day celebrated, Australian wool for Bumthang weavers, two-headed calf born in Paro.

  Dil and his friend are arrested and taken to the Tashigang for not wearing national dress outside the campus. They were on their way back from Pala’s when the police picked them up. Many students, both northern and southern, wear jeans to Pala’s. The arrest seems malicious and provocative. Dil and his friend return to school but a few days later, they disappear again. We are in the middle of a final review before exams. “Are they coming back?” I ask. The students study their notebooks, look out the window, do not answer.

  I hear they have run away. They have gone to join unnamed others across the border after they were beaten up by northern students for wearing Nepali dress under their ghos. And then, five more southern students disappear. They are taken at night. Arrested, gone, delivered to Thimphu for questioning, I hear from the other lecturers. The students will not talk about it; they look terrified at the mere mention of the five who are gone. This is the most frightening thing.

  The Situation finally merits a mention in the Kuensel. During the 68th session of the National Assembly, the Ministry of Home Affairs announces that several anti-national and seditious letters and booklets were mailed into Bhutan. The allegations made in these publications were found to be baseless, malicious, and against the fundamental principles of the Tsawa Sum, the Three Jewels of the King, the Country and the People. As such, they constituted an act of treason. The culprits and miscreants responsible could not be traced, the Ministry adds. There is no mention of a movement or any arrests.

  The View from Here

  We are going to visit a holy lake above Khaling, Tony and two Dutch aid workers from an agricultural project near Kanglung, and me. Tony is two months away from the end of his contract in Khaling, and will not extend. He is still quite thin, the result of a bout of typhoid and a stomach parasite. His nickname among the other Canadians is Bean, short for Bean Pole. His weight loss has no impact on his walking speed, however, and thirty minutes into the walk, I am winded. But I plod on, determined to keep up. I want to see the lake. I also want to be away from the Situation for a few hours.

  We walk through an oak forest cool with early morning shadows, and I am thinking about Robert and Christmas and home. Nothing in me wants to go to Canada this winter. I finger memories, hold up images, run a scan through muscle blood bone, trying to find some tiny fiber that still wants to go. There is not one. Not even for Robert.

  The forest opens into a meadow and the meadow rises into an immense hill, smooth and rounded and extremely steep, covered with golden grass and yellow flowers. The path zigzags up for almost four hours. We pass Brokpa, the nomadic yak herders from the easternmost settlement in Bhutan, with their herds of shaggy, lumbering yaks coming down from the mountain tops where it is already winter. My legs are screaming at me to stop! stop! stop! and I do for a moment, huffing and puffing, sweat running into my eyes. A tiny Brokpa child in cracked blue rubber boots motors past me, sturdy legs churning effortlessly. “Are we almost there yet?” I call out. “A few
more minutes,” Tony calls back. “A few” turns out to be forty-five, but then we arrive and stand gazing at the small lake set in a shelter of ancient pines and mossy boulders. Stone cairns have been built along the shores, and we can see the blue of one-ngultrum notes in the clear cold water, offerings made to the lake spirit. Tony says that all lakes in Bhutan are considered holy. His students warned him not to pollute the lake, or bring meat anywhere near it, or leave any garbage nearby. They were full of stories of what would happen otherwise: you would get sick, or the lake would send mist and clouds to make you lose your way in the forest, or the spirit might even rise out of the water right then and there and that would be the end of you.

  We eat our lunch of bread and cheese and hard-boiled eggs and as I am packing up, I am tempted to leave something behind, to test the stories, just to see what will happen. I tear off a minute piece of chocolate-bar wrapper, but at the last minute put it in my pocket. Tony proposes that we walk to a peak called Brangzung-La, not far from the lake. It is only an hour or so from here, he says, and the view is fantastic. We are exhausted from the long climb up in the broiling sun, but the promise of a view lures us onward. An hour or so turns out to be “or two and a half,” and I trudge along behind the others, muttering and panting and cursing Tony, who must have been a mountain goat in his last life. As we ascend, the tall fir trees shrink into weeping blue juniper bushes and dwarf bamboo, knotted tightly against the cold, and I begin to feel pale and stretched and thin. Tony says it is the altitude. I cannot walk another step but I do and I do and I do. I hate walking, I tell myself, and I don’t care if we can see the entire world from up there, it’s not worth it.

  But it is. The treeless peak is marked by a white chorten and ragged white prayer flags, the printed prayers blown completely off by the constant wind. The view lasts forever: snow peaks along the northern border, frozen white fortresses against the blue sky, and far away in the south, the plains of India, shimmering in the last of the afternoon light, and in between the north and the south, the valleys and ridges of eastern Bhutan spread out in waves. The others are taking pictures, but I want to memorize the view. I want to be able to close my eyes anywhere in the world and see this. We are not even very high up, and yet it is the best thing I’ve seen in my life.