Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [58]
After school, they come to take me roaming. There is so much to show me: a crumbling chorten, a flowering orange tree near a stream, a grove where ghosts are seen at night. They have so much to tell: the woman in their village who can talk to the dead, the time someone saw a demon and fell ill, the great hairy ferocious beast that lives in the mist on the tops of mountains and feeds on human flesh (one kid demonstrates by trying to bite another kid’s head). They tell me what they will be when they grow up: a dasho, a driver, a farmer. They tell me about their parents, who drinks arra and who does not, whose house has glass windows and whose does not, who died and when and why. They talk about God. God is Sangay, the Buddha, and God is also Guru Rimpoché. And Chenresig and Jambayang, they say, naming the Bodhisattvas of Compassion and Wisdom. Lha shama. Many gods. I ask if they believe in heaven. Yes, yes, they say. “Being very good, then going up to Guru Rimpoché’s place. Being bad, then going down.” I ask them what it means to be good. They say “good” means being kind, giving, not killing, not even a bird, not even a bug.
“But you eat meat, yes?” I ask. They nod. “So isn’t that also bad?” No, they say, they themselves do not kill the animal. “Only eating, not killing.” This reminds me of stories I have heard about pigs being tied near cliffs. The pig eventually falls off and then it can be said that the animal killed itself. I don’t really understand how this solves the prohibition on harming any sentient being, but they obviously do.
We walk back up the mountain in the cool evening shadows. At home, I write Robert another letter, reiterating, describing things again, in more and better detail. I am so lucky to be here, I write. Even when it is difficult and confusing. Maybe especially then. I am so glad I came. But I wonder if Robert will take this as a sign that I do not miss him, that I like Bhutan more than him. I rewrite the last page, saying I can’t wait to see him at Christmas. Christmas. The word looks foreign and unreliable on the page.
Beating Nicely
It is the language that confuses me at first. “Our sir is beating nicely,” a class IV student informs me. Beating means hitting, with a strip of willow or a thin stick, across the palm or the backs of the legs. But beating nicely? Perhaps it means a beating without force, a mild or apologetic beating: this hurts me more than it hurts you. But nicely is used in Bhutan to mean well-done. So this is a thorough beating, a terrible beating. The sir in question is Mr. Iyya, but almost every teacher in the school has a stick and they are all beating nicely. An ugly narrow piece of bamboo, brought whistling down onto a trembling hand, a vicious crack, an indrawn breath, silent tears. I do not often understand what the beating is being given for. One morning during assembly, several of the smallest students receive a stick across the back of the legs. Mrs. Joy tells me it is for coming to school without shoes. “But what if their parents can’t afford to give them shoes?” I ask, horrified. She shrugs. “They have to wear shoes. Headmaster has been telling and telling,” she says.
In the classroom, students are hit when they come late, when they talk out of turn, when they have forgotten their books, when they don’t understand, when they can’t remember, when they dare ask a question, when they give the wrong answer and, occasionally, especially in Mr. Iyya’s class, when they give the right answer. Teachers come to school with a notebook, a pen, and a stick. When the stick gets lost or broken, they send a student outside to find another. I should have expected