Singing Legend in Bhutan

Bhutan's singing legend Yeshi Wangchuk was at the GNH conference in Paro last week. I know this is not even a news. He was singing those songs we heard on radio as a child, but not on the stage, rather near the refreshment tent when the guests passed by to sip their tea. It was painful to see our legend sing like a gypsy in the open to entertain the guests.

Worse was in the evening, when he had to sing as the guests were enjoying their dinner. He went on till the last person left the buffet, by then even random visitors like us finished eating. He and his musicians were the last to eat. I know he must have been paid for his service but personally I felt very bad.

I know it wouldn't make a difference but I walked up to him and requested a pictures together just to let the foreigners around know that he's an important person. But even if nobody noticed I felt better after seeing him happily pose with me.

Bloggers Conference in Paro

The Second Bloggers Conference held in Paro College on 25^th October 2015 was a huge milestone for the Community of Bhutanese Bloggers. We were able to bring the event to a magnificent campus, get a notable sponsor and draw a decent crowd.

Venue: Paro College of Education

Sponsor: National Airlines Drukair

Supporters: iBest Institute and Bank of Bhutan

Speakers: Karma Choden, Dorji Wangchuk, Nima Dorji and me

Format: 15 minutes speech with presentation followed by 10 minutes Q&A for each speaker

 

Attendance 

The event took a special place in my heart because it happened in Paro, my home ground for the first time. Every other event, formal and casual, related to bloggers had happened away from me in the past and I had to travel the longest. This time everyone travelled except me. We had bloggers attending from Wangdue, Trongsa, Tsirang and of course mostly from Thimphu.

I was given to talk on Social Media. I got excited because it was something I use each day more than the restroom. It was my cup of tea but when I sat down to write my 15 minutes speech I realized my cup of tea had no bottom. It was like the black hole and still growing.  

Then I decided to confess my ignorance about the depth of the subject and talk about how an ordinary person could use it each day to enrich our lives and things around us.

But I didn’t surrender easily because even the unknown could be defined as unknown, so I gave a brief background on the ever growing power of social media.

“A few years ago, only privileged individuals on TV and Radio could talk to thousands of people at a time, and people who wrote in newspapers were read by thousands, as a teacher I had the privilege of speaking to an assembly of over 700 students once every two month when I was the teacher on duty (TOD) but other than that our usual conversations were between two persons or a small group.
 Today, in the age of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and of course blogging each one of us is as privileged as a newspaper journalist or a TV anchor. Any minute we can take out our phone and write something that will be read anywhere in the world by the time we get out of this hall.
 There is a new dimension to social media that wasn’t there in mainstream media, which is the ability for your audience to respond to you and share your content among their friends. This new dimension works like nuclear power, thus making it the most powerful form of media.
 Social Media gives ordinary persons like you and me the means to influence the world from our toilet seat using a mobile device that can be held in one hand and operated with a thumb. Social Media has given each one of us the power that we don’t fully understand yet. This world will be a great place if this power was given selectively to all the good people but the bad news is it is given to everybody. “

I categorized people on earth into four groups, because as is on social media we are no more divided by geographical boundaries:

1. The Users, people who use social media as tools to do good
2. The Abusers, people who abuse social media as weapons to cause harm
3. The Clueless, People who don’t know what they are doing on social media and therefore become the victim.
4. The offliners, People who are not on social media.

I then described myself as a user who has thus far made the best out of social media. I told stories of my blog, my Groups and Pages on Facebook that are geared toward enriching our social lives and spreading positive energy and I fondly talked about Bhutan Toilet Organization that began on Facebook.

The speaker before me, Ms. Karma Choden spoke about Leadership of Self, the foundation of which was the words of his majesty the king;

“What we need is not a Leader to lead the Masses – we need Leadership of the Self.”

“How does Leadership of the Self – being better human beings – translate to a better world? “

“No one should be left behind. This we must achieve without waiting for some great leader or genius who may or may not ever emerge – we should instead seek to do so, each of us, on our own.”

