Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [28]
Back in the car, under my questioning, Sir Tenzin explained that one of the men was a prince, the younger brother of His Majesty the king. After spotting him, Sir Tenzin had paused to prepare himself to give a suitably formal greeting. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about this encounter very much; he was far more interested in talking about his plans for Kuzoo.
The car radio was tuned to the station. RJ Ngawang introduced a song by Akon, the Senegalese-American hip-hop sensation. It was probably the dozenth time I’d heard “Don’t Matter” in the few days I’d been in Bhutan.
“Terrible pronunciation,” said Sir Tenzin, shaking his head. He had just a bit of a British lilt in his voice, acquired during his days at a Jesuit school in India.
“Akon, or the radio jockey?” I hadn’t exactly expected Kuzoo, in the hands of the first generation of Bhutanese to grow up with television, to be playing a bunch of traditional Bhutanese music and public-service programs, but I was a bit surprised by just how much pop music from my side of the world cascaded over the Kuzoo air. Because of the cost of production, there was little in the way of modern recorded Bhutanese music. Music from neighboring India and Nepal was banned from the airwaves, though it wasn’t clear whether that was an official edict issued from on high or a decision made by the radio jockeys themselves.
He laughed. “That radio jockey. All of them. They mumble a lot. That girl in particular. They get nervous.”
“We all do,” I said. “I can help you with that, sir.”
Sir Tenzin’s car chugged up a winding road that promised a sweeping view of Thimphu Valley, and led to the broadcast transmission towers for both the Bhutan Broadcasting Service and Kuzoo. The city was cast now in a twilight golden hue, the same light we’d have this time of day in Los Angeles. The insistent longing of Akon was a discordant sound track for this magnificent vista, as discordant as the presence of this city in such an otherwise starkly undeveloped country. From up here, the sprawl of the growing capital was evident. Buildings in various stages of construction emerged in the embryonic skyline, pushing the boundaries of Thimphu farther out from the center—a sure sign development had come to this place where electricity hadn’t flowed until a quarter century ago.
Off to the left, the majestic structure known as a dzong gleamed in the light from the setting sun. Each district had a dzong that served as central administration for government and clergy; this particular one in Thimphu was called “the fortress of glorious religion.” A golf course wrapped around the grounds, and I asked Sir Tenzin how Bhutan came to feature a game associated with rich people, and which was considered an environmental blight.
“The third king loved to play golf.” Sir Tenzin smiled, as if that was all there was to say about the matter. “It’s not my game, though. I haven’t got time for sports.”
He pointed to the spot straight ahead, way across the valley, where land had been cleared for the construction of what was to be one of world’s largest statues of Buddha—170 feet tall. A band of light shone down on the area where the giant Buddha would eventually sit, almost like a spotlight. I squinted to be sure I wasn’t imagining the gleam.
“One day, maybe in my lifetime, Thimphu will have a skyscraper,” said Sir Tenzin, and he laughed at his own suggestion, for it seemed so impossible. Buildings were forbidden from reaching higher than six stories, for reasons both practical and aesthetic; nothing could tower over a region’s dzong, for one thing. For another, modern conveniences that made taller buildings