Bhutan: Modern literature
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Bhutan Echoes Literature Festival
2024
August 16, 2024: The Times of India
Bhutan’s queen mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck dons many hats. Despite her many royal duties, she is passionate about social causes and an accomplished author. As patron of Bhutan Echoes, she is helping put the Himalayan kingdom’s literature and arts on the global map. In an interview with Anandita De, the 69-year old spoke about her work and why gross domestic happiness is a ‘ruling’ priority
The Bhutan Echoes Literature Festival celebrates literature as well as the arts. What are your future plans for this event?
When I started Bhutan Echoes (it was called Mountain Echoes back then) in collaboration with then Indian ambassador Pavan Kumar Varma, there was hardly anyone who wrote in English. Content was only written in our own language, so I wanted to broaden the scope of the event to more writers and readers, more lovers of words, which has happened in the course of these last 13 years. Today, what I envision for Bhutan Echoes is for it to go international, so that we can showcase our local talents on a global level. This is my dream and endeavour.
How do you stay connected with the people of Bhutan?
I feel it’s my moral duty. I’ve been blessed to be in this (royal) position and I can’t just let it go to waste. I have to understand the people — their aspirations, their dreams, their ground realities. That’s why, over 20 years ago, I walked into many villages on foot. Some of those journeys — crossing mountain passes and braving inclement weather — took me three weeks. I used to sometimes walk for over 10-11 hours a day. I’ve lost toenails, had blisters but I would go meet people, live with villagers, eat with them.
Most of your time is invested in improving lives through the Tarayana Foundation, for which you won the Pope Francis charity and leadership award. Tell us about the work it does.
At the Tarayana Foundation, we have been helping those experiencing financial difficulties through housing schemes, scholarships, training, production, marketing of rural products and financial support, as well as raising awareness of global warming and working extensively to preserve national parks and wildlife corridors. We are also into water preser- vation because water has become a huge and precious commodity not only in Bhutan but the world over. We make micro finance available to villagers in remote areas to help them improve their livelihoods. We are also looking into poverty in urban areas since the hopes of people who come into the city aren’t totally fulfilled. And therein lies the need for Tarayana Foundation to address these challenges in the future. Currently, we are working in over 600 villages in Bhutan. Our motto is service from the heart and respecting the people that serve.
You have authored three books. Each work is distinct in nature yet has a co-relation to Bhutan’s development. What drives you to write and which one did you enjoy writing the most?
The first ‘Rainbows and Clouds’ was a biography of my father, Yab Ugen Dorji. He was turning 70 and I wanted to record his memories. It’s an ode to him and I’m glad I did it because I captured his way of life in Bhutan which is lost now. I really enjoyed writing this book and capturing the essence of ‘his’ Bhutan. The second book (‘Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan’) is part-travelogue and part-memoir, and aims to introduce Bhutan to the world. It comes through all my experiences and all my journaling as I travelled from village to village. The third/ last book (‘Dochula: A Spiritual Abode in SBhutan’), is very special for me because it talks about the 108 stupas in Dochula Pass and that was when His Majesty (former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck) led his army into a war in 2003. I wrote the book so that he comes home victorious, and then I also built a temple and established a festival. It is to say thank you to the King and honour his work and sacrifices.
How important is a festival like Bhutan Echoes for today’s youth, especially in this age of social media and AI?
Books are different from AI as there’s a feeling of connection and getting to know one another — they come from the heart. We celebrate all forms of art and literature as we experience it together.
Bhutan is known for its high happiness index worldwide. And as honorary president of Sherubtse College, Bhutan’s oldest and most respected institution of higher learning, you take a keen interest in youth and gender-related discussions. What are the measures to deal with next-gen struggles in Bhutan?
There is a great need to fulfil aspirations of our youth, and we have to make sure that the youth stay and serve in Bhutan. This initiative has been initiated by His Majesty, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. He has started something called the Desuung project and now, he’s starting the Gyalsung programme. Youth who turn 18 have to join the Gyalsung and get trained in different arts and skills. They’re also trained to be tough, almost like a militia, in order to make them aware of who they are and where they’re going. Another project is the mindfulness city in Gelephu that is going to take us into a new realm of prosperity.
