A few days in Bhutan can engender a decidedly out-of-this-world feeling, a sense of being afloat in Ruritania. It is a combination of the high thin mountain air, deeply forested slopes crowned with towering dzongs, plunging to swiftly running rivers and a friendly populace universally attired in their vivid traditional costumes. But if one was looking for additional romance this summer, it was made public on May 20, when the kingdom’s 31-year-old monarch, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, announced his intention to marry 21-year-old Jetsun Pema in his opening address to Parliament. “As King, it is now time for me to marry,” he said before extolling the virtues of his would-be bride. People may have a preconception of the attributes of a future Queen, that she should be uniquely beautiful, intelligent and graceful. “I cannot say how she might appear to the people,” he added. “But to me she is the one.”
Next morning, in a Himalayan take on the William-weds-Kate celebrations, the papers carried glossy pin-ups of the royal couple, soon displayed in the shops and bars around Thimphu’s main square. Jetsum Pema seems a suitable match for the subcontinent’s only sovereign ruler: of noble birth, she was educated at Lawrence School, Sanawar, and Regents College, London. When she becomes Queen in October, she will, in the somewhat confusing shorthand applied to Bhutan’s living kings and queens (and to differentiate one from the other), most likely be known as “Q 5”. That is because there are four queens – or queen mothers – already, informally referred to as Q 1 to Q 4 in order of seniority, the present king’s father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, having married four sisters in one go in 1979. In 2006, Jigme Singye abdicated prematurely in favour of his son Jigme Khesar, so there are two kings, known respectively, rather like mountain peaks, as “K 1” and “K 2”.
To the outsider, this is but a small example of the complex codes that govern Bhutan’s social and political hierarchies, or its religious iconography and rituals that encompass both Buddhist and animist beliefs, or its powerful pantheist imagery that imbues every mountain, river, cave and temple with spirits, fierce and benign. In her book Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, the First Queen or Q 1, compellingly describes her journeys, on mule back and on foot, and the people and adventures she encountered, terrestrial and other-worldly, in far-flung parts of the country’s arduous terrain.
Ashi Dorji is a charismatic figure, and chief patron of Mountain Echoes, the second edition of the annual litfest that ended in Thimphu this week. She is as much at ease with medalled generals as with mystic lamas, glitzy Shobhaa De, foreign journalists and members of Bollywood’s bright young brigade who descended in Bhutan, engaged in talking shops, gawping at its natural wonders and mulling over the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which has been the country’s credo since it was made famous in a speech by K 1 several years ago.
This year, however, both Ashi Dorji and Bhutan’s suave Prime Minister Jigme Y Thinley, although adhering to the principles of GNH as a measure of development philosophy, were striking a cautionary note. It is one of those catch-all phrases that means all things to all people, and has perhaps been knowingly oversold. Happiness or contentment being a quotient that is material as well as metaphysical, the prime minister admitted the difficulty in quantifying the results of elaborate population surveys undertaken to measure GNP (“Very happy?” 45.2 per cent. “Happy?” 51.6 per cent. “Not very happy?” 3.2 per cent).
It was only three years ago that Bhutan held its first general election. Many voters needed explanations and much persuasion to exercise their franchise. The Opposition’s presence in Parliament is tiny. Getting into its stride as a constitutional monarchy, Bhutan will have to get used to the idea of being perceived as an extended family affair.
