The Laughing Heart Of Bhutan

On two separate visits to the Land of Thunder Dragon, two years apart, Jairaj Singh finds that reality and myth are not so disjointed in Bhutan as in the rest of the world.

“YOU’RE ALL BROKEN INSIDE,” she says. “You can’t even smile.” It’s 4.30 am on a Friday night. I’m sitting in one of the dimly-lit basement dives in downtown Thimphu that come alive when all the neon-lit clubs in the city dotting the mountainside go off. The woman sitting beside me is someone I met few a hours ago at another bar. She has brought me here to catch a glimpse of the other side of Bhutan nightlife, saying, “This is where stories come alive.”

She turns to look at me, with an all-knowing poise, as if she can see thoughts pass through my mind like clouds drifting across a full-moon night. We’re talking about happiness in a country that, not so long ago, decided to do away with gross domestic product, and instead, famously adopt a programme called gross national happiness to measure the well-being of its people.

The bar is filled with mostly young people who, like we, have come from other watering holes. Everyone seems to know one another. Although smoking is banned in Bhutan, I see cigarettes—mysteriously available to locals behind shut windows across the city—being lit around me. A man with close-cropped hair and heavy-set shoulders is introduced to me as someone who is close to the fifth and present king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. He meets us like we’re old drinking friends, and after regaling me with zany tales of his years studying in Delhi University, tells me a story that he requests be never repeated, because he realises I am a writer. It’s about a night of drinking such as this, many moons ago, when things went horribly wrong, and shows the king to be an extremely kind and forgiving man. His eyes glimmer with gratitude.