Buttertea at Sunrise (4 page)

‘You come again,’ Pema repeats, and as I head into the wet murkiness of the monsoon night, I clutch her words like a lifeline.

Back in my classroom, alone and tucked under my mosquito net, the cheerful voices and reassurance of Pema’s home are quickly replaced by a miserable emptiness. Images of my room at home, the comfort of my bed in the corner below the slanted wood ceiling, and the honking of Canada geese drifting in through the window start circling in my mind. Suddenly, I feel the barren silence of Mongar’s cement walls as acutely as if they were touching me. The candle flickers tenuously while a squad of flies, mosquitoes and who knows what swirls around my head. I blow out the candle and crawl deeper into my sleeping bag. In the darkness, I listen to the mosquitoes’ concert and wonder if the fleas are already marching in.

I wake up in the middle of the night. A loud alarm is going off right beside my ear. I reach for the flashlight but still see nothing. The threatening, shrill buzzing sound continues, and I clamber from underneath my mosquito net to investigate the state of emergency. Ready to grab my 27

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passport and my diary, I plan my escape. Then as abruptly as it began, the noise disappears.

I light a candle and stare at the ceiling. Immediately the black beetle I noticed earlier resumes its mission, throwing itself headlong into the walls. The rain continues to play drums on the roof, and eventually I fade off into a restless sleep.

The next morning, the rain continues. It is the middle of June, and the monsoon has just begun. I was told to expect it to last for at least three months.

My quarters smell musty and mouldy, and within a few hours, my belongings feel damp. My hair hangs limply in my face, and my skin itches all over.

Outside, the noise of the construction site fills the air.

Most insistent of all is an endless cacophony of hammers.

It is not a noise one gets used to and ignores. The uneven racket pierces the ears, and sets up a disturbing vibration in the skull, hitting on the most sensitive nerve.

Now and then, there are loud shouts in Bengali or Hindi.

I guess they are orders, instructions, or perhaps even a greeting. Then, somewhere in the mist, a generator springs to life, roaring and sputtering as the diesel fuel fills the chambers.

When the rain eases, I slide a few steps towards the hospital. A huge scar of bare soil gapes to the right of the main building. In its middle, waving metal rods pierce the concrete foundations of two new buildings. Amongst an apparent chaos of heaps of stones, old oil drums and piles of sand sit women, children and old men, hunched on the ground, patiently beating heavy axe-size hammers onto blocks of stone. Clunk, clunk… clunk, clunk… the sound reverberates between sheets of mist. Mechanically, driven by a force astounding for such skinny arms and slender 28

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shoulders, they turn boulders into rocks, then stones and then pebbles. One huge piece successfully crumbled, the next one is rolled forward and thrashed with the same unremitting stubbornness, until all that is left is a pile of gravel.

One of the women turns her head and stares at me long and hard. Her simple, orange sari is mud-caked. The loose end is wrapped over her head as if to protect her from the wetness and misery all around. On her arms a few bangles clink together, singing a cheerless tune. Beside her, a boy of maybe twelve years does not bother to look up. He feverishly attacks his rocks; perhaps his speed interrupts the monotony. Feeling sad and guilty for my own idleness, I turn to follow the ‘new’ road leading to the bazaar.

The muddy lane snakes up and to the left around a hilltop, and having reached its highest point, abruptly ends in the middle of a huge green field – a football field. Maybe a hundred metres ahead and raised up on an embankment five or six metres high, Mongar’s bazaar oversees the valley behind me. The far edge of the football field also offers an unobstructed outlook over Mongar Hospital. Below a protruding hilltop, which serves as an emergency helicopter pad, the green roof of the hospital is sheltered amongst big leafy trees. The building is designed in a square, hollowed by an enclosed courtyard, with the glassy dome of the operation theatre sticking up in the far corner. Behind the hospital, the road disappears in the trees and emerges further down at an open space, lined with many separate staff buildings. Construction noise fills the air.

I cross the field and arrive at a set of steep steps at the base of the bazaar’s fortification. The houses of the bazaar line a muddy road cut into the hillside. There are three ‘hotels’

for ‘Fooding and Lodging’, and shops open their doors on the ground floors of the remaining buildings. Every shop 29

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has a number and a name printed in bold white letters on a blue sign. The upper words must be written in Dzongkha, the beautiful Bhutanese script. Underneath English translations inform me about the shop and its owner: Shop No. 4, Dechen Lhendrup; Shop No. 6, Karma Yeshey;

Shop No. 7, Dorji Choden. Unsure of whether to turn to Dechen, Karma or Dorji, I postpone my shopping for a closer inspection.

The buildings are magnificent works of art. Wooden beams frame white stones, and the second floor projects like a gallery, supported on wooden pillars. Trefoil-style window frames are carved in smooth arches, painted with flowers, jewels and other auspicious designs. The walls leading up to overhanging roofs are also carefully carved in intricate trims and painted in joyous colours and patterns.

A few windows have iron grids shaped in a traditional endless knot or a wheel.

Cautiously stepping over the threshold into the first shop, I find myself in a dark room with one naked bulb throwing a gloomy light on shelves of non-perishable items, cheap reproduction clothes, plastic ware, flashlights, pots, matches, coke bottles, boxes with nails and other hardware.

Wire baskets hanging from the ceiling are filled with spicy potato chips, sandals, Tupperware, soap containers, string and packets of Maggi noodles. A big barrel with lentils stands on the floor, the one beside it contains dried beans.

Huge sacks of rice and flour are opened, but no sign indicates the cost. A basket contains some bruised bananas and green, pear-like fruit.

‘
Kuzuzang po la
!’

