Kunzang Choden, the first Bhutanese woman to be published in English, writes about her childhood
Mohan Gulrajani
Kunzang Choden, the first Bhutanese woman to be published in English, writes about her childhood
An excerpt from ‘Telling Me My Stories: Fragments of a Himalayan Childhood’, by Kunzang Choden.
Author Kunzang Choden.
Throughout their lives we referred to our father as Acho or older brother and mother as Nene or paternal aunt. Following convention, a few days after my eldest brother Rinzin Dorji was born, in the year of the bull coinciding with 1949, his astrological chart was made. One of the findings was that the baby was not compatible with his parents. Father, who was also born in the year of the bull, and mother, who was born in the year of the sheep, were not suitable to be parents to their newborn baby. They were warned that if my brother acknowledged his parents as his parents, it would be harmful to all concerned. In my brother’s case the consequences would be dire. If he was to refer to them as his parents, their lives would be shortened. There was nothing alarming about such a prediction; such findings were common. Sometimes, in such cases, other people, relatives or friends are invited to become symbolic parents to babies. In my brother’s case, to avert any disaster, he was taught to call his father Acho, or older brother, and his mother became Nene or aunt. As often happens, those of us who followed him in birth also copied him in the way we addressed father and mother. Problems arose again when by custom we began to add the prefix “Acho” to our eldest brother, Rinzin. To distinguish our two “older brothers”, father was thus referred to as Acho Gigpala or Big Older Brother, which alluded specifically to his physical size rather than to his position of birth. Older brother became Acho Rinzin. But even with this rather complicated arrangement, the ominous prediction could not be averted, and our parents died in the prime of their lives.
Mother liked to talk to us about incidents connected with our births. She especially liked to talk about the special signs that accompanied some of our births. She would smile warmly each time she recalled the ragged Tibetan beggar who walked into the room next to where she had just given birth to her eldest son, Rinzin Dorji. The beggar had come in unseen by all, and was loudly chanting the prayer of Sampa Lhendup (the prayer to Guru Rinpoche that spontaneously fulfils all wishes) as he walked in. She marvelled at how he had managed to get past, unnoticed by all the people in the courtyard, the weavers in the loom rooms and the servants everywhere, to come into the private quarters of the family. Although she didn’t say it, I think she took this to be an auspicious sign, and I know that she thought her firstborn was special. She maintained her subtle partiality towards him till the end. He was the only one of us who had a chance to be blessed by her own father, our grandfather, Chummey drungpa Gempo Dorji. It was grandfather who had named his grandson Rinzin Dorji.
I heard it often enough to recall that the signs were also very auspicious for my younger brother, Sonam Wangchuk. Not on the exact day of his birth, but on the day that my second brother, who is a year younger than me, was to be taken out of the house for the first time, the signs were remarkably special. The ritual of lhabsang, fumigation for purifying the atmosphere and symbolically cleansing the mother and child of the birth pollution, must be conducted three days after the birth of every baby. Only after this ritual are the mother and child allowed to go outside the house. The respected Lopon Tsedarla, a religious practitioner, conducted the ritual. At the conclusion of the ritual, Lopon sprinkled holy water and burnt special incense. As a part of the ritual, all the participants followed Lopon who led the procession circumambulating the house, chanting prayers as he rang the hand bell and sprinkled holy water. Mother and the baby followed as well, accompanied by family members and others who had been involved with the birthing. While the little procession was doing the circumambulation there was a sudden excitement. Phub Dorji, a servant of the household, who had been sent with a parcel to Her Majesty the Queen Mother Ashi Phuntsho Choden some days ago, happened to return just then. He was carrying a big packet wrapped up in his kabney (the white shawl men used as a ceremonial scarf) with parcels from the Queen Mother. On top was a large jack fruit. Immediately aware of the coincidence of the timing of his arrival, the jovial parcel bearer swaggered towards the house, and everybody saw the lone peacock feather that stuck out boldly from the top of the luggage. To have the subtropical jack fruit in cool temperate Ogyen Choling, was a rare extravagance that only the royal family could favour us with. Mother probably took this to be a royal blessing for her newborn. The peacock feather, used exclusively during prayers and rituals to sprinkle holy water, was also a very rare item. The coincidence of these two objects coming together was doubly auspicious. My parents were sure that their second son would also be a special child. They probably thought that he was marked to serve the King in the Royal Court.
As Sonam grew older, he was trained by father to wear a small sword in a silver-gilded scabbard. He was taught the court etiquette, and I remember how he was, even as a child, trained to deliver verbal messages from father to the servants. They imagined that he would be required to do that at the court, to carry the King’s commands to the courtiers (a task referred to as kachor). Father’s partiality towards this child was obvious in the innovative toys that he created for him. Once he devised a wooden sheep with wheels and the older children had to pull the sheep for Sonam. The idea of the sheep progressed to a wooden cart. Father fashioned the cart with wooden wheels that was to be pulled by a small mule which he selected from among our horses. Father had probably been inspired by the horse-drawn carts he had seen in India. The use of the cart had to be discontinued after its first trial. My elder brother Rinzin Dorji and our cousin Ugyen Namgyel were made to ride in the cart as a test. There was a serious technical problem in the construction of the cart. As the mule walked, and then galloped, the cart hit the mule’s hind legs which frightened it into a wild frenzy. The mule kicked and galloped erratically as the stunned onlookers shouted in panic for the animal to stop. Finally, when the mule could be contained, two very disoriented and slightly bloodied boys got out of the wooden cart. Father considered Sonam Wangchuk too young for this trial run; I think he was considered too precious.
