For three days, the hills of Bhutan — or more precisely the town of Thimphu — quiet, beautiful and green, came alive not with the sound of music but the sound of literature and reading, with the conversation of authors and readers.
There was music too, just as there was archery (a national sport), food and drink (with the national dish, cheese and chillies, having pride of place) and animated discussions on the nature of Gross National Happiness, Bhutan's signature ‘export' that has had much of the world talking about exactly what it is.
Mountain Echoes, the appropriately named literary festival at which these discussions took place, was the first ever literary celebration in a country just beginning to come to an awareness of its literary potential and just taking the first hesitant steps into transforming from an oral culture to one that also values print.
Organised by Siyahi (the Jaipur-based literary consultancy), with support from the Indo Bhutan Foundation, Pavan Varma, India's ambassador to Bhutan and a well known writer himself, and the indomitable Namita Gokhale, writer and co-director of the Jaipur Literary Festival, Mountain Echoes began life with a lucky charm (or several lucky charms) hanging over its head. The second Mountain Echoes literary festival, to be held in May 2011, will focus on many themes like the need and importance of preserving languages, oral traditions, the contemporary art of science fiction, story writing, ballads and fantasy fiction, among others.
Packed audiences
And the luck held throughout. With some eight sessions a day, each one in some way involving an Indian and a Bhutanese writer, the festival opened to packed audiences and held their attention. Supplementing the largely local audience were Indian writers and journalists, as well as others who had flown out on business or simply to combine a bit of tourism with literature, or to research the potential of joint projects between the two countries.
After the opening speeches — short and crisp — by the Queen Mother and the Prime Minister, it was poetry that paved the way to the festival. Recited in English, Dzongkha, Urdu and Khasi, the poems were eloquent testimony to the potential of literature to cross borders; even if the words escaped the listeners, their inherent music and their deep meanings somehow touched everyone in the room.
It's not every day that royalty, politicians, academics and bureaucrats attend literary festivals or, indeed, speak at them. Some of the most interesting sessions at Mountain Echoes were those in which Bhutanese authors spoke about their work. In a session entitled Bhutan: the Inner Self, Dasho Karma Ura, of the Centre for Bhutan Studies, spoke with Indian writer Omair Ahmed about Padmasambhava or the second Buddha, credited with having brought Buddhism to Bhutan. At another, as Gulzar (a bit hit in Bhutan because of Bollywood) recited his poetry and Pavan Varma translated, Her Majesty the Queen listened with rapt attention and every now and again stood up to applaud, a standing ovation that took both Indians and Bhutanese — many of whom have studied in colleges in India and understand some Hindustani — into its fold.
Kunzang Choden, one of Bhutan's best known authors and among the earliest to be published outside Bhutan, spoke on the subject of women's writing pointing to the great silence of women's lives and the enormous challenge that posed for writers in a society where there was not only low literacy and an emphasis on orality, but also no real tradition of secular writing or publishing. “How will new writers come up,” she asked, “where will they find the language and the opportunity?”
Links with India
It was in this sense that the links with India became important, for India provided a sympathetic and supportive space for writers to publish, and books from India could enter Bhutan via both the land and air routes, and be made available at relatively reasonable prices. Namita Gokhale pointed to other connections that could transcend borders and offer rich spaces for discussion. She suggested a future focus perhaps on literatures of the Himalayan region, something that would allow Bhutan's rich tradition of folk tales to take their rightful place besides those of other hill regions, and would also offer the potential to share similar and different stories. Indeed, one of the most well received sessions of the festival was a discussion on folk tales and folk literature, with Bulbul Sharma, Kunzang Choden, and Siok Sian Pek Dorji of the Centre for Media and Democracy.
An awareness of the commonalities of hill regions also made space for discussions on the northeast of India and Bhutan, with writers like Sanjoy Hazarika and Patrick French whose work on Younghusband is well known in Bhutan. Other areas of discussion included blogging, with leader of the opposition Tshering Tobgay speaking about the subject, on film, on music, on archery and poetry. Dasho Kinley Dorji, Managing Director and Editor in Chief of Kuensel, the national newspaper, spoke on the subject of Gross National Happiness.
All in all, the three days packed in a considerable amount of discussion, and sales of books of participating writers were brisk. Perhaps the most important, and humbling, thing was to see how important the craft of writing is in the enterprise of fashioning a self, whether it is an individual self of a ‘national' one, as many Bhutanese writers are doing. For Indians, particularly privileged middle class Indians, who have taken a healthy writing and publishing environment for granted, this was something of a revelation, as was the fact of the significant and supportive role India can play — as long as we remember that being Big Brother or Big Sister means being open and inclusive.
Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of Kali for Women.