And when I spoke of social media as power in our hands I could easily relate the leadership of self as the guiding principle each time we deicide to hit the post button.

The third speaker Mr. Nima Dorji, a lawyer and blogger, spoke on the thin line that exist between the Right to Reputation and Right to Freedom of Speech -that is the law on defamation. This topic was something everyone on social media must know at this time and age, because we really must know how far to push our freedom of speech into other’s right to reputation.

The final presenter Mr. Dorji Wangchuk, a senior journalist, blogger, professor and activist, talked about his model of journalism—The Middle Path Journalism. He boldly declared that our media is directionless at the moment. The journalist trained in different parts of the world imported the models and therefore even in one media house we could see various forms of voices. He took us down the historical journey of development of media in different parts of the world including Bhutan and shared with us how media in each region were shaped by history; by colonialism, civil war, the world wars, the cold war, the industrial revolution, etc. He then asked which country’s model would work for Bhutan, the country with entirely different history and values. Following is what he shared about varying values and I think this is a food for thought for the media fraternity, and for the blogger community.

Ê Western Values = rights, justice, equality, liberty, freedom

Ê Western Civilization = Individual

Ê Eastern Civilization = collective

Ê Bhutanese Values = tha damtsi (Commitments), tsam tsay (Contentment), maang and Za Saang (Community/Family), Nyinzhay (Compassion/Empathy), Lay Jumdray (Cause/Effect)   

Hon’ble Sangay Khandu, MP in National Council from Gasa moderated the conference and he was someone who could add value to every talk. More than anything I hold the highest regard for the man for being there in every little event, no matter how far, and spent his valuable time with us, and at times even paying for our lunch (lol).

At Drugyel Dzong!

To make the event even more memorable we headed to Drukgyel Dzong in the afternoon and spend quality time talking about life and history, until it became so cold and dark. Except for a few Paro College students and me the rest of them had to travel back to Thimphu and as we parted we decided that between this and the next conference in 2016 we should have an Annual Dinner in Thimphu. All the members of CBB are invited. It shall be after December 17.

At Drugyel Dzong, with our invention- The lamp!

My Adopted Sister Nima Chunda

My childhood has been interesting. Everyone who knew me as a boy has unforgettable stories to share. From the outside, they must have found it adventurous. But I have been trying to forget everything because there weren’t many beautiful moments I could cherish. I don’t want to be hateful. I want to be different.

My childhood was kind of a dirty street where only a few kind people had walked by and I mean the real kind ones whose kindnesses were compassionate and unconditional. Since I had only a few such people in my life I am going to begin writing about them, one by one.

1997, Paro: I was in junior high school fighting for attention. I would be in trouble every other day. I wasn’t scared of any form of punishment. It seemed like I enjoyed being punished. I was avoided like an infected dog. As a dirty village troublemaker, it was easy for people to hate me.

1996, Paro

Life would have been different if I was cute. It could have been forgivable if I was rich, or at least talented. I was miserable in studies, sports, music and everything that could have made life easy in junior school. I was rather into fighting most of the time. I would be beaten often, and if I survived I would have it from the teachers.

But there was one girl who looked at me differently. She was quiet and gentle. She was perhaps a little older than me or a little more matured. She'd told people that I was her adopted bother. I went numb when I heard that as if I had waited all my life to hear that. It was a culture in the '90s to adopt brothers and sisters but like I said you had to be special to be chosen. People were shocked that a gentle girl had accepted the most mischievous boy in the school as her brother. I was equally shocked.

From that day I began to hide from her, and whenever I was going to do anything undesirable I would scan the whole place to make sure she wasn't around. Soon people knew about this spell that worked on me and started using her name as key to controlling me.

Perhaps she must be the first girl to whom I spoke softly; I called her Aue Nima. Her name was Nima Chunda. When she called me to seat with her and share her lunch, I would be the quietest boy with all the decency that I didn’t know I had. People passing by would stop to confirm if it was really me. 

