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I considered giving them a big-sisterly lecture about how Valentine’s Day was just a silly marketing conspiracy to convince you that without a “special someone” you were inferior, incomplete. I thought of doing the “girl power” thing, telling them how lucky they were to be beautiful and young and employed in a profession people clambered to work in back where I was from. How they were lucky to be alive at a time when their country was opening up in new and exciting ways. To please not make the mistake I’d seen so many women make, delaying life while waiting for a man to ride into the picture so they could be half of a couple and not need to find themselves. I even contemplated telling them my own Valentine’s Day stories.

But all of this was talk, and talk they didn’t really want to hear. I myself couldn’t have appreciated this when I was their age. You had to suffer through a few Valentine’s Days before you could understand what really mattered, anyway. So I ordered the girls up another round of wine coolers, got myself a shot of Bhutan Highland whiskey and Ed a Coca-Cola. Together we swayed to the music of the karaoke machine. A little while later, we would all head over to Club Destiny to go dancing.

8

MY BEST FRIENDS IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW

THERE ARE A FEW VERY IMPORTANT THINGS TO know about the Bhutanese New Year, in addition to the fact that shops, schools, offices—almost everything except Kuzoo FM—shuts down for three days in celebration. For one thing, slaughtering of animals is prohibited. By government decree, the butchers remain closed throughout the first calendar month. Killing is never good for one’s karma, but it is seen as a particularly inauspicious way to launch a new year. That doesn’t mean eating meat is forbidden; merely the act of slaughter and the sale of meat are illegal.

For another: Drinking as much alcohol as possible is considered an essential part of the celebration. The drunker you are, the thinking goes, the happier you are, and the likelier you are to remain that way for the rest of the year. Thankfully, this holiday is traditionally marked at home with the family, so the roads in town aren’t necessarily glutted with “happy” drivers. In fact, on this particular New Year, the streets seemed emptier than I’d seen them yet. Even the five or six stray dogs that escorted me down the hill to Kuzoo each day appeared to be taking a holiday. Perhaps the fact that it arrived just before the first-ever celebration of the new king’s birthday in February was contributing to the serenity in the streets.

The salient points about this holiday called Losar were conveyed to me by Tenzin Choden, the radio jockey at Kuzoo with whom I’d had the least interaction. She was the quietest of the bunch, so soft-spoken that in person as well as on the air she was barely audible; she also had a husband, so she felt less compelled to hang around the studio before and after work. She’d show up at the appointed time to host whatever slot she was responsible for and then leave. Strictly business.

Then there was her general suspicion of me, a foreign interloper. This had much to do, I inferred from her comments, with the way I dressed. Since I had been told that it wasn’t disrespectful for a Westerner to wear Western clothing, I opted not to outfit myself in the Bhutanese national dress. As a newbie and an outsider, I felt like a clumsy poseur in the beautiful, brightly colored ensemble. Plus, it was nearly impossible to put it on properly without the aid of a fleet of assistants. The national garb consisted of layers of wangju (shirt), kira (dress), and tego (jacket) cinched with a stiff, wide fringed belt, and with a simple broach at the breastbone. Like an old Bhutanese house, it seemed to be held together magically, with nary a nail or screw. Struggling to assemble this outfit, neatly, I thought, must be what it’s like for a man the first hundred times he ties a necktie, only far worse because