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Neelam Raaj, August 26, 2024: The Times of India
The Bhutanese people might be tired of being asked about how happy they are but every August, when a bunch of well-known Indian and international authors, publishers and journalists arrives at Paro airport for a literature festival called Bhutan Echoes, they invariably end up with a smile on their faces. It’s not just relief at landing safely on one of the most difficult runways in the world and the fresh air, but also the prospect of what lies ahead.
Besides breathtaking mountain vistas, bubbling streams fluttering prayer flags, Thimphu, the capital of the Himalayan kingdom, has become host to a quieter, more thoughtful annual literature and arts festival quite unlike the schmooze-fests that some of its Indian counterparts have turned into. Where else would you find an inaugural session on death and reincarnation? On a stage that resembled a cosy living room, Bhutan’s Queen Mother Gyalyum Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck and Meru Gokhale, veteran editor and publisher, discussed how the Bhutanese have a more natural relationship with death. Unlike westerners, they think about death many times a day and funerals are 21-day affairs. Sounds strange for a country whose guiding principle is GNH (Gross National Happiness) rather than GDP but accepting the inevitable can also be a route to contentment. The session did have its lighter moments with an audience member sharing a story of being smacked by a ghost who looked like Lady Diana.
The festival, which started as Mountain Echoes under the aegis of the India Bhutan Foundation, has had a rebirth too and is now known as Bhutan Echoes: Drukyul’s Literature and Arts Festival. Along with a broader canvas that includes cultural heritage along with literature, it has acquired a more local flavour. Discussions ranged from the growing exodus of young Bhutanese to foreign shores to an examination of what being Bhutanese meant. “It means eating a lot of chilli,” one participant joked, and anyone who has tried their national dish, ema datshi, will probably agree.
The litfest has certainly spiced up the country’s literary scene. “In an age where it’s difficult to tear youngsters away from TikTok, the festival has played a big role in encouraging print,’’ says Kelly Dorji, model, actor, author, artist and the owner of Bhutan’s first gastropub. “Before this, bookshops were shutting down and aspiring writers had no avenue to express themselves. It has given storytellers the confidence to write and several of them have since self-published their books,” says Dorji.
Mita Kapur, founder of Siyahi, which is a Jaipur-based literary consultancy and producer of the festival in its early years, has seen the transformation first-hand. “During my first visit in 2009, there were just one or two bookshops, and I would go through shelf after shelf to find out who is writing and whether there are any publishers. There was Kunzang Choden, the first Bhutanese woman to write a novel in English in 2005, but mostly people would get their books printed at the local printers and stock them in cafes and other stores,” says Kapur, who saw this as a challenge. “It wasn’t just about organising a festival in which writers from outside gathered. We engaged with schools and initiated the culture of book clubs to encourage the reading habit.” To her surprise, the beginnings of a literary scene emerged. “And then one year, I found that there were four bookstores and beautiful writing coming out of Bhutan,” says Kapur, who also introduced sessions in the nation- al language Dzongkha, poetry and a local version of standup comedy.
Teacher-turned-author Chador Wangmo started writing in 2012 when there was hardly anyone who wrote in English. “I grew up in eastern Bhutan, very close to the border with India, and my uncle and aunt had a bookshop some distance away, but I literally lived there because I loved reading. Like most Indian children, I grew up on a diet of Amar Chitra Katha and Phantom comics, but I never thought I could write,” says Wangmo. It was when she started working as an English teacher in Bhutan that she realised that there were no Bhutanese folktales the kids could read. She started writing illustrated books for children to document Bhutan’s rich oral storytelling tradition. “I knocked on the doors of many printers but the only question I got was, ‘Is it a guidebook for board exams?’ That was the only thing selling so they didn’t want any Bhutanese stories.” But Wangmo didn’t give up. She self-published the children’s book and a novel titled ‘La Ama’ in memory of her mother who died of cancer. “I just printed 2,200 copies of the novel and didn’t really expect to sell any, but it was sold out in two months. There were even pirated versions which I was very angry about but decided to take it as a compliment.”
But it was taking part in the Bhutan literature festival as a speaker that gave her the confidence to put her photo on the book cover for the reprint. She has also given children the first female Bhutanese superhero, Dema. “The festival gave me wings,” says Wangmo, who now runs a bookstore in Thimphu. In a city that has no traffic lights, there seems to be no stopping the march of its literary scene.
