Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [46]
Some of those who have become enthralled have gone on to play a critical role in Bhutan’s history. A Jesuit priest named Father William Mackey created the first high school in Bhutan in the sixties, and began a long friendship and study exchange between Bhutan and his native Canada. The late Michael Aris, who as a young man tutored members of the royal family, published several important books on Bhutanese history at the behest of the third king. Controversial insights into Bhutan were revealed by Nari Rustomji, an Indian advisor to Sikkim. His book was long banned in the kingdom for its controversial frankness about a dark aspect of Bhutan’s history: the plot by the mistress of the third king to claim royal power for the children he’d fathered with her. The mystically inclined actress Shirley MacLaine made a trip to Bhutan as a guest of the starstruck acting prime minister in 1968, and wrote about her spirit-seeking adventures in Don’t Fall Off the Mountain, another work long prohibited in the kingdom.
Since Bhutan opened its borders, stories have abounded about alliances great and small, between outsiders who befriended the powerful of Bhutan and those who connected with regular people. Bhutanese love to tell stories about single, careerist Western women who visit on vacation and fall for their tour guides—suggesting that they couldn’t find men back home and couldn’t help being swept off their feet by the chivalrous Bhutanese. This kind of forbidden love affair is the basis of a book by a Canadian woman named Jamie Zeppa, who worked twenty years ago as a teacher in eastern Bhutan and fell in love—and had a child—with one of her students. After a stint as a golf pro at the Royal Thimphu Golf Course, Rick Lipsey returned home to create the Bhutan Youth Golf Association, which for years dispatched two pros a year to the kingdom to teach kids—and adults—the game. So inspired was digital photography expert Michael Hawley by the visual splendor of the country, he published a book of photographs about it that’s also the world’s largest, at five feet by seven feet and 133 pounds, and costs $10,000 a copy.
Among many of the modern fans of Bhutan there is something of a competitive spirit to prove one’s devotion to the place—and one’s power to access members of the royal family and other VIPs. A kind of “My Bhutan is bigger than your Bhutan, my attachment greater.” These boasts have to do with not just the desire to help the Bhutanese but the fierce need to stay connected to the land and its people after leaving it, wanting to attach somehow to Bhutan rather than just love it purely and wholly—allowing that love alone to be enough. Bhutan gives you so much, makes you aware of all you have, that it inspires you to somehow mark the territory, claim it as your own.
With each incursion, each friendship, each exchange, though, a tiny bit of the old Bhutan melts away, and a new and different one emerges. Each of us who loves it—no matter how that love is manifested—permanently changes it.
7
THE SYMPHONY OF LOVE
NGAWANG, PEMA, AND PINK WERE BICKERING and giggling conspiratorially in the center of the Kuzoo work area. Each had a piece of paper in hand; it looked as if they were working on a script. Their idea of sophisticated audio production was to divvy up the text and record tag-team, one line each.
“Herpa-tett-ez B,” said Pink, struggling with the words in front of her. “Herps.”
Word was out that Kuzoo would run free ads to show potential advertisers the power of radio, in the hope of one day attracting paying customers. The initial funding from the sale of the king’s BMW gave the station a cushion of security, so making more cash to pay the bills wasn’t yet an urgent necessity. Which was a good thing because the bulk of the “ads” on the station still came from the government ministries, with announcements