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for drinking from the upper-caste well. She explains the four major castes and the thousands of subcastes, the concept of untouchability. She talks about recent Indian history, the situation in Jammu-Kashmir, the problems in the northeast, the Naxalite movement. For Dini, the recent political developments in Bhutan are similar to a dozen other demographic conflicts in the subcontinent. “This is nothing new,” she says. “It may be new to Bhutan, of course, but not to the rest of the region.” I listen carefully as I slice tomatoes and long red chilies, peel garlic, learn to use a pestle and mortar to grind seeds and spices into a paste.

Dini thinks I should deconstruct my love for the landscapes of Bhutan. “You’re projecting things onto the place,” she says, “all the things you feel your own culture is missing. The pre-industrialized world, communion with nature, all that Shangri-La-Di-Da business.”

“But the people are safe and content here, Dini.”

“And poor.”

“Well, yes, there is material poverty,” I agree, “but not misery.”

“What’s the difference?” she asks.

I say that lives in the villages might be hard and short, but the people seem genuinely content with what they have, and this is a function of their faith, which recognizes that desire for material wealth and personal gain leads to suffering. Dini says they are content with what they have because what they have is all they know. How deep do you think those values go? she asks. Their lifestyle is not a matter of choice but a function of the environment. If they could have cars and refrigerators and VCRs, they would. Let the global market in here with all its shiny offerings, she says, and see how fast everything changes.

I remember the video shops, the air freshener and plastic coasters shaped like fish for sale in Thimphu.

Dini doesn’t see why the Bhutanese should not choose for themselves. “If they want fish-shaped coasters, why shouldn’t they have them? You want Bhutan to ban consumer goods just because they ruin your quaint notion of an untouched magical little world. It reminds me of all those environmentalists coming to India and telling us we have to cut down on CO2 emissions, what do we think, every Indian can have a car or what? Every American has a car, but oh, that’s different.”

I can say nothing to this.

“Look,” she says. “In your mind, Bhutan can be whatever you want it to be. But only the Bhutanese know what it really is.”

The next time I stop to watch a family transplanting rice into flooded paddies, I feel how Dini’s adamantine edge has cut away some of my sentimental attachment. The family stands in muddy water, backs bent as they stab the rice shoots into the wet earth, their hands fast and unerring. At the edge of the field, a girl of about three carries a baby wrapped on her back with a broad handwoven cloth. The baby gnaws a fist and frets as the terraces fill slowly up with green. Standing there with an armful of rhododendrons I have picked in the forest, I am aware of two possible versions: I can see either the postcard (Lost World Series, Rural Landscape No.5), or I can see a family bent over the earth in aching, backbreaking labor, the ghosts of two children dead of some easily preventable disease, and not enough money for all of the surviving children to buy the shoes and uniforms required for school. It is too easy to romanticize Bhutan. The landscape cannot answer back, cannot say, no you are wrong, life here is different but if you add everything up, it is not any better. You can love this landscape because your life does not depend on it. It is a merely a scenic backdrop for the other life you will always be able to return to, a life in which you will not be a farmer scraping a living out of difficult terrain.

I love the view, but I would not want the life.

In the twilight, the percussion of frogs and crickets and cicadas rises up from the marsh below the staff quarters, and I meditate, legs folded under me, eyes closed. At first, I itch and squirm and shift, but gradually a stillness settles over me. My goal is mindfulness: I