Losar -- Part II

Nicki Minaj blares through my door.

The music is full decibel. Unrestrained.

I open the door and a computer has been set up just there on the porch. Speakers are connected and facing directly into my Boy’s Sick Room. Nicki Minaj turned banshee. The DJ is pint-sized Yoezer, dressed as if he summoned a universal idea of an American pop deejay: he’s wearing neon green sunglasses, is holding a ten Ngultrum note in one hand (likely couldn’t get ahold of a Benjamin) and a toy gun in the other. I almost expect him to say, “‘What up homie?” to me, but instead he says something else in Kengpa. Still, I translate it in my head as, “What up homie?” and before he can threaten to cap my ass, I move to the front yard, where Gyeltshen and the others have piled a heap of dry wood nearly eight feet tall. 

“Fire,” he says.

“Big fire,” I say.

Mr. Dorji has a Coke bottle filled with kerosene. He sprays it all over the wood. “Really big fire!” he says.

It is the year of the fire monkey after all, so we should honor him appropriately. I gauge the distance from the pile of wood to the corner of my Boy’s Sick Room. Hopefully it’s not too big of a fire, I think. Before I or anyone else considers the risk of igniting my room, the stack is lit and it takes off. The flames build upon one another, engulfing the wood. Dusk has descended and the fire becomes brighter and brighter in the twilit sky. The stone wall dances in shadow and light. Heat reverberates, the leaves of the nearby trees shuttering in upward waves. Though we placed our plastic chairs close at first, we begin shuffling them back further, the heat too unbearable to stay close. We strip off layers. Gone are the jackets. Gone are the sweaters. We stand in t-shirts and polo-shirts and still the heat is uncomfortable. Again I gauge the distance from fire to the Boy’s Sick Room. It seems safe, for now.

Ikel comes out with Druk 11000s.

“Do you drink, sir?”

“A little bit, yes.”

“Okay, sir. Beer, sir?”

“Sure, beer’s great.”

Ikel places the bottles on the table, and K.D. grabs one, opening it with his teeth. He pours my share of the Druk 11000 into a glass, all the way to the rim, the liquid curving up like a lens. Then he pours himself one, filling it the same way. The others hold their drinks in the air and say, “Cheers!” and we take sips. Before I can even lean back to settle in, K.D. tops off my glass, again leaving an amber convexity at the rim. I look at his glass, grab a bottle and top him off. He says, “No, no, sir,” but holds the glass out willingly.

This give and take goes on throughout the night: “More beer, sir? No, no.” Fills it up. “Finished, sir? Have some more? No, K.D., I couldn’t.” Fills it up. “Seriously now, I can’t.” Fills it up. I recall what a veteran chillup teacher told me before I came out to the east: “You have to be rude. You have to demand that they don’t fill up your cup. Be mean even. It feels weird, but that’s the only way to stop getting served.” But I’ve fallen into a rhythm with K.D., and music has started to play and I will not be the one to hamper the merriment.

We stand up and make a circle around the fire. Dzongka songs are being played from the DJ stand—did Yoezer drop that beat?—and all begin to dance. Gyeltshen does not drink. He does not need to. When the music starts his smile reveals complete bliss. He bobs his head and shakes his arms, twisting his hands in the air, mudra style. I copy him, but somehow my hand gestures look more like a flightless bird attempting a takeoff.

Ikel looks over at me and chuckles. She is capable, her dancing as natural and vivacious as the fire itself.

“I’ve had wine,” she says.

The song changes to a Hindi pop song. Everyone sings along but me. The dance changes slightly, we begin to rotate around the fire. We do false-steps and shoulder-rocks and fist-pumps (well, I fist pump) to the beat, moving and laughing and celebrating.

You’re a good dancer,” I say to Ikel. “You can tell that you like to dance a lot.”

“Maybe,” she says, her head tilting sideways slightly, a gesture that instantly reveals Bhutan’s cultural ties to India. “It’s because it’s Losar, the New Year.”

“You only dance at celebrations?”

“This one especially is important. This could be our last New Year. We don’t know what the future will bring.”

I nod, take a drink, and think Ikel will start her final year, whenever that may be, dancing.

The nature of our circumambulation changes for me with her comment. Sends me reeling. Or maybe it’s the 11000 Druk’s—Thunder Dragons—invading my bloodstream, thumping monk drums just under my temples. The fire becomes a stupa, and my dancing a meditation. Impermanence on the mind.

This very well could be it for me. The summer is supposed to bring landslides and I have been warned, “Don’t travel in the summer. The roads are too dangerous.” There is malaria in the jungle. HIV in the cities. A foreign teacher has died here, four years ago. The autopsy revealed septicemia. It is not uncommon to be warned of evil spirits and creatures unknown. There are wild animals and drunk taxi drivers, bandits and psychopaths. What’s in the water? What lurks in the shadows? Could the Year of the Fire Monkey be my last?

