Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [42]
An hour later, the rumble of thunder wakes me up. From the bed I can see the storm approaching in one window, lightning illuminating swollen storm clouds. From the other window the sky is still starry and clear. I fall asleep when both windows are full of rain, and I dream that Lesley and I find a hidden valley in Pema Gatshel. Between the school and the hospital, we follow a barely perceptible path and emerge from a grove of trees into a grassy, steep-sided ravine with a silver stream singing through it. “It was here all along,” I say happily, and awake to see that both windows are filled again with stars.
Lesley leaves the next morning for Tsebar, and I hurry off to school to find the students and monks carrying items up and down the stairs—buckets of water, trays, bowls of rice, flowers, freshly cut pine branches, books, religious instruments, folding chairs. The Bhutanese teachers are shouting orders. Today there will be a puja, the students tell me, to chase away the ghosts. The headmaster laughs at this. Not exactly ghosts, he says. Pujas are held regularly in temples, but they are also held elsewhere for hundreds of other reasons—for the birth of a child, a wedding, promotion, or cremation, to ensure the success of a new project or a journey, to protect a household from harm. This puja, he explains, is being held to clear away any bad karma, obstacles, or harmful thoughts left over from last year that might hamper the success of this school year.
After morning assembly, the teachers are called upstairs to a classroom which has been cleared out. Red-robed monks sit in rows, chanting prayers. The Bhutanese teachers prostrate in front of an altar laden with offerings of food and water, butter lamps and incense. The Indian teachers bow, some deeply, some stiffly. Mrs. Joy merely nods her head. The headmaster tells me that I can do whatever I wish, it is up to me. I prostrate in front of the altar, because it is holy and beautiful, and then linger, listening to the prayers and the music, the same horns and bells and drums I heard in Tsebar. Back outside, we are served salty butter tea called suja and rice crisps. Someone pinches my arm, hard, and I almost drop my cup. It is Mrs. Joy. “Why did you bow down up there?” she hisses. “It is worshiping idols.”
I try to explain that an altar is an altar, a god is a god. “It’s all pretty much the same to me,” I tell her.
She shakes her head angrily. “You broke the First Commandment! ”
I cannot remember what the First Commandment is. I consider telling her to mind her own goddamn business, but then I think of Mr. Joy, leaning on the railing in a cloud of cigarette smoke, smiling nastily, and I say nothing. “May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness,” I think wearily. It is the only Buddhist prayer I know so far.
At lunch, I mail a hastily scrawled note to Lorna. My kids think I’m an idiot, one of the teachers addresses me as “your ladyship,” I have fifty-three flea bites, and my blackboard doesn’t work. How are you?
A week later, Lorna writes back: Ha! I have fifty flea bites on one leg alone! Your kids are right. What is a blackboard?
Royal Visit
Mr. Iyya rushes into the staff room during morning clinic. “Have you heard the Good News?” he asks, wringing his hands.
For a moment, I think Mrs. Joy