Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [59]
Tenzin Choden was always meticulously attired in the national dress, including perfectly matched, dainty three-inch heels, which Bhutanese city women wore as evidence they’d successfully moved beyond the farm. The limousine shoes did not stop her from jauntily making her way up the steep hill and narrow staircase to the kitchen studio as casually as if she donned flip-flops. It was hard to imagine the starched twenty-four-year-old Tenzin ever dressing down. I imagined she must have a special kira, even, to sleep in.
“When you want to wear Bhutanese, you tell me,” she said disapprovingly, as she gave my all-black getup of turtleneck, stretchy pants, and clunky walking shoes a once-over. “I’ll come over to Rabten Apartments, and help you get dressed. You will look very nice.”
For all the self-assuredness I’d detected in the Bhutanese ladies I’d met, Tenzin in particular seemed to possess confidence in abundance. Her family was in the construction business, several Kuzooers had whispered, which was polite shorthand to disclose that she was wealthier than most of the others. This explained the fact that she owned her own personal laptop, a luxury everyone at the station coveted most (having an iPod ranked second). Because of this possession, she had the freedom to work on her reports from home.
Given all this, I was surprised when Tenzin asked for help on a special project she’d assigned herself, a taped report on the meaning of the Bhutanese New Year, Losar. Why Tenzin chose to sink her teeth into an additional bit of work wasn’t clear; in the back of my head, I allowed myself the fantasy that my failed workshop and ongoing casual talks in the workroom each day might actually have sunk in, but I knew in my heart that that probably wasn’t the case. Whatever it was that had inspired Tenzin, I was happy to help.
To begin gathering interviews for the report, we walked down to the row of meat shops near the vegetable market, below the lower road where the bloody carcasses that hung in the windows would make even the most devoted carnivore commit to tofu and kale forever. They looked like Upton Sinclair’s nightmare incarnate, flesh dangling, flies swarming, the occasional stray dog panting and drooling nearby. Tenzin whipped out a little minidisc recorder that she’d borrowed from the Kuzoo supply closet and interviewed a handful of shoppers (in Dzongkha) and butchers (in Nepali) as if she’d been wielding a microphone for years. Since most Bhutanese didn’t want the job of slaughtering animals at any time of year—very bad for the karma—Tenzin explained that the majority of the meat proprietors were immigrants. When she was done, she announced, “Okay, we can go now,” and marched us back up the half-mile hill through the center of town to the studio.
Now it was midway through the holiday, and Tenzin was finally ready for feedback on her edited segment.
The only other person in the studio was RJ Kinzang, a sweet, eager young man of twenty-three who came from more modest means than his colleague. He was the eldest of nine children; his family ran a tiny general shop off one of the rattier side streets, and they all lived above it. He was there hosting the country music show. What better way to ring in the Bhutanese New Year than with a little twang? More than anyone, Kinzang loved working at Kuzoo, and loved being on the air. He was the guy everyone asked to cover for them when they didn’t want to come to work, which usually had something to do with their staying out too late the night before—or being slotted to host the country show. Kinzang didn’t drink,