I dance to cleanse myself of the fear. I am alive and well. A’int nothin’ gonna get me down.

Dakchak deng dir jawa tsom pala gek dang nyewar tsewa künshi né dödön pel pel samdön yishin drüb tashi delek phünsum tsokpar shok.

May the work that we are now about to begin be free from all obstacles and imminent dangers, and, meeting with ever-growing fulfillment and success, bring good fortune, prosperity, happiness and peace.

 “Beer, sir?”

“I’ve had a lot. I think I’m good.”

The comment doesn’t take. K.D. and I raise overflowing glasses and take sips. Conversation picks up. English is spoken freely now.

An American song comes on.

“You know this one, sir?”

“I’ve heard it. But I don’t know it.”

“Show us the American dance, sir.”

“We don’t have a lot of dances with specific moves. We just kinda make it up as we go along.”

“Show us, sir. Come on. Show us.”

There is a trite beat, an easy-to-dance-to beat. But now, as the de facto expert on American dance, the beat seems complex and cunning. I hope the sweat is from the fire. Making myself look stupid is easy, but making everybody look stupid is a whole other responsibility.

American dance. American dance.

My shoulders start to undulate. Side to side. My hands go forward, straight in front of me, like a mummy.

“Ya’ll ever seen the Cabbage Patch?” I ask.

My words are disregarded, the others paying close attention to my American moves. No one answers. They assume the mummy position with me.

“Stir the pot,” I say. “Stir the pot.” Everyone follows the move, twisting hips while their arms circle the air. The Cabbage Patch is a hit, I think. But one can only stir the proverbial pot for so long until the move gets boring.

“What about the Shopping Cart?”

For an agrarian people, this one might be as foreign as they come. The world is not blessed—or burdened—with the gross infinity of supermarket product choices like America. But, the moves are simple enough, and very quickly, my dance students catch on.

I test another one. “A’ight, a’ight. How about the Sprinkler?”

The song is interminable. I exhaust my repertoire over the course of the next minute and a half: we Whip, we Nene, we Superman, we Dougie. We C-Walk, or attempt to C-Walk. We go back to 1996 and do the Butterfly, and I remember my first middle school social, when Crystal Smith watched me first attempt the moves and then laughed, saying, “Look at this white boy try’n ‘a Butterfly.” My newfound Bhutanese friends now have an eclectic variety of American dances to share with their friends. I imagine years down the line, during some other cultural celebration where an aging Gyeltshen hears another American song come on. I imagine him standing before the crowd and instructing, “I will show you the dances of the Nene and the C-Walk. Long ago my American friend shared this traditional dance with me, and now I will pass the knowledge on to you. In this way, we will celebrate.”

Finally, I put my hands in the air and say, “That’s it. That’s all I got.”

The others look slightly disappointed; the song is only half way through. It lingers in the background, disconnected. I just stand there. Mercifully, someone runs over and switches to another song. It’s Hindi, I believe. Not American. I’d like to think though, that the ultimate goal was realized. Everyone learned the ‘American dance.’

The fire has collapsed onto itself, a monolith devoured. The flames are cooler now and we sit close. It appears that there is a method for stopping the flow of alcohol: drink all the bottles dry. We kill the final Druk 11000, take it down, and move to Gyeltshen’s living room for dinner. Again we eat with our hands and sit and converse. There are framed black and white pictures of Bhutan’s five illustrious kings high on one wall. On the adjacent wall, pictures of Gyeltshen and his wife under prayer flags, and on a snowy mountain side. The woodstove is stoked and warms the room. The TV behind us flips images of beautiful women in saris, and thick-haired men with buttoned down shirts open at the chest. Again the women in the room breastfeed their infants. We take tea and continue the conversation, though now Kengpa is taking precedent and English is used sparingly.

At its own pace, the night winds down. Without pretext or excuse, the others gather their belongings, dress the children in warm clothes, and begin to leave. There seems to be a natural rhythm that all are in tune to. Except me. The others arrive with the rhythm, eat with rhythm, serve tea with it, care for children with it, return home with it. I follow cues. He arrives, so I go too. She eats, so I do too. They stand up to go home, I do too.

“Good night,” I say. “Thank you for the great day.”

“I hope you are feeling comfortable, sir.”

“Yes, very comfortable. I have had a wonderful time. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir. Come over any time, sir. You are always welcome here.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Back in the Boy’s Sick Room, I lay down on the stiff mattress and pull the plastic feeling covers over myself. I turn off the lights, close my eyes, and wonder if the others have gone to sleep too. Does the rhythm say to fall asleep now? Have I found the rhythm too?