Book Scene Flourishes in Bhutan
THIMPHU, Bhutan— Not long ago, when Bhutan’s government tried to enroll children in school, parents hid them in the attic and bribed government agents with butter and cheese to go away. Families needed their children as field hands. But just a few generations later, this tiny Himalayan kingdom has changed. Literacy is now around 60 percent, compared with 3 percent in the 1950s — giving rise to a surprising literary scene.
The number of bookshops is increasing; there are around a dozen in the capital, Thimphu. Bhutanese writers are publishing books. And each August, Bhutan hosts an international literary festival. For a remote country of less than a million people squeezed between China and India, it’s a delicate dance of letting in outsiders without getting overwhelmed.
Historically, Bhutan has sealed itself off, a Shangri- La nestled in the highest mountain range in the world. Before the 1960s, few foreigners set foot here; it was only in 1999 that television was allowed. The old ways are fading — you can see it in the haze of pollution over Thimphu, and in the young, unemployed men wearing traditional long robes, who have drifted in from the countryside, trapped between two worlds.
The new generation of Bhutanese writers see themselves as guardians of their nation’s culture. Many are in their 30s and 40s, and love to remi- nisce about growing up in villages without radios or even roads, wearing traditional clothes and eating traditional foods (such as hard cubes of yak cheese).
Tshering Tashi, a writer and co- director of the Mountain Echoes Literary Festival, said, “Our foremost job is to record.” Mr. Tashi, 45, is determined to track down the last of the traditional shamans — the custodians of Bhutanese legends — and write their stories before they die. He hiked two weeks into the mountains to find a hermit who had been living by himself for 70 years.
Gopilal Acharya, 40, is a poet who, like most Bhutanese writers, writes in English because that is what he studied in school. He wrote a book of children’s tales that celebrate a way of life where even today people till fields with oxen and wooden plows.
Mr. Acharya is considered one of his country’s most talented writers. But he still works as a consultant on sanitation issues. “I don’t want to be doing fecal management,” he said. “I live to write. But I need to make mon- ey.” Just about all the writers here are self-published.
Every August, dozens of writers from the United States, Europe and other parts of Asia arrive for the Mountain Echoes festival. This year, Sarah Kay, a successful American spoken-word poet, was one of the bigger draws. The Bhutanese contingent seem to enjoy the spectacle but most have no urge to leave. “It’s so hectic over there,” Mr. Tashi said, referring to the West. He spent three months in New Jersey at Princeton University. “There was never any time for reflection or contemplation.”
Chador Wangmo, one of Bhutan’s favorite novelists, said some of her fondest memories are from long winters as a child, when snow kept schools shut for months and the children sat around the fire, listening to the elders’ tales. “Those stories were our only source of entertainment,” she said. Ms. Wangmo’s books explore old superstitions, juxtaposed with contemporary themes. Her novel “Kyetse” is a Dickensian tale of a woman trafficked across Bhutan.
Lately, Ms. Wangmo, 38, has been interrogating her grandmother, Pema Dema, about the stories the elders used to tell. Ms. Dema, well into her 70s, questions why they should be remembered at all. She said: “There was never enough food, it was so cold, we had no shoes, we walked long distances for water.”
“Today compared to that,” Ms. Dema added, “is almost like paradise.”
From 3 percent literacy to throwing literary festivals.