After my parents died, our lives did not play out in the ways they had imagined for us. I think my father wanted to present Sonam Wangchuk to the Royal Court as it was a common family tradition. My grandfather’s brother Thinley had been sent to the Royal Court, and then my father’s own younger brother Ugyen Wangdi was also sent into the service of the Second King. But father died when my brother was still a small boy. When our parents died, their dream of presenting their son to serve the King died with them.
My youngest brother Ugyen Rinzin was a very small baby, “just a bundle of wrinkles”, so mother spontaneously called him “Denma” which means wrinkles. It always amused me to hear people guessing the origin and the significance of his name. Many people thought he was named after Denma Tsangma, the commander of the legendary King Gesar of Ling. Little Denma was plagued by serious health problems, and mother did everything she possibly could to save him and help him regain his health. He had such a severe case of chicken pox that his body was covered with sores that festered, and his clothes stuck to his sores. Mother had devised her own method to make sure that his clothing did not stick to his body. In those days plastic sheets were rare, but she found one which she put on a bamboo frame so that the sheet did not come in direct contact with his body, but he was still warmly covered. When he was about three years old, she took him to bathe in Dhur tsachu, the medicinal hot sulphur springs in the northern part of Choekor valley. These hot springs at the north end of the valley adjacent to Tang are still very popular for people with all sorts of ailments. Apparently, Denma’s health improved immediately. Mother spent her most anxious moments with this baby. She often said that he was her most precious child because life was given to him so hesitantly. Mother told us of an incident when he was a baby and sleeping in a tent, when they were in Lhuentse. The men were playing archery nearby and a stray arrow came through the tent and landed next to the sleeping baby’s head, missing it by inches. Denma had a narrow escape. Years later, when as an adult he suffered a bout of ill health, Denma went to bathe in Dhur tsachu because he was convinced of the positive effect of the hot springs. And once again they did not disappoint him.
My mother could not remember any special signs at my birth except that I was the first girl born after several generations of no female children in my paternal house. The anxiety of “will this girl live past her infancy?” seems to have been the unspoken thought on everybody’s mind. She sometimes mentioned that during labour she did not lie down; she walked around the room. Then when she was on her way to the toilet, while crossing the threshold separating her bedroom and the toilet, I was born. I was literally born on the threshold. Not so auspicious or exciting but the story of my birth always ended with the comment, so fortunate that you were not born into the toilet pit. I could have been lost at birth. The long-drop toilet pit, which is several metres long, would have meant certain death for a newborn baby. What mother recalled was that when I learnt to say my first words, they were to ask for very special food. Later, every time a crow cawed, I used to say, ‘The crow is saying, “Dorji Jigji coco caw”’, which means give Dorji Jigji a fried egg. She teased me, saying I demanded and ate more fried eggs than all her other children.
Mother had a miscarriage after a fall from the stairs in the utse and she also gave birth to another son who died in his infancy. I have a hazy memory of standing at the doorway not knowing what to do as I watched a small reddish baby being bathed in a shallow oblong wooden bowl near a blazing fire in the hearth in the room where he was born. Mother was sitting on the floor, bending towards the baby as she supported him in the tub with her left hand, letting water drops from her right hand dribble on to the baby. It was such a tender, ephemeral picture of mother and child, so delicate and warm. I carry this picture of my little brother. But before we had a chance to get to know him, he was sick, and we could not be with him. In those days it was common for babies to succumb to any one of the many childhood diseases which were rampant and uncontrollable. My little brother died of whooping cough as did many other babies in the village that year. At the time my father was in Tibet on a trading trip, and it would have taken days to reach him. So, my uncle Ugyen Wangdi came from Wangdue Choling palace to help with the death rituals.
After a few days of serious whispers and long silences, one morning, still sleep-ridden and groggy, I woke up early to hear subdued noises and some unusual activity. I stayed at a distance as the men conversed in hurried whispers. According to astrologers, my brother’s dead body could not be taken out through the main door. He had to exit the house from the northern side but there were no doors towards the north. So, a wooden wall had to be taken down and his corpse was placed in a wooden box which was lowered to the ground by means of a rope. Babies until the age of eight years cannot be cremated, so their bodies are placed inside boxes or old baskets and then taken to the river. This practice is still common in some rural areas to this day. The boxes and baskets are harnessed to boulders and the river left to consume them. Slowly, over time, the corpses are washed away or eaten by the fish. Diarrhoeal diseases were the biggest killer in those days. Mothers would helplessly watch their babies waste away until “the cheeks of their bottoms became small circles” on bony bodies. There was nothing to be done to save their babies; neither could anyone ignore the nondescript bundles harnessed to boulders in the river after an epidemic. Long after my brother’s death, whenever we went to the river, I always had the uncanny fear that I would come across his body. I never did.
We would have been six siblings but only four of us survived to adulthood.
Excerpted with permission from Telling Me My Stories: Fragments of a Himalayan Childhood, Kunzang Choden, Bloomsbury India.
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