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By the time I reach Calcutta, I am longing to see the mountains again. All winter, my thoughts have never been far from Bhutan. The bus from Calcutta to Phuntsholing barrels over a deeply gouged and rutted highway. The air becomes suddenly cooler, and I look up: ahead, without a prologue of knolls or hills, the mountains rise straight up. I feel a familiar surge of happiness. I am back home.

Involvement

And if you hit upon the idea that this or

that country is safe, prosperous, or

fortunate, give it up, my friend... for you

ought to know that the world is ablaze with

the fires of some faults or others. There is

certain to be some suffering... and a

wholly fortunate country does not exist

anywhere. Whether it be excessive cold or

heat, sickness or danger, something always

afflicts people everywhere; no safe refuge

can thus be found in the world.

—Buddhist Scriptures

We the Lecturers

The college is awash in mid-morning sunlight when I step off the Comet from Tashigang. I unlock my house and fling open all the windows. Mrs. Chatterji calls down to me, asking about my trip to India. She is very beautiful, with large brown eyes and pale skin and a fall of straight dark hair. Over her flowery sari, she wears two thick handknit sweaters against the cold, but when I suggest that she comes out into the sun, she shakes her head. “Bad for the complexion,” she says, and points to the broom in my hand. “So today you are doing spring cleaning?” Actually, I was only going to sweep off the front step so that I could sit on it, but I nod. After living below her for six months, I know that housework is her entire day. She begins as soon as her husband leaves for class in the morning—sweep the floors, beat the rugs, tend the garden, do the laundry, cook the meals, wash the dishes. “She needs a child,” Mrs. Matthew once whispered to me.

“Or a job,” I whispered back. Mrs. Chatterji has a master’s degree, but when I asked Mr. Chatterji why she didn’t teach, he laughed. “My wife does not have to work. She is happy at home.” But I do not believe it. In the late afternoon, waiting for her husband to return, she descends the stairs and paces back and forth along one wall of the house. I have never seen her go farther than this by herself, and I cannot imagine how long that stretch of time is between the last thing cleaned and folded and put away and the sound of her husband’s footsteps on the stairs.

On the other side, Mr. Matthew is working in his garden. He offers to lend me his gardening tools. “Your garden has become like jungle,” he says in his musical Keralan lilt. I tell him that I like the undomesticated look, but he frowns.

I change the subject. “It’s so quiet without the students, isn’t it?”

“Quiet is good,” Mr. Matthew says. “You know, we were talking about you just before our winter holidays.”

“Who was?”

“We, the lecturers. You are becoming too familiar with the students. This is not good. They will be taking advantage.”

“I haven’t had any—”

“You must not lower yourself to their level. You are a lecturer, not one of them, isn’t it. Lecturers cannot be friendly with the students.”

“It’s all right, really—”

“No,” he says. “It is not all right. I hope you will improve yourself this year.”

I sit in the sun on my front step all afternoon, reading and drinking in the view, and in the evening go out to the tap in the backyard to wash my journey-stained clothes. Mrs. Matthew stops on her way upstairs. “Washing your clothes at night?” She is aghast.

“It was too nice a day to do laundry,” I say.

“In the dark?” She goes clucking loudly up the stairs to her apartment, where she and Mr. Matthew will discuss the errors of my ways, and they will be legion.

This is the other side of small, which Chhoden had warned me about last year when she spoke of the constricting uniformity of village life. After six weeks in total anonymity, I had forgotten this, the smallness and narrowness of the community here. I had forgotten all the implied criticisms of my teaching methods and general