Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [27]
“Don’t worry about the eggs,” said Ngawang, putting some rice in the cooker so I could have something to eat later on. “I’ll find you some.”
And I had a feeling that if anyone could find me anything in all of Bhutan, it was Ngawang.
ALMOST ON CUE, as soon as we’d finished our tea, Sir Tenzin arrived to take me on a promised twilight drive of the city. He’d been enjoying playing tour guide, showing me around and bragging to whomever saw us that he had an American consultant at his disposal. Since we were about the same age, I figured I wasn’t obliged to refer to Sir Tenzin as “Sir.” But I did so anyway, partly to dispel any notions that Americans were boorish, and equally, perhaps, because of his commanding and intimidating presence. Had he learned this from being a school principal, or was this innate? He was taller than most Bhutanese I’d met so far, about six foot one, and his personality filled up the room. He seemed as quick to anger as he was to laugh or smile, switching from garrulous to silent in an instant and staring into space, as if he’d tuned out you and the world around him so he might collect his thoughts. Except that his demeanor didn’t seem meditative as much as distracted.
I wondered if this had anything to do with Sir Tenzin’s affinity for doma, the Bhutanese equivalent to chewing tobacco. Doma was a curious, tacolike packet made by slathering a leaf with lime paste (not the fruit but the acidic residual of boiling limestone) and wrapping it around a small brown nut called an areca. There couldn’t possibly be any positive health benefits associated with sucking on this “delicacy.” The trio of ingredients emitted a smell worse than the stinkiest cheese. But what magnetized its users was the warming effect it reportedly had on the insides, the way it lightened the head—the same impact as a shot of whiskey, people said. Those who indulged in doma insisted the high did not impede their ability to work. They also had convinced themselves that the lime paste wasn’t eating away at their guts, even as doctors diagnosed a growing number of cases of stomach cancer and gastritis. (The spicy food was believed to be a culprit in those conditions, as well.)
On the matter of this addictive substance, there seemed to be two types of people: those who refused to touch the stuff, and those who did so with great frequency and gusto. Sir Tenzin was in the latter category. The two camps were easy to identify; the teeth and lips of doma users were stained, to various degrees, the color of blood. A light sheen of red seemed to be the mildest of the side effects. This scarlet mark did not deter doma users in the slightest; they would congregate the way cigarette smokers might outside an office building in New York, furtively rushing together for a quick hit. The king had banned the sale of tobacco products several years ago, but had he attempted to ban doma, his obedient subjects quite likely would have staged a revolt.
Doma wasn’t to blame for Sir Tenzin’s momentary pause at the first stop on our twilight drive. We were pulling up outside a little place in the center of town when he fell silent. The sign outside the shop was unlike any other I’d seen. In pretty cursive script, it announced, THE ART CAFÉ. It was the first shop I’d seen that looked as if it could have been located in other parts of the world. A couple of cute tables were arranged out front, and at one of them, two young men sat talking, with big colorful mugs in their hands.
“Is anything wrong, sir?”
“No, no, just give me a moment, please,” he responded distractedly. I hopped out of the passenger door. After a minute, he stepped out, too, without a word. And as he approached the café, he swept down in a long, elegant bow.
“Your Majesty,” Sir Tenzin said to the two young men. They said not a word in response, simply stopped for a moment to receive the greeting, and then kept talking. Unsure what to do, I smiled lamely, curtsied, and followed Sir Tenzin into the store.
Pretty photographs of prayer flags and mountains hung