Ara and Bhutan Star (or A Friend in Bhutan)

Ever since I started working at Kanglung Primary School, I’ve felt pretty lucky with the staff of teachers I’ve ended up with. From day one, I’ve always had someone to ask a question to. Dechen was my first savior, answering question after question during my first days of work. She is extremely kind, smart, assertive, and still brings me a bunch of vegetables almost every week from her garden – usually spinach, although last time it was celery greens (In Bhutan, people eat the leaves of celery versus the stalk. When Dechen presented me the greens, I explained how it’s the other way in America. That night she tried eating the stalks and said she enjoyed it).

Over a week after work started but before classes started, we got a few new teachers who had transferred from other towns. Teachers in this country are constantly being transferred; actually all government workers, which teachers are, are being transferred all the time. One of the new teachers was Rinchen. To Scott, I started nicknaming her ‘the giver.’ In the early days of our friendship, she was always giving me stuff – gum, buying me momos from the college canteen, a new pen, chocolate. Rinchen is younger than I am and has recently married the person she had been dating for nine years. They don’t have any children, which is rare for married couples in Bhutan. As an employee for Bhutan Power Corporation (BPC), her husband is always away. In fact, she says the longest they’ve been together is three weeks. But, she says, they are happy and the distance only makes their time together all the more joyful. I actually believe her.

Rinchen has become one of the only other teachers I converse with on an almost daily basis, although that’s not saying much. She teaches class one and I teach classes five and six, so our paths almost never cross. Our conversations are limited to the mornings in the staff office when I ask her how she’s doing, about when her husband is coming back, how her class is.

Last Thursday, Rinchen asked me what I was doing for the weekend. When I said, “Nothing,” she replied, “Well then, you should come over to my place.” Other teachers have extended general invites to me to come over for tea, but this was the first direct invite I’ve received. I felt, well, flattered. Rinchen’s husband had actually just gotten back into town, so I asked, “Are you sure you want me to come over? Don’t you want alone time with your husband?” Rinchen answered, “No. He’ll like it if you come over.”

At the end of the half-day school day on Saturday, I told Rinchen I’d wonder up to her place sometime after lunch. Afterall, I didn’t want to impose myself when she was eating a meal. She lives about two kilometers up the hill from where Scott and I live, so it took me about an hour to walk to her place from lower market where I had met Scott and some friends for lunch. It was a drizzly day. I walked with my raincoat on and carried a plastic bag with sugar crackers inside and a package of Indian desserts that I know Rinchen likes. When going over to a Bhutanese person’s house, it is customary to bring something.

After a small girl showed me the way to Rinchen’s apartment in the BPC complex, I knocked and the door opened. I walked into a small living room where five people, including Rinchen, were sitting on the floor with a spread of food in front of them. Their gazes were fixed on the TV, which was playing the live semi-finals for Bhutan Star. The room also had a couch, upon which a man was sitting, two chairs, and two coffee tables. Rinchen stood, welcomed me in, graciously accepted my house gifts with, “You are turning into a Bhutanese,” inquired, “Where’s sir?” and had me sit in one of chairs as her cousin fetched me a bowl. It was past 4 pm. Rinchen explained that she had come home from work late which caused her to start cooking lunch late. She insisted I join them. Even though I had just eaten a huge lunch in town, I had to accept; it’s near impossible to say no to a Bhutanese offering you something. The other people in the room were her two small nieces who live with her so they can go to a good school, Rinchen’s friend who was also visiting, a female cousin who doesn’t go to school and helps out around the house, and Rinchen’s husband who was on the couch.

I took off my raincoat, cozied myself into an arm chair, and mentally prepared myself for a second lunch. As we ate, we all watched Bhutan Stay together. At least half the country, if not much, much more, was doing the same thing – everyone unified by the magic of singing well enough to win a car.

Not knowing the semi-finals of Bhutan Star was on TV that day, I had envisioned a different scene. I thought Rinchen, her husband, and I would sit around a table chatting and drinking ara. Instead, there was no real chatter except for the occasional question I asked about Bhutan Star. We sat like that for a while. Although it wasn’t my ideal way to spend part of a Saturday afternoon, I accepted it for what it was – just another cultural experience, the culture of the Bhutanese home. While almost every Bhutanese home has a prayer room, the house will also likely contain a TV.

When Bhutan Star ended – the finals would air the following day – a children’s program started. The eating was done (I was able to get away with just one serving), the dishes were cleared, the eating mat was rolled up and put away, and Rinchen had migrated to the couch next to her husband. It was then we got to chat a little bit before Rinchen got up to prepare some ara, a customary practice when guests come over for a visit. The only ones drinking were Rinchen’s husband and myself. Rinchen’s friend wasn’t having any and Rinchen doesn’t drink.

Rinchen and her friend escaped into the kitchen but not before grabbing two eggs from the refrigerator, which meant the ara would be cooked the special way, how it’s presented to special guests. I’d like to say I was honored, but ara for special people often makes me want to gag. Ara is akin to sake, a white alcohol made from either rice or maize. Specially prepared, the ara is boiled with butter and then an egg is dropped in, stirred cooked. I’ve seen one egg used for several people. Usually, when the butter ara is served, the egg doesn’t appear until the end when you see strains of it floating around. Rinchen and her friend used two eggs for two people. The result was a bowl of yellow ara with an unusually large amount of egg sticking out the top – one bowl for Rinchen’s husband, one bowl for me.

My already full stomach was trying to negotiate how I was going to get this bowl of liquid and it’s contents down. I drank the ara as smoothly as possible, doing what I considered a good job of not letting it show that it was pretty unpleasant to me. Then came the inevitable. The egg was staring me down. Usually, people drink the small swirls of egg by swiping their finger into the cup to make sure everything gets out. But this egg was going to take a lot more than a mere swipe of a finger. I watched as Rinchen’s husband ate the egg from his bowl with spoon – large spoonfuls of egg into his mouth, gone. When it was my time, someone brought me a spoon. The egg looked just like how it would in the morning – scrambled. So that’s what I tried to tell myself, that it would taste just like yummy scrambled eggs. I dipped my spoon in, scooped the smallest portion, and ate it. As one might expect, it didn’t taste like scrambled egg – it tasted like ara-drenched egg. I wanted nothing more to do with it. But there was so much left. Somehow, the ara had transformed the egg into two. Rinchen and her husband could probably read my face; I couldn’t be as smooth as I had been with the butter ara. Rinchen said, “Just leave it if you didn’t like it.” I tried taking a couple more itty-bitty bites, in hopes that my taste buds would get used to it, but it wasn’t happening. Each bite got worse and worse. At one point, I tried to offer it to the husband, but he said he was completely full from his portion. He said I could leave it as well. When I expressed my discomfort with wasting food, Rinchen said her husband always wasted food so I shouldn’t worry. Usually such an argument wouldn’t work on me, but this time it did. Waste I would. Happily. I was off the hook.

As early evening approached, I made my exit; I wanted to walk home while there was still some light. Rinchen sent me off with a small bottle of unbuttered, un-egged ara for “sir” and cubes of dried yak cheese saying, “You arrived with so much and now I’m sending you home with so little.” I assured her that what she was giving was more than generous. She walked me to the road, we talked of future get-togethers, and we said our goodbyes. The taste of eggy ara was long gone from my mouth, and what remained was a pleasant taste of a great afternoon spent with my friend Rinchen.

Rinchen and her husband