Mountain Echoes
2012
Day 4
23rd May, 2012
The last day of sessions at Mountain Echoes packed in textile
narratives, poetry, political boundaries and the stories planted at every step
of a mountain path.
The morning began with HM Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuck’s
address on how narratives get woven into textiles and our lives, and of Bhutan’s
vibrant culture of textiles and arts. She spoke of how weaving in Bhutan is a
form of oral history passed on from mother to daughter and keeps every
generation in touch with the past. This preservation of traditions is the
underlying concept behind the living museum of textiles in Bhutan that
facilitates the revival of lost pattern motifs. The Royal Academy of textiles
plans to provide training for a career in textiles.
This led to a session with Laila Tyabji and members and
curators from the Bhutanese textile museum and the royal textile academy. They
discussed how textiles fit into a literary session and form a text in
themselves, telling the story of a culture and an individual. The panelists
talked of how like in India, in the Rig Veda and the Upanishads the universe is
imagined as a cloth woven by god, in Bhutan too there is a lot of mythology
around weaving as a creative life giving force. They also discussed the
incorporation of the younger generation into weaving, the evolution of the
national dress, the Kira, regional variations in weaving and wearing styles of
the traditional costume, the economic effects of weaving and how traditionally
weavers were considered producers of wealth.
The session was wrapped up by Kuenga who sang a
beautiful song about a textile that comes from a particular region asking people
to wear the textiles and show them off instead of letting them rot in the
cupboard.
This fascinating discussion gave way to a poetic dialogue
starting with Gulzar reciting his famous and fitting poem Julaha or the weaver
and Pavan Varma reading the English translation. The two of them talked to
Sukrita Paul about their poetry and about a certain conversation amongst
cultures that is only possible through translation. Pavan Varma spoke of how he
translated Gulzar’s poetry and struggled with maintaining the sounds that are
specific to a language and why an anthology of Gulzar’s poetry that he was
translating came to be titled as ‘Neglected Poems’. They spoke of how
translations are like a mistress – if they are faithful they aren’t beautiful if
they are beautiful they aren’t faithful.
After scaling the worlds of fabric and poetry, it was time to
touch upon the magnificent surroundings that is the Himalayas, the spiritual
repositories and home to stories of gods and demons. Patrick French introduced
Steven Alter and Karma Singye Dorji, both of whom have grown up in the mountains
and have a strong sense of attachment for them. Steven Alter said that while his
family has been in India for four generations, and their ancestral home is in
the US, whenever asked, he says that he is from the Himalayas, because they go
beyond political borders.
Karma Singye Dorji said that the rim of the mountains form a
security blanket for him, as everything within the range of these mountains
makes sense and has values that you can live by. He spoke about the importance
of food and made an interesting comparison of the shape of a momo with the
Himalayan landscape with a peak and its fall. They talked of how the Himalayas
continue to provide different stories for writers, ranging from personal
stories, to the geographical story of two continents colliding in tectonic
coitus, to the political and religious stories.
Next up was a session on women writers by Namita Gokhale and
Kishwar Desai introduced by Kunzang Choden who spoke of the significance of the
feminine in the mountains that have a lot of feminine energies and deities.
Namita Gokhale said that while she began writing thinking that men and women
write similarly and resisted the label of a woman writer, at some point she
realized that there was a voice inside her that took notice of things in a way
that was different from men. Her first book Paro was written in first person
feminine and most of her books carry the voices of different women protagonists.
She read from a story called ‘Chronicles of Exile’, which is about
Gandhari told from the perspective of her maid accompanying her from Kandahar to
Hastinapur.
Kishwar Desai spoke of how she wrote about female feticide in
her novel ‘Witness the Night’, inspired from stories of women that
she met through her career. She said that she wrote it in extreme anger in just
a month and wasn’t sure how the book will be received but the fact that her
character’s voice traveled across cultures was a great achievement. She did a
reading from her new book ‘Origins of Love’, which is about the fertility
industry.