That summer, I didn’t have money to go home and she had heard that. She took me to her family and gave me three best days of my childhood until she got enough money to buy me tickets home. I had good food, slept in a soft bed, visited her relatives and watched endless movies. She would take me to videocassette shops and make me choose movies. Imagine the joy of getting to watch movies of your choice in the ’90s.

She would often send me her lunchbox so that I could taste better home-cooked food. She would call me by the riverside during the weekends and help me do my laundry. She would send me gifts and goodies. I was new to all these acts of kindness; I only saw those happen to other boys in the hostel. She made me feel like anyone in the hostel; wanted and normal. I suddenly began to see the world differently.

To this day I wonder how a small girl of her age had such a compassionate heart to care for me, who didn’t even have a cute smile to return. She was the best thing to happen to me in my junior school.

My mother would often ask, “Where is your Aue Nima now, what’s she doing?” and the last time she asked me I told her, “Aue Nima has become a nurse. She is in Thimphu Hospital. We are in touch.” My wife and daughter heard Aue Nima's story from me more than once and we met several times.

Today, when I could help a random person somewhere I remember Aue Nima, because I know the DNA was passed down from my adopted sister. 

Name-Changing Syndrome

How does changing a name help anything? Of course there is a traditional rural belief that when a child is sick for a long time changing the child's name helps. Often the child ends up with better health and a very funny name. But what about an institution's name?

My daughter and I

Today, I was sitting with my family by the river Pachhu, look at my former college from across the river. It's a nice place be over the weekend, watching the majestic Dzong, the Ta Dzong, a beautiful bridge, a river and a beautiful college campus, not to mention the endless paddies on the other side.

I seriously don't know what my former college was called when I was studying there; it could have been Paro College of Education (PCE) or National Institute of Education (NIE) but when I went home I had to tell my folks that I was studying in Teacher Training College (TTC) because that's the only name they understood.

TTC was the founding name and it's imprinted on the minds of everybody from that era, even the bridge that connected to airport road was named as TTC bridge. But over the time the college was renamed as NIE and everyone confused it with NIE in Samtse, because the founding name of Samtse College of Education was NIE.

The new name was slowly getting into the tongues of local people and perhaps people in the system themselves but suddenly one day the name was changed yet again. This time it was called Paro College of Education. It has been at least ten years now but the new name is popular only inside the campus and on the paper. Imagine an institution changing its name three times in its short history, what's so wrong with us? How credible are we?

In less than 20 years we have three different types of graduates from that same collage, one holding TTC certificate, another holding NIE certificate, and yet another holding PCE certificate. Technically speaking the former two groups of people are robbed of their history. Their college doesn't exist. It's understandable within the country but I wonder how it works in universities outside when they go for further studies.

That's the name-changing syndrome my college suffered and the syndrome is widespread in our country, it begins from ministries down to small branch offices, schools to colleges, villages to geogs, and even the words in the dictionary. What was your school called yesterday?

Journey of Terton Sherab Mebar’s Kudung (body)

In my last post, I have briefly narrated the history of Terton Sherab Mebar, the first known treasure discoverer to have set foot in Bhutan. As promised I will narrate the history of his kudung (body) that seemed to have a life of its own and created history and mysteries greater than the living Terton himself.

Because Terton Sherab Mebar went against the prophecy one too many times and compromised the whole divine mission he had been assigned to, his mission on earth seemed to have been terminated prematurely. He died in his thirties, leaving behind many unfinished works. He was supposed to visit Nub Tshonapatra seven times and discover treasures that will make our country rich in all times to come, but his first untimely attempt jeopardized everything.

Terton Sherab Mebar lived in Pangpisa after that life-threatening mission to Nub Tshonapatra when he was called to attend a big event in Baylangdra, Wangdue. Before leaving, he summoned the nine households in Pangpisa and asked them to bring him a stone that could fit in his palm. He was presented with a broken piece of stone. He asked if the stone was already in that shape or did the people break it into that shape to fit in his palm. He took it as a bad sign when he was told that the stone was a freshly broken piece. He told his nine patrons that the signs said he might not return alive from Wangdue and therefore instructed them to bring his body back to Pangpisa.

