Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [87]
Scholars claim that Buddhism developed as a reaction to negative elements of Hinduism, in particular the rigid caste system and the excessive, empty ritualism that had built up over the centuries in India. Hinduism and Buddhism are not wholly separable, however. Most of the Hindu deities turn up in the Buddhist pantheon, and the two systems share many concepts, including reincarnation and karma. Moreover, by the time Buddhism came to the Himalayas, it had picked up many of the practices of Indian Tantrism. Although Durga Puja is more flamboyant than the Buddhist rituals I have seen, its colors more gaudy and its music less somber, the two do not seem fundamentally different.
Offstage, something is wrong. There is much running off and returning and urgent whispering. Beside me, Gayatri is twisting her handkerchief into knots. “Is something going on?” I ask her. “No, ma’am,” she says, but her face is strained and unhappy.
The next morning, she appears at my door dressed in a cream-colored salwar kameez, a knee-length dress over loose pyjama pants, her hair freshly washed. At the auditorium, a large group of students is waiting, holding flowers, incense, jugs of milk, a tabla, the statue of Durga, and khukuris, fierce knives, long and cruelly curved. At the college gate, the crowd stops unexpectedly. I am lost in the middle and must stand on tiptoe to see what is happening. What is happening is the older students are having an argument with the principal. It is the first time I have seen authority openly challenged in Bhutan.
“Principal wants them to put on national dress and they are telling they have to wear their Nepali dress because they are the pundits doing the puja,” Gayatri whispers.
This is serious—I can see it in the principal’s anger-blotched face and the physical stance of the students, in the number of khukuris catching and throwing the sharp October light. And then there is this: balanced precariously on the wooden fence is the newly appointed administrator of the eastern zone, whose office is ten kilometers away. He is grinning around the cigarette jammed into the corner of his mouth, and he is recording the scene with a sleek new video camera. It seems highly unlikely that he was just driving by with a camcorder in the backseat and decided to stop at the college in the hopes of catching a bit of defiance on tape. A cloud of nebulous fear begins to form in my gut. Don’t be silly, I tell myself, a bit of resistance to authority is to be expected. This is a college, after all. In Canada this would be nothing. But this is not Canada, and the video camera makes me very uneasy.
The crowd breaks up, and the students return to their hostels to change their clothes. Since the dress law does not apply to foreigners, I go back to the auditorium and wait. It occurs to me that I could slink off, go back home, stay out of it. But no, I will not. These are my students, and they invited me to go with them. Besides, I am too curious to stay at home. They return wearing ghos and kiras that have been put on in haste, bunched up and tied loosely. When I see Dil’s dragging on the ground behind him, I realize it is not haste but defiance.
The group moves silently forward, out of the gate, down the road past Pala’s, and as soon as we have turned the corner, the students begin to sing. Gayatri says the song is devotional, but the voices are too loud and khukuris are flashing everywhere. At the river, the statue is immersed in the rushing white water, and milk and flowers are