After breaking for a quick lunch, the audience came back to a
riddle posed by Tshering Tashi, the speaker of the next session on unclimbed
mountains. His co-panelist Siok Sian Dorji told the audience that Bhutan has the
distinction of having the highest unclimbed peak in the world and with the ban
on mountaineering in 1987 it is not impossible to accomplish this task anymore.
Tshering Tashi showed pictures of Gankar Punsum (White peak of the three
brothers) – the highest peak. After the last mountaineers tried to scale the
peak in 1986, the Layaps from the region pleaded the government to ban climbing
because they felt that it disrespected their deities.
They discussed why climbing mountains in Bhutan is very
difficult and how the people in Bhutan live on a different clock which is not
comprehensible to the western mind, which has every moment as structured time.
Bhutan is an unmapped, uncharted space with no guides or paths to help
mountaineers. While discussing whether it is a good idea to ban mountaineering,
the panelists as well as members of the audience stressed on the Bhutanese
philosophy of climbing a mountain as a form of reverence and to achieve a
certain state of mind and not as a physical achievement. They felt that
mountaineering is a western concept as opposed to the Bhutanese concept of
mentally and spiritually reaching that state of mind.
This was followed by the launch of Keunga Tenzin’s second
novel, ‘Kuenden the Valiant Son’ by Kishwar Desai, Namita Gokhale and
Sharmila Tagore.
At the same time, there was a brainstorming session on at the
Nehru Wanchuck Center on the relationship between media and policy making among.
Some of the very well known names from the Bhutanese and Indian media joined in.
Tshering Tobgay, the leader of opposition talked about the multiplying effect of
new media and how it can be a very worthwhile tool. Many of the panelist
disagreed with the fact that media can actually affect policy making in a state
but everyone agreed that with Bhutan’s newfound democracy, the media has a very
very crucial role to play in the shaping of Bhutan’s future.
After this, writers Ali Sethi, Shazia Omar, Ashok
Ferrey, Sujeev Shakya, Kunzang Choden representing different sides of the
borders read from their works and addressed the question of identity, nation and
narrative, and what really defines their stories.
The day moved to a lighter note as the audience tuned into a
conversation on music between Vishal Bhardwaj, Rekha Bhardwaj, Ugyen Pande and
Sonam Dorji. Sathya Saran asked all of them how music bridges the gap between
the popular and the elite, between classical and contemporary traditions. All of
them agreed that classical music forms the base for all music and how the
audience had started accepting the merging of classical with the contemporary.
Sonam Dorji spoke of traditional Bhutanese music and sang a small bit from the
central and western parts of Bhutan classical music while Ugyen Pande spoke of
how he was influenced by Bollywood music while he was growing up and sang one of
his compositions to show how it has a pinch of Bollywood taste. Not satisfied
with a few notes, the audience requested Rekha Bhardwaj to end the evening with
her song ‘Namak Isk Ka’, which received much appreciation and applause.
The last session of the day aptly titled, ‘Blessings of
Bhutan’ summed up the festival as Dr Karma Phuntsho and Sonam Jatso with Swati
Chopra talked of Buddhism and how it guides every aspect of Bhutanese life from
routine activities to national policies. They talked of Buddhism as an
educational system that makes you look inward, at the psychology of the ordinary
mind and how that mental state can slowly be transformed. The development policy
of Bhutan follows the Buddhist philosophy of the middle path, achieving a
balance between roots and wings, tradition and modernity. Dr Karma Phuntsho
ended the session with inspiring verses in Sanskrit, Tibetan and English
ending the festival on a note which really did close by showering blessings.
Finally, festival director Pramod KG ended the day of
sessions with a speech on the debates, discussions, the ideas generated at the
festival, and the participants from different parts of the world who came
together to celebrate literature. On behalf of himself and his co-director
Namita Gokhale, he thanked HM Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, Pavan
Varma and everyone who helped make the festival a success.
Ambassador Pavan Varma also expressed his gratitude towards
everyone who worked towards Mountain echoes achieving new grounds and becoming
the crucible of ideas, creativity and interaction.
The festival drew to an end but the authors, audience and
organizers were all already gearing up for the next edition.
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