The descent to Paro airport is a thrilling, bendy glide between two large and exceeding solid hills; as I watched the lovely landscape undulating through the plane window a fellow passenger, another writer, noted glumly that if the pilot suddenly had a lapse in concentration a large chunk of Indian Literature in English would be lost. This made me wonder if anyone would even notice, but I was clearly being uncharitable: David Davidar and Shobhaa De were on the same flight, so I'm sure our tragic, scenic deaths would have merited some coverage. Later I learned there were several Bollywood people on the same flight; we might even have made Page One.
Film discussions too
The second edition of Mountain Echoes, the Indo-Bhutanese literary festival, was a big hit among all concerned; there was something for everyone. If the standard serious discussions on Indian writing and publishing didn't float your boat, there were film discussions, Bhutanese literature, politics and culture, art and poetry.
On the literary front, the panels I enjoyed most even when I didn't really understand a lot of what was being said were the panels on Bhutanese language and literature, and the challenge that recreating these in a written English context presented to a new generation of Bhutanese writers. Dzongkha is a beautiful language, and it didn't hurt at all that we mostly heard it in poetry or song, rolling through the halls like mountain mist. Not unlike us, they have songs for everything; an enthralling half-hour was spent listening to sections from a house-building song, a multilayered, gentle tune rendered in Kencho Lham's amazing voice from the stage and rounded off by a spontaneous audience chorus, a song that was supposed to go on all through the process of construction. No wonder the houses in Bhutan are beautiful.
The real reward for everyone who went from India, even more than the festival, was Bhutan; the country and its people. I'm a profoundly soulless person, but after five days looking at mountains and streams, causing a significant dent in the yak population and just breathing their air, I was dangerously close to writing poetry. The Indian contingent descended upon Thimpu like a horde of marauding Visigoths; a lot of the senior journalists were mostly determined to prove that behind the smiling mask of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness lay a dark, desperate misery; for some reasons, the ever-smiling royals, aristocrats, politicians and senior government officials they met over the next few days were unable to satisfy their demands for harsher realities.
In the very first session, between telling us about her journey across Bhutan on foot that led to her recent book and hard-selling Indian ambassador and festival preside-in-chief Pavan Varma's new novel, Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wanchuk warned us not to over-market GNH; it's a fragile, philosophical concept, not a unique selling proposition.
And the festival, as a whole, was largely free of a lot of the over-enthusiastic networking that larger literary gatherings are notorious for. It was possible to see major publishers, authors and film directors walking about without a rugby-scrum-like horde of attached people looking to make a sale. Perhaps this is because Bhutan is a magical land; during the course of my adventures, I even met a well-behaved chihuahua.
The only real mob I witnessed during the trip was a legion of Indian Army wives who all wanted their picture taken with the ever-gracious but somewhat alarmed Imtiaz Ali. They love Bollywood in Bhutan; strangely enough for such a peaceful nation, they're crazy about Salman Khan. “There's just something about him, you can tell he's a good man,” explains the trendy young owner of Thimpu's poshest coffee place, Karma Coffee. “Bhutan and Salman go well together.” Perhaps he reminds them of the yeti.
One of the phrases you cannot go to a sub-continental literary gathering involving more than four people without hearing is “A blend of tradition and modernity.” It's a very convenient phrase that can be used for anything from literary definitions to drinking games, but it's also a phrase that can be used to describe many of the lovely young Bhutanese people I met: writers, filmmakers, politicians, journalists. They live between their ancient, stunning country and the savage, loud world outside with remarkable panache. When you see them looking forward to slipping out of their formal national costume and into snazzy designer clothes to hang out with you at a trendy bar, you think you know them.
But when a few hours later, you're driving about in the dark forested hills outside Thimpu listening to stories alternately about high-society scandals and mountain spirits and demons that they honestly believe in, you realise you're in the presence of something far more complex and interesting than cross-border similarities.
Cool Prime Minister
Even the Prime Minister, a distressingly cool gentleman we met on our last day, told us how he used be a long-haired, jeans-wearing rebellious youth, and how strange he felt to now find himself a soldier for tradition. Asked about how young people were coping with television and other grossly unhappy-making effects of the 21st century, he smiled and shook his head. “It's a phase, and they'll outgrow it,” he said. “We're Bhutanese in the end.”
