In the March National Geographic there is a story “ Bhutan ’s Enlightened Experiment. Guided by a novel idea, the tiny Buddhist kingdom tries to join the modern world without losing its soul.”
Now we know that won't work.
One picture shows people building a road of rocks. The workers are among the tens of thousands of migrant workers, many of them Indians who do the manual labor that Bhutanese citizens often shun, such as building roads. Does that have a familiar ring to it?
Another picture shows a boy 12 and a girl 9 showing off their hip-hop moves in a bar owned by their mother. Another has teenage girls in tight jeans. Another shows actors making a horror and musical movie, fake blood and all hoping for a hit song because it almost guarantees success.
The one that drew my attention was one showing student monks. The caption reads
In a room he shares with six other monks at a monastery in Wangdi Phodrang , Chencho is honest about his calling. “It’s hard work memorizing all the texts, but afterward you have a comfortable life, so it’s worth it,” he says. “In the village, work is never ending.”
Remember those monks in Viet Nam who set themselves on fire? What are the odds that Chencho would do that? Monks just aren’t what they used to be.
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