Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [82]
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
He continued with a slight modification.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.…
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.…
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
And ring in Gross National Happiness.
With only the slightest wink in his voice to his having modified this great poet’s work for the youthful Bhutanese audience, Sir Pema concluded his greeting:
“Kuzoo’s New Year’s mantra: ‘Let bygones be bygones.’ The year 2007 is behind us, and 2008 beckons us. Warm wishes to all our listeners. May you have a really bright and prosperous New Year.”
With one election down and one to go sometime this coming spring, soon the new constitution would be adopted and the new king officially installed. For Bhutan, the year of the Male Earth Mouse would indeed be a historic one.
THE NEXT DAY, I do something I haven’t done much of yet in Bhutan: play tourist. I’m going on a field trip to a place all tourists go, about an hour outside Thimphu. It’s called Dochula Pass. It is the site of a memorial built for Bhutanese who died in a conflict with Indian separatists in 2003. It’s also a perfect vista for one of the most magnificent confluences of mountain ranges on the planet.
My companions are a fresh crop of Bhutanese tour guides who I am tutoring in English. It’s sure to be an informative trip, with one visitor (me) and forty accomplices trained to explain the landscape. As a thank-you to the trade department for inviting me here, I offered to help out however I could, and I’d been assigned to help the guides practice talking to foreigners. They are undergoing a special hospitality training course in preparation for the king’s coronation.
Sitting in a room and asking these shy young Bhutanese to speak English in front of their friends hadn’t worked very well. I’d sliced paper into strips and written topics on them I knew tourists, particularly American tourists, would be most likely to ask about. I’d call up a guide and ask him to choose one, and have him riff on it with me: “Why are there penises painted on the houses?” “How come the king has four queens?” “What will the new democracy mean for Bhutan?” “Why is Bhutanese food so spicy hot?”
The pupils clammed up under pressure to speak to a chatty foreigner in front of a group. The best way to warm these guys up, I figured—and most of them were guys—was to get them out of the dank, dark conference room. I asked the course leader if we could take a short field trip, to Kuzoo, a long two-block walk on the upper road. They all knew where it was, of course; everyone knew where everything was in Thimphu. They’d all just been too shy to go in for a visit—these same hardy young people who can set up and break down elegant campsites with ease in hours, and deftly navigate the bamboo woods and ancient trails of the most remote locations in their country simply by looking at the sky.
“Who wants to go to Kuzoo?” I asked. All hands flew up, and the enthusiasm wasn’t just because it meant getting outside. Our mob moved as a unit out to the street, and as we walked I made a couple of cell phone calls to be sure arriving en masse would be okay. “Five at a time,” I said, and I took them in, in small groups, doing my own best impersonation of tour guide. “You’re about to see the world’s only radio station in a kitchen.” I’d still not confirmed this to be true, but my pride in Kuzoo allowed for this reasonable conjecture.
Ngawang happened to be behind the board in the blue-tiled studio, and before I opened the door, I told the guys who we were going