Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [77]
In a shop outside the college gate, I stop to buy laundry soap. The shopkeeper hands me my package and I recognize my own handwriting. “... careful with subject-verb agreement,” I read. “Don’t use clichés.” The soap is wrapped in one of the compositions I corrected this morning. “Where did you get this?” I ask.
The shopkeeper shows me a stack of papers. “The students are giving,” he says. “I tell them not to throw, I will use in my shop. Instead of plastic. Plastic is too expensive.”
Shakuntala shows me past exams set by the University of New Delhi. Write a composition on one of the following: Time and tide wait for no man. A book is the best of friends.
It occurs to me that Mr. Bose may be right.
But there are also signs of hope. A student named Tobgay writes about how education has changed his family life. When he was first admitted to Sherubtse, his parents were thrilled, especially his father who was illiterate. During his first-term break, at a family gathering, his father proudly asked him what he was learning at the college, and Tobgay told him. I told that we saw the picture of the first man walking on the moon and everyone laughed at that. I told it was true, the people had gone up to the moon even and then my father became angry with red face and bulging eyes. Don’t tell lies, he told. It is not a lie, I told. After my cousins went, he told that he felt shame by me telling such things and, now that I am in college I think I am a high shot to tell such things like this or what. How people can go to the moon, he told. So now when I go home for holidays I am never telling what I learned at college and when I am at home all the things we learn at college seem impossible, like people walking on the moon.
And in the Zoo, I can actually hear the students listening as we read Macbeth. There is a palpable tension in the room, and when the bell rings in the middle of Macbeth’s dagger soliloquy, Singye in the front row gasps. “He will not do it,” he says, aghast at the thought. There is no need to explain the significance of the crime Macbeth is about to commit, or the evil omens, the unruly night and strange wind, the wild behavior of Duncan’s horses, the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. These are not literary symbols to the students but the real and obvious results of a monstrous deed. It is impossible to gauge the distance between what I am supposed to be teaching them about the play and how they read it in the light of their own culture, but their insights are bringing the play to life for me, and it has never seemed more horrifying.
One Saturday morning, two students bring a note to my door: there will be an evening cultural competition featuring song and dance in Dzongkha, Nepali and English. Mr. Bose and I are to judge the English items. “Will you be in the competition?” I ask the students, and they say yes, they have been released from SUPW in order to practice their song.
“What’s SUPW?”
“Socially Useful Productive Work,” one says.
“Some Useful Period Wasted,” the other adds.
I laugh, delighted, and from the garden next door, Mr. Matthew clears his throat loudly. I am not sure who this warning is meant for.
Shakuntala and I go to the college store, a windowless room behind the student mess, to collect our weekly supply of vegetables. Baskets of chilies, tomatoes and beans are emptied out onto shelves, where they are pawed through and pinched. Everything is weighed on a rusty scale suspended from the ceiling. The man in charge, Mr. Dorji, shakes his head when I show him my handful of chilies. “Not even half kg,” he says. “Take for free.” My chili intake has increased steadily but I am still no match for the Bhutanese teachers who are loading up large jute sacks. My students tell me they cannot eat without chilies. When I prepare Western food for them, pasta or pizza,