He squeezed the stone with his bare hands like wet clay and left his handprint on it. This stone with his handprint was one among many such rocks he left behind from different occasions. In fact, every household in Pangpisa owned one each besides the six that were in the temple. One was a chunk of gold he took from Pasakha during his failed mission of unearthing an endless supply of gold, silver and salt.

As foreseen, Terton Sherab Mebar died in Baylangdra, Wangude and the message reached Pangpisa. A group of men was sent to claim their Lam’s kudung (body) as wished by lam himself, but people in Baylangdra turned them away. They said it was the lam’s destiny to die in their village; therefore, the body must rest there.

The disappointed patrons of Pangpisa spied on Baylangdra ever since. They planned to strike during the harvest season when every able man from the village went on their annual alms seeking event. The temple where the kudung was preserved was guarded by a lame gomchen who couldn’t go with the rest. Men from Pangpisa waited for this moment, and without wasting any time, they barged into the temple and tied the lone gomchen onto a pillar, and to keep him from starving, they placed a huge pot of porridge at his reach to last through until the villager returned. Thus, the kudung was stolen and brought to Pangpisa.

There is no record of what happened after this event until centuries later, after Zhabdrung’s era. It was during Tshulthrim Namgyel’s (Popularly known as Penlop Haap) reign as the Parob or Paro Penlop (governor of Paro), that he asked the people of Pangpisa to hand over the kudung to the central government in Paro for better preservation. Paro was the centre of Western Region, then. He explained to the people of Pangpisa that the Kudung was a national treasure and the there could not be a better place for the kudung than Paro Rinpung Dzong. It could be safe from disasters and also secured from Tibetan invaders.

People of Pangpisa reluctantly consented to hand over the sacred remains to Paro Dzong, intending to secretly steal it back. The Kudung was stored in the Marchey of Paro Dzong, secured in a wooden box and sealed into the mud wall. No sooner did they give away the kudung, they began plotting to steal it back. They planted one of their local monks to spy and get access to the Marchey. The monk started chanting Dem, the prayer in the worship of Jetsun Dema, from day one. He made the entire Dzong believe that he was the best candidate to be the caretaker of Dema Lhakhang, the chamber in the Dzong dedicated to Jetsun Dema.

That was their first move; they wanted to get access into the Dema Lhakhang because beneath it was the Marchey where their lam’s kudung was kept. Meanwhile, some men from Pangpisa worked with blacksmiths in Paro Woochu to forge iron rods with hooks on one end, and the rest of the men worked on creating a proxy of Lam’s kudung using clay.

One day, when most elder monks were out of the Dzong for rituals, the team from Pangpisa sneaked into the Dzong with the proxy kudung and got straight into the Dema Lhakhang. They removed the floorings that were straight overhead the kudung and, using the iron rods, fished the box containing the kudung. Unfortunately, they discovered the box was too big for the narrow gap between horizontal beams running across under the floor. According to their plan, they were to lift the box into Dema Lhakhang, take out lam’s Kudung, replace it with the proxy and place back the box in the Marchey as if nothing had happened.

But their plan failed when they couldn’t lift the box through the beams. They then broke open the box in midair and tried to take out the kudung, but they found that even the kudung wouldn’t fit through the gap, except for the head. When they ran out of ideas and time, they decided to at least take something, if not the whole Kudung, so they cut off the head from the body and replaced it with the head of the proxy kudung. The box was sealed again and placed back.

For the next many years, no one knew about this high profile break-in, not until a fire disaster that razed down Paro Rinpung Dzong (Date to be confirmed), about which I couldn’t find any information yet. Penlop Haap Agay Haap was still in Power, and he was said to have jumped into the raging fire to save the kudung. Everyone thought he might have burned himself to death, but he came out of the fire with the box without so much as a blister and without even burning a single strand of his hair.

