Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [101]
Phuntsho relays his prediction in a serious tone: “It is not going to be a good year for you. Watch your health. Wear red every day, preferably under your clothes.” I take a mental inventory of my closet at home, scanning for red clothing. “They really need to do a wind horse puja for you. You have to be very careful,” she says. This puja will rebalance my energy and ward off illness.
In my purse, I happen to have a crisp $100 bill. A friend in Thimphu has repaid me for books I’d brought from the States. I fish out the other cash I have on hand, dollars and ngultrum. All told, the sum that other Rinpoche wanted from me two years ago. I press the money into Lopen’s hands.
“It’s for the boys,” I tell Phuntsho. “For the orphanage.”
“They will say prayers,” she says, and she translates after he begins to speak. “Lopen says they will do a puja.”
I don’t argue. If they feel the need to do a puja, so be it. The mental power of sixty young monks, with Lopen at the helm, can’t be a bad idea. I’m happy to accept the prayers. Yet happier still not to be looking for answers anymore.
TEN DAYS LATER, Ngawang gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Eight pounds, eight ounces. Right out of the womb, he resembles a tiny version of Mr. Japan, with the same sweet face and a generous pile of hair. His entrance into this world is thirteen days after his due date, which happens to be a year to the day after Ngawang arrived in Los Angeles, and two days into the year of the Female Earth Ox.
The monks anoint him with a beautiful name. Kinga Norbu: precious jewel, loved by all.
The astrological forecast for the new year is terrible in almost all regards. Rain will be scarce, food in short supply—economically difficult, all the way around. There’s one exception. They say it’s a particularly lucky year in which to be born.
POSTSCRIPT
NOT LONG AFTER I RETURNED FROM MY INITIAL trip to the happiest place on earth, I had lunch with an acquaintance who posed a question I’d never asked myself, much less another person.
“What would you like to be doing five years from now?” she said, leaning in, Oprah-style, across the basket of bread-sticks.
My God, I thought. Who knows?
Five years. Five years ago I could never have imagined jetting off to a Himalayan kingdom and finding my entire perspective of the world, and myself, turned upside down. Why would anyone want to imagine the future, much less plan it? I didn’t say that, though. I didn’t want to make her feel bad, since she seemed to be one of those people who liked plotting her life. I just knew you couldn’t do that.
So I gave her as vague an answer as possible: “I really have no idea.”
“But,” she insisted, “do you want to be married? Do you want to move out of Los Angeles? Do you want to keep doing the work you’re doing?” There was a sense of urgency to her line of questioning, as if my entire future rested on the words I now uttered.
“I really, honestly have no idea,” I said. “All I know for sure is this: In five years, I would love to feel as great as I do, as strong as I do, right this minute.”
My lunch companion looked at me expectantly. She seized on the word “great,” and she wanted to know more, the specific things that were causing me to feel so good. I told her there wasn’t anything specific to add. That was the triumph, I told her. I didn’t feel good because I had a new romance, or a new job that paid tons of money, or anything visible or measurable. None of those things that usually set people to the “Yes” gauge on the happiness scale had happened to me. I didn’t feel good because I expected nothing bad ever to befall me again; instead, I trusted that I could handle whatever