Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [15]
“Oh!” she exclaimed, interrupting her autobiographical monologue as if she’d remembered something more important. “How did you come to know about Bhutan?”
I told the story of that fateful night in New York. “Do you know Sebastian? He’s in the tea business.”
“American?”
“Yes, yes. Tall, thin man. American,” I said hopefully. I imagined Sebastian must be a revered figure here.
“Nope,” she said, as if she were flipping through mental images of people he might be. “Don’t know him.” She paused for a moment. “So it was your karma that brought you to Bhutan. That’s cool.”
“No, it …” As I disagreed, I understood. “Yes, it must be because of my karma that I came to Bhutan.”
“What do people know about Bhutan where you are from?”
“Well, I knew about Bhutan because I heard you didn’t have television,” I said, refraining from launching into a rant against the evils of the boob tube. It didn’t seem good form to introduce myself in this way, particularly given the reason for my visit. “But honestly, most people don’t know very much about Bhutan.”
I also didn’t mention that several family members were concerned I might be held hostage here simply because they worried about everything. Or that my father had warned me in his bon voyage phone call that I’d likely have to carry my own toilet paper, as if that were the most barbaric proposition. There wasn’t any need to tell Ngawang, either, about how one of my more sour coworkers deemed Gross National Happiness “old news,” and “a gimmick.”
Ngawang laughed. “We have television now!” she said. “The fourth king allowed it. I love watching TV!”
That’s what I was afraid of, I thought. “The fourth king?” I asked.
“The father of the new king, who is Bhutan’s fifth king,” Ngawang explained. “Our monarchy is one hundred years old, and His Majesty is the fifth in his family to serve.”
“Do you like the new king?”
“Oh, yes, very much. Everyone loves our king. He is a man of the people and devoted in his service to Bhutan.” The words sounded as if they’d been lifted from a brochure, and yet the tone was heartfelt.
Her scattershot line of questioning continued. She brimmed with the energy of a teenager. How big was my family? And oh, did I believe in God?
My parents were both alive, I told her, and I had a younger brother with whom I was close. We had lots of aunts and uncles and cousins, but none of us saw one another much. As far as what I believed, I wasn’t sure, but I liked the idea of believing in something. What little I knew about the Bhutanese faith, Buddhism, seemed to make a lot of sense to me.
“What about you?” I asked. “Do you believe there is a God?”
“I don’t know what I believe, either,” Ngawang said. “But being raised Buddhist, I follow what my family tells me. If it’s an auspicious day and we have to make offerings, I obey. So have you ever been in love?”
That’s complicated, I thought, glad she hadn’t asked if I’d been married, because I hated answering that question. “In love a thousand times with silly infatuations, but for real, yes, twice. And you?”
Ngawang said she’d had a boyfriend who’d taken up with her best friend. She didn’t believe in love anymore. What mattered to her was having a baby.
“Well,” I said, “you’ve got plenty of time …”
At last we were moving again. It seemed that each time Ngawang’s cell phone trilled, it played a different tune; now it was playing “Hotel California,” and I wondered whose ringtone it was. The interruption saved me from being asked about my interest in children, which was even more complicated to answer than the love question.
On the phone Ngawang was speaking in her native language, but every so often I’d make out a reference to me, “Madam Jane.” Listening to the cadence of her voice and trying to discern the tone provided further welcome distraction