The man behind the counter speaks in a heavy slur and seems to suck on something in his mouth. Then his lips part and reveal black-stained teeth between dark red gums.

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He looks at me with interest, continuing to wrap a broad green leaf into a tiny package.

‘
Kuzuzang po la
!’ he repeats loudly and waves me with a huge hand towards him. His lips part even further and dark red juice collects in a little pool on his lower lip. His greying beard is patchy and equally stained, and the stare of his small eyes is disconcerting even if friendly. Suddenly he coughs and in one unexpected agile movement, turns and spits noisily into the darkness behind the counter. Too intimidated to even offer a courteous greeting, I flee the store.

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C H A P T E R T H R E E

First

Encounters

My third day in Mongar begins with a visit to the

weekly Sunday ‘subjee bazaar’, the vegetable

market. As Pema had advised me, at 8 a.m. sharp

I head up the road to the ‘market’ – a fancy name for a muddy patch of grass where farmers unload their crops on the ground. To me, it looks like a stampede. Villagers sit or stand behind their goods, and a huge crowd of people rushes around, trying to buy as much as possible as fast as possible.

The supply is limited and not particularly diverse: piles of chillies – red and green and of various sizes; spinach leaves bound with dried grass into bushy bundles; a basket full of sugar cane; some green beans; a few tins filled with colourful powders that smell rather pungent; tennis-ball-size white cakes of stinking cheese wrapped in banana leaves; and a few brown eggs packaged carefully into cans filled with cracked corn.

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I stand helplessly and watch the chaos. Pieces of conversation in a foreign language whirl all around me. In some areas, heavy bargaining raises an argument. An old lady shouts furiously at a thin Indian man who is busy filling an entire load of potatoes into a heavy hemp bag. Beside me, three different people are thrusting their well-worn plastic bags at an old man selling gnarly carrots.

Intimidated, I try to figure out the cost of all these delicacies. It seems that for everything, some one-ngultrum and maybe five-ngultrum notes are the highest value needed. Even if not plentiful, food is definitely cheap (twenty ngultrums are not even one dollar). But how do I ask for anything? Desperately I look around for a sign of Pema or Karma.

A young woman, carrying a woven bamboo basket on

her back, pushes past me. She is barefoot, and her dress is carelessly wrapped and hitched up above her ankles. Like all the women at the market, she wears a
kira
, a long piece of rectangular cloth wrapped around the body and fastened by two buckles over the shoulders. A belt around the waist keeps everything in place. Her jacket, the
toego
, is flung over her basket. She stoops to pick through a pile of beans.

Ever-increasing floods of people push through the

undesignated aisles and elbow their way to the preferred sellers. I can hardly see what is displayed on the ground.

Young lads, fat women, little girls and endless numbers of thin, wiry Indian men equipped with huge sacks stoop to the best bargains. Like a frozen statue, I am fixed to my patch of mud and stare at the turmoil. Everyone is moving fast, talking loudly and filling their shopping bags. Everyone except me.

A steady, warm rain continues to soak sellers, buyers and the earth-smeared goods. I start to wander aimlessly between piles of vegetables and fruits, trying not to step on anything, trying not to get pushed over. Soon I realise 33

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that the amount of food for sale is dwindling fast and further dallying will cost me my vegetables for the coming week. Yet, how do I get the stuff laid out on the ground to end up in my backpack? There is no one to ask. I wait to see a familiar face, but receive only a few stares of old, wrinkled women, sitting beside their daughters who are busy bartering. ‘
Nigzing, nigzing!
’ someone cries. ‘
Mangi,
meme, sam!
’
‘
Sam mala
!’
‘
Gila, meme! Sam!
’ the shouting continues. By the time I am ready to choose something, all is sold out. Gone. Finished. Everyone is packing up.

Frustrated and drenched, I shoulder my empty backpack.

On the way home, I meet one of the hospital employees, fully loaded with two woven bags overflowing with

vegetables.

‘You must go to bazaar,’ he advises, pointing at the façade of houses along the main street. ‘You will get things in shop there. All foreign things. You will like.’

I am lucky. In one of the shops, I discover a man who speaks English, and I recite my shopping list. He nods cheerfully and immediately shows me an assortment of tea, all in its original leaf form, which causes more confusion. I manage to choose a packet of Red Label and acquire a tiny strainer, a bag of powdered milk, and some not so clean and not so white sugar. As a special treat, I ask for some cookies.

Then the shopkeeper climbs onto a shaky stool and, from a rope suspended from the ceiling, unties two rolls of toilet paper wrapped in foil. He scribbles some numbers on an old piece of newspaper and smiles. We look at each other in mutual sympathy.

His name is Rinzin Tshockey, and he owns and runs this little shop. A short man, almost disappearing behind his counter, he seems in full control of his dominion. The shop is brighter than the ones I had been to earlier, lit quite efficiently by a huge gas lamp on the counter between 34

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several jars of sweets. There seems to be more variety in the goods on the shelves. I notice it especially in the cookie section.

‘All coming from India,’ he explains. ‘Samdruk Jongkhar bus is arriving every week, but during monsoon, there is often road block. These days we are needing many food for people. So many people in Mongar. Good business now, only power is always going off.’

Rinzin Tshockey points at the hissing gas lamp. ‘Many Indians coming here for Kuruchu power project. In some years, we have good electricity.’

‘Do you bring all of this food from India?’ I ask.

‘Not all, madam. But every month I take a truck to Samdruk Jongkhar, you know, to our border with India.

I am thinking to expand this store. Last time I was buying some Coke. Do you want?

Rinzin Tshockey points at a lone bottle of Coca Cola amongst a dusty shelf full of canned fruit juices that announce their Bhutanese origin with the label ‘Druk’.