Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [30]
Off air and out of the nightclub, things were not going well for the twenty-five-year-old woman formerly known as Tsheten. After seven years, her marriage was unraveling. Marriage had long been a very casual institution in Bhutan; a couple declared themselves married when they started living together, and unmarried when they stopped. Now, the ways of the West were imposing on this tradition. More elaborate ceremonies were becoming common, as were more acrimonious, complicated divorces. Pink’s situation was so strained that her mother had sent for the family’s monk for guidance.
The family was also facing another life-changing issue they wanted the monk to address. Pink’s sister, Tshering, had prayed and prayed she’d get a job as a flight attendant on Emirates airline. Her fervent appeal had worked. Like Pink, Tshering had one leg in the modern world. But only one. Like many single Bhutanese women, she still slept in the same bed with her mother at their shared apartment. Now she would be moving to Dubai and flying to exotic ports heretofore accessible only in her dreams. No more tediousness of going back and forth, day in and day out, serving on the only flight the Bhutanese airline ran daily: Bangkok to Paro. Paro to Bangkok. As an exotic and costly tourist destination that attracts the famous as well as the rich, Bhutan ensured the staff of Druk Air the occasional celebrity sighting—Matt Damon, Orlando Bloom, Bette Midler, and Demi Moore had been among the recent stars to visit. Better still was the honor of serving members of the royal family who might happen to be on board. Relocating to another country and going to work for a foreign airline would expand Tshering’s world, and the idea of living away from family for a while was alluring—even if to do so for anything other than education was considered by many to be very un-Bhutanese. The pay would be exponentially better than what she earned now, more than enough to allow her to save money, which would never be possible at home.
The monk determined that both sisters needed to be cleansed so they could proceed. A series of pujas was in order to ready them for the immediate futures they faced. He’d be in town for several weeks to accomplish his plan.
Pujas are special prayers performed by holy men to give additional heft to a message you want to transmit to the gods. These holy men have the expertise and wisdom—the divination—to know which gods need to be sought out, which chants are necessary to best help remove whatever obstacles are in the way.
The intensity and length of the puja—how many monks are needed, and for how many days—depends on the severity of the situation. Moving into a new home requires pujas for the old place and the new. New jobs and the ending of relationships qualify, too. No one in Bhutan questions anyone who misses school or work because they have to attend a puja. The ceremonies are considered a normal part of daily life.
How prevalent they are is evident as you walk the streets of Thimphu on most any day. The moan of bagpipelike horns floats in the air, punctuating the throaty chants of monks and mingling with and occasionally drowning out the more mundane sounds of honking cars and barking dogs that comprise the aural cityscape.
Buddhism, I was learning, was far different in this nation where the religion was dominant than it had appeared back home, far more complex than the yoga, meditation, vegetarianism, and fat smiling statues of Buddha that Westerners