Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [90]
Dil and his friend are arrested and taken to the Tashigang for not wearing national dress outside the campus. They were on their way back from Pala’s when the police picked them up. Many students, both northern and southern, wear jeans to Pala’s. The arrest seems malicious and provocative. Dil and his friend return to school but a few days later, they disappear again. We are in the middle of a final review before exams. “Are they coming back?” I ask. The students study their notebooks, look out the window, do not answer.
I hear they have run away. They have gone to join unnamed others across the border after they were beaten up by northern students for wearing Nepali dress under their ghos. And then, five more southern students disappear. They are taken at night. Arrested, gone, delivered to Thimphu for questioning, I hear from the other lecturers. The students will not talk about it; they look terrified at the mere mention of the five who are gone. This is the most frightening thing.
The Situation finally merits a mention in the Kuensel. During the 68th session of the National Assembly, the Ministry of Home Affairs announces that several anti-national and seditious letters and booklets were mailed into Bhutan. The allegations made in these publications were found to be baseless, malicious, and against the fundamental principles of the Tsawa Sum, the Three Jewels of the King, the Country and the People. As such, they constituted an act of treason. The culprits and miscreants responsible could not be traced, the Ministry adds. There is no mention of a movement or any arrests.
The View from Here
We are going to visit a holy lake above Khaling, Tony and two Dutch aid workers from an agricultural project near Kanglung, and me. Tony is two months away from the end of his contract in Khaling, and will not extend. He is still quite thin, the result of a bout of typhoid and a stomach parasite. His nickname among the other Canadians is Bean, short for Bean Pole. His weight loss has no impact on his walking speed, however, and thirty minutes into the walk, I am winded. But I plod on, determined to keep up. I want to see the lake. I also want to be away from the Situation for a few hours.
We walk through an oak forest cool with early morning shadows, and I am thinking about Robert and Christmas and home. Nothing in me wants to go to Canada this winter. I finger memories, hold up images, run a scan through muscle blood bone, trying to find some tiny fiber that still wants to go. There is not one. Not even for Robert.
The forest opens into a meadow and the meadow rises into an immense hill, smooth and rounded and extremely steep, covered with golden grass and yellow flowers. The path zigzags up for almost four hours. We pass Brokpa, the nomadic yak herders from the easternmost settlement in Bhutan, with their herds of shaggy, lumbering yaks coming down from the mountain tops where it is already winter. My legs are screaming at me to stop! stop! stop! and I do for a moment, huffing and puffing, sweat running into my eyes. A tiny Brokpa child in cracked blue rubber boots motors past me, sturdy legs churning effortlessly. “Are we almost there yet?” I call out. “A few more minutes,” Tony calls back. “A few” turns out to be forty-five, but then we arrive and stand gazing at the small lake set in a shelter of ancient pines and mossy boulders. Stone cairns have been built along the shores, and we can see the blue of one-ngultrum notes in the clear cold water, offerings made to the lake spirit. Tony says that all lakes in Bhutan are considered holy. His students warned him not to pollute the lake, or bring meat anywhere near it, or leave any garbage nearby. They were full of stories of what would happen otherwise: you would get sick, or the lake would send mist and clouds to make you lose your way in the forest, or the spirit