When they opened the box to assess the kudung, they found the head of the kudung had turned into earth. This saddened the Penlop, but he found that the rest of the body was intact upon further inspection. Then he knew that something was done with the head. He furiously tried to detach the clay head from the body but soon figured out that the clay head had merged with the body. It’s said that the clay head gradually turned into a real head and smiled at the Penlop. He lived with much regrets for not being able to ask anything when the kudung came alive for that brief moment.

Penlop Haap rebuilt Paro Rinpung Dzong and placed the kudung back in the Marchey of the new Dzong. However, he was told that the Dzong would be destroyed yet again in times to come. He, therefore, prayed to be reborn in Paro so that he could be the one to rebuild the Dzong again.

Ruins of Paro Dzong (1907) - Shared by Tshering Tashi

In 1907, when Paro Penlop Dawa Penjor was in power, Paro Rinpung Dzong suffered another major fire disaster. The penlop was said to have fainted twice, once when he was told about fire, and next then, he reached the Dzong and knew the Kudung could not be salvaged. So that was the end of the long journey of Pangpi Lam’s Kudung, across almost 700 years.

Penlop Dawa Penjor was believed to be the reincarnation of Penlop Haap, and it’s said that he always saw this coming. He had stored hundreds of strange balls stitched in animal hide, which looked like stone used in ancient weighing scales, in the fireproof basement of the Dzong.

Paro Penlop Dawa Penjor(?)

Later after the ashes cooled down, and when the entire officials were worried about the reconstruction and even planned to send people to India and Tibet for donation, Penlop Dawa Penjor told them not to worry about funds. He sent his men to collect the stones covered in leather from the basement. Confused men thought the Penlop was severely shaken by the fire incident; nonetheless, they presented hundreds of heavy balls to the penlop. He then cut open the leather covers and showed hundreds of football-sized balls of pure gold. He is said to have funded the entire reconstruction and most of the objects in the Dzong today were made of pure gold.

When the Dzong was completed, Penlop Dawa Penjor approached the people of Pangpisa to bring the sacred head relic of kudung for the consecration ceremony of the new Dzong. He promised the people that it would be returned in three days. Penlop Dawa Penjor was known for his honesty and integrity and when he approached, the people consented.

1914 Paro Dzong restored to by Penlop Dawa Penjor

On the third day of the consecration ceremony, birds hovered over the Dzong and made strange sounds; some birds fought overhead and dropped dead on the Dzong courtyard. Dawa Penjor immediately consulted his astrologer and found out that if he didn’t return the head relic to Pangpisa, there would be a threat to either his life or the safety of the Dzong. He returned the relic right away. It was later discovered that the people of Pangpisa had been performing deadly religious rituals for the safe return of their most priced treasure ever since the Penlop took it from them.

The sacred head relic was sealed in a box by Paro Penlop and opened once a year for public display during a major ceremony. The sealing after the ceremony was soon done by Woochu Drungpa. Trongsa Penlop Jigme Namgyal upon hear that ordered the boxed to be sealed using his seal because he didn't like the idea of Woochu Drungpa putting his unholy hands on the precious National Treasure. Woochu Drungpa was the official responsible for punishing criminals and had his hand in many executions. A certain Zimpon Sangay carried Jigme Namgyal's seal and sealed the box, never to be opened again.

It was only recently the seal was finally broken, and the sacred head relic was displayed for public viewing. It was said that the seal on the box was always called "Sangay's Seal" and many thought it was Buddha's seal (Sangay=Buddha). Later upon verification, they figured out that Sangay was Trongsa Penlop's Zimpon Sangay, who sealed the box on behalf of Trongsa Penlop Jigme Namgyal.

The Scared head was on display on the day I visited Ugyen Guru Lhakhang in Pangpisa. I just look at it for the longest time and wondered what a journey it underwent across almost 800 years.

Paro Penlop Dawa Penjor's wife's home in Paro Geptey, now converted into Heritage Museum

Disclaimer: There could be inconsistencies in the historical events and dates; therefore, I remain open to feedback and advice to make this thrilling narrative as close to fact as possible. 

The Best Public Toilet in the Country

If something is not good enough, go and change it. If you can’t change it, seek help but change it.

