Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [88]
“Rajan, can I ask you what’s going on?”
“Oh, now the puja is over,” he says, “and we will all eat—”
“No, no,” I interrupt. “I mean: What. Is. Going. On.”
He is silent for so long that I think he will not tell me. Then he says, “You know, ma’am, they did not want us to have our puja.”
“Who didn’t? The principal?”
“Not only the principal. They—the northern Bhutanese.” And he tells me that there is trouble in Bhutan, between south and north, Nepali and Drukpa. “They don’t want us to be Nepali anymore,” he says. “We have to wear their dress and speak their language. We can no more be who we are.”
The others catch up with us, and we walk in silence.
The campus is oddly still. The students return to their hostels, and I go home, wondering about Rajan’s comments, and how long the alleged trouble has been bubbling beneath the appearance of calm, wondering about that videotape and who arranged for it and how they knew there would be a confrontation at the gate, and what will happen. It strikes me that I may be on that videotape, and I wonder if I will be implicated in what is happening, whatever it is.
The Situation
And now there is a Situation. This is how the students speak of it. This situation, they say. The situation is serious. Sometimes they speak of the Problem, which calls to mind the Irish Troubles, but I can’t believe that things will go that far in tiny, peaceful, quiet Bhutan. Aside from a few oblique comments in the staff room, none of the lecturers speaks of the incident at the college gate. But overnight, there is a physical division between the students. They change places in the classroom: north sits with north, south with south. I talk to Shakuntala about it. We are in her dining room, drinking lemon tea. We often sit here until late at night, talking and working and laughing. On her walls are portraits of students she has drawn, pencil studies of leaves and flowers and ferns, photographs of chortens and prayer flags. I feel nostalgic, looking at her work, as if that Bhutan is already over. I cannot shake this feeling of dread. I tell her about the video camera at the gate and the flashing khukuris, and the separation in class of northern and southern. “The thing is,” I say, “why do they have to make dress into such a big deal? If the Nepali students want to wear Nepali dress for a Hindu puja, let them.”
But Shakuntala doesn’t agree. “It’s not such a big thing to ask,” she says. “To wear your national dress when you leave the campus.”
“But it’s a religious custom,” I say.
“Still, it’s not much to ask,” she says. “No one is saying they couldn’t have their puja. No one is saying they couldn’t be Hindu anymore, that they all had to become Buddhist. They were just being asked to obey the dress law.”
Not a dress code but a dress law. “I understand that it’s to preserve Bhutan’s culture, but shouldn’t it be voluntary? How will it ever work, otherwise?” I say. I don’t say, “What about the other cultures and traditions that exist in Bhutan? What about preserving them?” I am caught between two ways of seeing, two possible interpretations, unable here to have faith in either one.
I study the next issue of Kuensel, looking for some mention of a Situation, but there is nothing. I want to hear more directly from the students, but the atmosphere on campus has grown increasingly oppressive. Fear and anger pinch their faces, and they answer my questions elliptically. No one will give me a full explanation. I want someone to start at the beginning, I want