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At the door he stops, studying a class II C picture. I want to ask him what he is thinking, does he feel this powerful pull or not. Does he think of me the way I think of him. Say something, I think. Please. “Thanks, miss,” he says and closes the door behind him.

Miss. Madam. Ma’am., I burst into tears.

Foreigners Can’t Understand

Dini and I are asked to judge a debate about the role of women in Bhutanese society. The debate is not taken seriously, and the conclusion is that there is no gender problem in Bhutan. “What about the fact that there are five hundred male students and eighty female students at the college?” Dini asks. “How many women ministers are there? How many women dashos? How many women are elected to the national assembly?”

“And what about how the women on campus are treated?” I add. They are often hissed at and harassed when they get on stage to make a speech.

“There is no discrimination against women in Bhutan,” a male debater reaffirms. “If women want to become ministers, they can. If they want to be elected to the national assembly, they can be. They just don’t want to be.”

“Why don’t they want to be?”

He pauses to think. “Because they’re busy with their families. Anyway, if they have any ideas they want raised, their husbands can do it. And when we hiss at the girls, we’re only teasing them. They know that.”

Dini leaves the auditorium in disgust.

I try to discuss this in one of the senior classes. “Let’s define gender problem,” I begin one morning.

“Is this in the syllabus?” someone asks from the back of the room.

“No, it’s not in the syllabus,” I answer, unruffled. “But I’m just curious about what constitutes a gender problem to you.”

The answers are similar. The way women are treated in India. Widows made to throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre. Girl babies aborted, or left to die. Institutional barriers. Discrimination embedded in law. But none of this happens in Bhutan, they say. Therefore, there is no discrimination.

But there are other forms, more subtle but still very powerful, I begin.

A student interrupts. “The government says there is no discrimination against women in Bhutan. And the government must be knowing whether there is or isn’t.”

I stand silenced at the front of the class. If I persist, I will be contradicting the government. If I stay silent, I will implode. “Write me an essay on it,” I say finally, knowing that I will not be able to read them.

I am just beginning to see how large the gap is between what I try to teach and the Bhutanese way of thinking and learning. I give what I think will be an inspiring lecture on Shelley’s “Song to the Men of England” to my senior poetry class and the students object to the poem.

“We are not believing like this,” one says. “We believe if you are born poor, that is your karma. It means you must have been very greedy in your last life.”

“But the rich people in this poem, what about their karma? Are you saying they have a right to exploit the peasants?”

“No,” another explains. “If they do all these things like in this poem, they will be reborn poor next time and will have to suffer. So there is no need for uprisings because karma will take care of everything.”

“But what about helping to alleviate the suffering of others? As Mahayana Buddhists, aren’t you supposed to be acting compassionately?”

Yes, they say, compassion is important, but they cannot see the link between compassion and working to change institutionalized injustices. Anyway, in Bhutan, the social system is handed down to us from our forefathers, one says finally. It is part of our traditional culture. We must preserve our traditions and culture.

And that is the end of that debate.

Like class II C, they want to memorize everything. They are uncomfortable with ambiguity and keep asking, “But what’s the real answer? ”

“Why can’t there be more than one answer?” I counter.

They shake their heads. For the exams, they say, there is only one right answer.

“But not for literature,” I say. “Everything we read is open to interpretation.