Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [23]
Finding pleasure in giving things away was a developing habit for me. I’d taken the once-unimaginable step of donating my twenty-years-in-the-making collection of five hundred books to the public library. This occurred after I’d paid several thousand dollars over two years for a storage closet in New York, indecisively letting them collect dust. (“Should I move them West, or should I hedge my bets that I’ll move back East?” I mulled each month as I wrote the check.) Until one day I made the call and begged for the cartons to be hauled away, aware that for many educated people this was an action tantamount to suicide. Or, at least, cause for institutionalization. One dissenting alleged friend dubbed my action, simply, “idiotic.”
My coveted collection of books really wasn’t necessary anymore. I felt secure enough in my intellect not to have to flaunt my impressive personal library in my tiny apartment any longer. I could get most anything I wanted to read, reread, or simply fondle for sentimental reasons in practically an instant at the spectacular public library located two blocks from where I lived in downtown Los Angeles. And I could support a vital (if, to some people, arcane) public institution in the process: With the money I’d saved not buying more books, I started making an annual donation to the Los Angeles Public Library, stoking my middle-age ambitions to be a patroness of worthy causes.
As for my television, I’d hung on to that only to watch the very occasional DVD or videotape. I’d long ago ditched the cable. Until the rare occasions when I wanted to turn it on, I obscured the screen with a painting.
And yet, I continued to be a hypocrite.
Not only did I keep working in the news business, I had just arrived in one of the last places on earth to be corrupted by media and consumer cultures. My mission was to teach them how to “professionalize” this new radio station they’d just begun, which I suspected was code for “make us sound like every other radio station in the world,” instead of letting it grow organically to become its own sort of Radio Shangri-la.
EVER SINCE TELEVISION arrived in Bhutan in 1999, more people have been opting out of the agrarian lifestyle that supported their ancestors and is still the mainstay occupation. Now young people flock to Thimphu for their education and a chance at jobs that promise plush benefits (like working behind a desk, with a computer, and not in the fields). No one has officially drawn the connection between the introduction of mass media and the swelling of the population in Bhutan’s capital city. But no one can deny it, either. A generation ago, it wouldn’t have occurred to young people to leave their families and their villages.
Being wired to the outside world, of course, doesn’t make Bhutan any less geographically remote, or any less costly to leave. It still requires days of travel to get in or out. Besides, most people in Bhutan don’t have much cash, and credit cards don’t exist. No matter how rich you might be, there is just one airline and one airport. Permission to travel in either direction is meted out with great deliberation and is typically granted to the lucky few who win scholarships to colleges and universities outside the country.
But thanks to the wonder of satellites and a vast network of interconnected servers, you can more clearly see what it’s like out there in the world without having to go. And that window to the world changes your perspective. As fiercely, traditionally Bhutanese as you might be, as much as you might vow you’ll never leave, those other ways of life depicted on TV look mighty tempting. When television beams a window on the world—the possibility of other—right into your home, it’s hard not to become enthralled. Or, at least, intrigued. Those images sure get you thinking about what you have, and what you don’t.
IN 2006, THE KING allowed media infiltration to reach another milestone. Two private weekly newspapers were licensed to compete with Kuensel, the once-government-backed paper that