Bhutan NOvelists Story Resembles Her Own

Coming full circleBHUTAN’S FIRST FEMALE NOVELIST WRITES A STORY THAT STRANGELY RESEMBLES HEROWN. AVIJIT GHOSH REPORTSAt the age of nine, Kunzang Choden trudged 12 days on foot and on horsebackthrough dense jungles and splendid mountains in the daytime and slept insidenarrow caves at night. She was on her way to school.It was the Fifties. Bhutan, almost an isolated Himalayan kingdom till then,had hesitantly opened its doors to modern education. Till then, mostly boysreceived religious education in the Buddhist monasteries. But now, asgovernment schools opened up, education became accessible to all. Girls toocould attend these schools.But Kunzang’s father had a more radical idea. A prosperous farmer in centralBhutan’s Bumthang district, he decided to send his daughter to a convent ineastern India. The villagers thought he was crazy. For a society whereeducation was almost synonymous with men and religion, the idea of sending adaughter to school abroad was unheard of, almost sacrilegious. But Kunzang’sfather knew what he was doing.So one fine day, they set her off on an arduous trek to St Joseph’s School,Kalimpong. Kunzang even had a retinue of servants, and, hold it!, atranslator, for company. Cooking their own food, dancing around campfiresand listening to the sound of the wind, it was like a happy Long Marchtowards the unknown. “I didn’t even know where I was going. I only knewIndia as the land Buddha came from,” recalls Kunzang, whose just-releasedwork of fiction, The Circle of Karma (published by Zubaan/Penguin), makesher Bhutan’s first woman novelist.Over four decades later, the 52-year-old author still carries vivid memoriesof that childhood odyssey. Some journeys lead you to new worlds. Kunzang’strek through the mountains altered the course of her life forever. But thewalk can also be seen as a metaphor for Bhutan’s movement towards the modernworld.In The Circle of Karma, the protagonist Tsomo, a 15-year-old girl from aremote village, too undertakes a journey that changes her life. Like theauthor, she travels to India. Like Kunzang, she too loses her mother at anearly age. And, like the writer, she finally goes back to Bhutan. Many firstnovels are autobiographies, thinly-veiled as fiction. But Tsomo, says thewriter, is not Kunzang Choden. “You create a character. And then, facts getinter-woven,” she says softly.There’s a mountain unspoiltness about Kunzang. She speaks in a low,unhurried voice. And it reflects in her writing. The Circle of Karma isleisurely-paced. It doesn’t dazzle you with similes. Instead, it gentlyguides you like a child into Tsomo’s changing world and earns your empathy.Like her heroine, Kunzang too has seen the Land of the Thunder Dragon changefrom a feudal, agrarian, subsistence economy to a fledging market-drivensociety. These twists and turns impacted every area of Bhutanese life. Thenovel maps these changes and tries to capture them in a microcosm. “Tsomorepresents many Bhutanese women who were born in the Thirties and Fortiesand felt strongly deprived of education. She represents a generation,” saysthe writer.Kunzang’s generation of Bhutanese women were hesitant pioneers battlingsocial and cultural odds as they stepped out of home and entered the worldof learning. A generation that paved the way for the new millenniumBhutanese women. In the tiny Himalayan kingdom today, girls constitute 30per cent of the total enrolment in institutes of technical education. Inprimary schools, 46.8 per cent students are girls. The maternal mortalityrate has fallen from 7.7 (1984) to 2.5 (2000) per 1,000. An astounding 68per cent of those who benefitted from the government’s non-formal educationprogramme are women. “And there are many women entrepreneurs in theretailing business,” says Kunzang, who also writes on women’s issues.It was a different world, though, when Kunzang landed up in the Kalimpongconvent run by Irish nuns. For someone who only spoke Bumthang Kha, herlocal Bhutanese dialect, sitting in a class full of younger and brighterchildren from a different social and cultural background and being taughtevery subject in English was a disorienting experience.Back in Ogyencholing village, she was the only girl in the small villageschool her father had set up. There she learnt the classical Tibetanlanguage. As a preparation for her east India trip, her father found her atutor who knew the English alphabets. “After we finished learning A to Z, hetaught us how to repeat them backwards. That’s all he knew,” she laughs.It wasn’t the best of preparations. The nuns put her in the kindergartenclass where everybody else was so junior that she felt “like a mother” tothe rest of the students. Kunzang recalls feeling self-conscious all thetime. She says, “I wanted to blend. But I stood out. However, thingsimproved with time. And looking back, I have never regretted being there.”After finishing school from Darjeeling — she had moved to Loreto Convent bythen — Kunzang went to Indraprastha College (IP), Delhi. Convent wascontrolled and protected but college meant freedom. Being on the Feminacover for being chosen as Miss IP 1973 was part of the fun. Kunzang recallsthe event with a degree of amusement. During the competition, she was askedwhat a lady would do if she stood before a puddle wearing a long dress.“Being a mountain girl I immediately said that I would jump over it. It wasn’t very ladylike. But I guess, they overlooked that,” she laughs.Back in Bhutan after getting a degree in psychology, Kunzang taught at aprimary school in Bumthang and also sent development reports for thenewly-established radio station. What she missed most was books. For acountry rich in oral tradition, the printed word was limited to religioustexts. There was little fiction or secular literature to read in Bhutanese.Writing — be it corresponding with her friends, or, just for pleasure — wasan important part of her existence. But penning fiction or collecting folktales wasn’t part of her scheme of things then.But being married to a Swiss — they met in Bumthang where he was working ona rural development project — and having three children who were unsureabout their cultural identity made her realise the importance of tellingthem the folk tales of Bhutan. What began as a mother’s concern slowlyevolved into a larger enterprise. Collecting these tales that had survivedthrough generations of grandmothers and putting them on paper for everyoneto enjoy became her driving passion. The outcome: two books on Bhutanesefolk tales.“Folk tales, oral traditions and women’s issues — these are my key areas ofinterest,” says Kunzang, who also has a degree in sociology from theUniversity of Nebraska. Studying sociology has helped her understand howwomen were made to carry out a sustenance role through much of Bhutanesehistory. How a sly male interpretation of Buddhist texts prevented womenfrom accessing the religious scriptures. And how, shorn of knowledge, thedestiny of Bhutanese women was never in their own hands.Since then, as Kunzang takes pride in telling you, a lot has changed. In thecivil service, 16 per cent are women. In Bhutan today, most major decisionson family matters are jointly made by husband and wife. “And we do notsuffer many of the gender-based discriminations such as dowry deaths orhonour killings as are endured by our south Asian sisters,” says the writer,now working on a book tentatively titled, Chilly and Cheese, Food andSociety in Bhutan.That’s not to say Bhutan is free of gender-related prejudices. Only that acountry which had opened its door to women’s education merely five decadesago has made rapid strides in female empowerment.Kunzang Choden’s own journey on those perilous mule paths paved the way formany Bhutanese women. Just as her novel might spur a bunch of wannabe womennovelists in the Land of the Thunder Dragon.http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050403/asp/look/story_4562286.asp