Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [14]
The erratic madness of the road didn’t seem to cause concern; kids sat at the edge of it, older people meandered across it, cows clustered serenely in the middle of it. Even as we whizzed by and stirred up dust and pebbles, both the human beings and the animals went about their business, undisturbed.
And then there was a visual punch line, adding a bawdy comic-strip-like touch to the landscape: Houses were adorned with giant, brightly colored paintings, sometimes of a rooster or a lotus flower or, occasionally, a ten-foot giant winged phallus, wrapped sweetly in a bow. When I’d found pictures of these online, they’d appeared humorous; here, they seemed ordinary, just part of the scenery.
As we drove, Ngawang was like a windup doll, chattering from the middle row of the van. She narrated the sights: Animals lived on the ground level of a house, she said, and the people one flight above. You could tell we were in Paro, and not Thimphu, because the houses had three rows of windows, not two. From the license plates, you could distinguish whether a vehicle belonged to the government, was a taxi, or was a private car. She had earned a tour guide license, she explained, so if I had any questions, she was equipped to answer them.
I had one. “What exactly is the meaning of the giant penises?” There had been various discussions on the Web about their meaning. They weren’t fertility symbols, nor were they indicators that prostitutes were available inside, as was the case in other countries. It had something to do with a bawdy mystic named Drukpa Kunley, also known as the Divine Madman, who tamed demons (and just about everyone else he came into contact with) using his abundant sexual powers. But the reason for their prominence on the sides of houses hadn’t been properly explained on the Internet.
Ngawang deciphered the mystery. “We believe it is wrong to envy what someone else has. When you have a phallus painted on the house, people will be too ashamed to look and to covet what they don’t have,” she said. “In this way, the phallus wards off evil spirits.”
This had to be the most beautiful circuitous logic I’d ever heard.
“I imagine a lot of visitors ask that question, huh?”
“Yes,” Ngawang said, giggling, lingering on the s for emphasis. “They think it’s strange. For us, it’s just a part of Bhutan.” Then she explained that having to answer the same question over and over showed her that a career as a tour guide was not for her, which is why she was so excited that she’d been hired at Kuzoo. And when she read my résumé, she decided she wanted to learn everything I knew.
“I want to be the best radio jockey ever,” she said. “Please teach me how, Madam Jane.”
Kesang interrupted the flattery, the pitch of his voice indicating it was urgent. Ngawang translated that we had indeed gotten stuck in the roadblock.
For the next ninety minutes, parked on the side of the very scary, very narrow road, surrounded front and back by several dozen other vehicles, and in between the almost constant trill of her cell phone, I learned a lot more about Ngawang.
Her mother had died when she was four. Her father proudly served in the Bhutanese army. It seemed a curiosity that a peaceful Buddhist nation would require a military, but perhaps that was how the country had avoided being annexed by neighboring China or India. Since her father was stationed in the west at a