It was my turn to design a social service activity yesterday afternoon at the Royal Academy. My team knew I would certainly point at a toilet, because ever since I founded Bhutan Toilet Org I have been after toilets like Romeo.

Dr. Prabrat was after me for days, wanting me to plan the program in detail and on paper, in his very Oxford way but I assured him about how I had everything on my fingertips, after all it was a toilet we were talking about.

The plan was to whitewash the wall, scrub the pots and tiles, educate the caretaker and make the only public toilet in Paro town worth Nu.5 it charges per use.

I requested Dasho Dzongrab, Kinley Gyeltshen for approval and he in turn instructed Municipal authority to assist us. From the municipal we understood that Paro didn’t have a wet sweeper after the one they had, died. The current caretaker is an employee who is assigned toilet duty only on Sundays. The only sewage truck in the valley is broken down.

But I made it clear to the Executive Engineer of the Municipal office that we were going beyond complaining, by becoming a part of the solution, something I learnt from BCMD’s media nomad workshop last year.

The condition of the toilet however shocked my team; my worst description was just the tip of the shit-berg that even I, who made few inspections before, couldn’t believe. The door was locked with countless dents of break in attempts. There was a fresh poop right at the door. No portion of the wall was spared from doma stains. The two sinks and four toilet pots were coated with thick layer of deposits. God knows how some poop went right up on the wall. The only remaining two flush tanks were filled with bottles and sanitary pads. The caretaker used the useless bathrooms for scrap collection. The worst was what lies behind the toilet; all the connections to septic tank were blocked and therefore sewage has been overflowing straight into open drain for years. The drains have eventually disappeared under overgrowth and you can see fresh yellow all over the green.

Any logical person with authority would recommend demolishing of the out-of-hand eyesore standing in between taxi stand and vegetable market, two populated areas. But we were there to rescue it. We whitewashed the wall first and our artist Nima Tshering wrote “A Clean Toilet!” and that was what we went there for.

The Driving Force

The 14 of us dug, swept, brushed, scrubbed, and washed in our effort to make this toilet worth paying Nu.5. After three hours the inside of the toilet started glittering but tones of poop behind the toilet didn’t seem like something we could deal with.

God Knows, how this could happen

The only institution that could help was fire department of the Police. We made a few calls and big red fire truck appeared. Three rounds it took to wash down the whole history of shits in Paro. The three firefighters went out of their ways to help us. We can never thank them enough.

Help from Police Department

The clean toilet that we aspired was ready. But in two days we didn’t want all our effort to be covered in shit. Municipal already said they were running short of manpower to look after the toilet. But the executive engineer readily agreed to allow us to hand it over to some organization that could take better care of it. That’s when my team thought of Chithuen Phenday Association, with whom we share close ties. We called them over to consider our proposal and right there standing near the toilet Paro Municiapl Authority agreed to handover, and Chithuen Phenday agreed to takeover. The orphan toilet finally got adopted and hence it will be open throughout the week and a gate will open to taxi stand too. Anybody misusing the public property will be held responsible and if the culprits are not found then the association will be help responsible.

The toilet will be handed over formally in few days after the plumbing damages are fixed but ownership and accountability are transferred with immediate effect. Paro will hereafter have the best Public toilet in the country. Other Dzongkhags are encouraged to follow the Paro model or innovate better strategies to make their public toilets less terrifying.

Here we Go! 

The Royal Academy would like to thank Dasho Dzongrab, the Police Department in Paro, Paro Municipal Authority and Chithuen Phenday Association for coming together for a cause. Together we did it.

And I personally would like to express my greatest appreciations to my colleagues Nima Tshering, Pema Chhomo, Sonam Ura, Dr. Prabrat, Sangay Wangchuk, Deki Pem, Sonam Palden, Ben, Hemant, Penjor Ghalley, Karma Tenzin, Ram Dahal, and Tshering Nidup for job well done. You guys cleaned the hardest shit!

Following are some memories we cleaned and washed away: