Over the mountains my true love waits
Tashi, a famous Bhutanese actor, has just returned from Hollywood.
“Tashi!” Karma was grinning. “The world traveler returns to the Hub Bar!” He called to the bartender and ordered two Hit beers. “For the international film star!”
Tashi sighed.
“You must tell me everything.” Karma pulled up a stool and sat close by and started to devour Tashi’s masala, spooning the oily, spicy peanuts and chopped onions into his mouth in between questions. “Was it like the song?”
“What song?” This launched Karma into a rendition of “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, repeating the line dream of Californication four painful times. The bartender was smiling. “Well, was it?”
“Yes,” said Tashi, taking a long swill of beer.
“Did you meet Beyoncé?”
“No.”
Karma frowned and peered into his friend’s eyes. “What’s wrong, Tashi? Didn’t they like the movie?”
“They liked the movie. In fact, they will screen it in more cities.”
Karma rubbed his hands together, and excitement beamed from his eyes. “Great, Tashi! Great! You will be the first Bhutanese film star known in the world! And Chencho will be the famous director! Maybe as famous as Khyentse Norbu even! This is great for our country!”
Tashi turned up the corners of his mouth for Karma and reflected his smile. “Chencho is very happy. His future in film is certain, now. He won’t ever have to work in the import/export shop again, you know, he can really make enough money with his films. And even go abroad, if he keeps playing his cards right. His is very happy about everything.”
“But you are not very happy,” observed Karma.
“No.”
“Did something bad happen
Tashi thought over the past two weeks. The long ride from Paro to Bangkok to Seoul to Los Angeles, the delirious mechanical hum. The hotel beside the freeway with its insects and slimy eggs and stale toast; the heat which made him feel dirty, as if his body was absorbing filth with each breath of stagnant air. He had tried to walk outside of the hotel but encountered only cars, and buildings, and people ignoring him or glaring at him; he spent most of the time inside the hotel with the dazzling array of glitzy, stupid television channels. There had been the screening, and the party afterwards, and another party, with a swimming pool, and so many people with their heavy floral smells and strangely altered faces. But there was the ocean, stretching out to infinity, and once he learned the way to the ocean, it had been manageable. Except for that one night, the night he pushed so far towards the edges of his mind, as if in hopes it would fall off and never bother him again. That night was none of Karma’s concern. “No, I can’t say that anything especially bad happened.”
Karma clapped him on the back. “Well, cheer up! It’s not so bad, being back in little ancient Bhutan.”
Tashi looked up sharply. “Karma, I’m glad to be home.” (…)
Tashi sighed and said; “I’m going for a walk.” He stood up.
It was still early, and though the sun had dropped behind the mountains, the sky still glowed with soft blue light. Tashi decided to walk along the river. he made his way between the shops and houses, noticing all over again things he never usually noticed, the most ordinary things: strings of dried cheese hanging in the shop windows, deep red chilies drying on the rooftops, hand-lettered names of shops (…). Dogs yapped in the distance. The street sloping down to the river was streaked with paan-spit , and trash clotted the little stream that fed the water, but the Thimphu river itself was clear and cold. He remembered telling Mark, Chencho’s contact in Los Angeles, about the Thimphu river, and declaring that he wanted to see the Los Angeles river. Mark had laughed, and then had taken a detour from the restaurant they were heading towards. Tashi had stared in horror at the concrete channel. Power lines parsed out the steel sky overhead. The water was entirely trapped. It could not even be water anymore, Tashi thought, without the ability to flow and carve the earth and make sounds and nurture fish and animals. He had realized at that moment that he wanted nothing to do with Los Angeles.
Shaking he head fervently, Tashi took a deep breath of the chill air, and stepped onto the covered wooden bridge. The bridge’s windhorse prayer flags fluttered red, yellow, green, blue, white in the breeze, thousands of them, encasing the walkway in a tapestry of sacred colour. He listened to the hollow sounds of his footsteps on the worn boards. A raven came to sit on the railing, watching him with silent black eyes. (…)
Tahis climbed the opposite bank, striding through the weeds and grasses to stand upon a ridge where he could overlook the city. White tattered prayer flags hung serenely on wooden poles, protecting the world below. The national stadium lay on the opposite bank, and it was silent this evening, but Tashi knew exactly how it looked when it was full of citizens in their ghos and kiras , gathered for an archery or football match, a warm mass of colourful dots melting together. He looked up, to the chortens and the houses; white shapes with twinkling lights, places of home … stately crumpling buildings with dragons and tigers painted on the walls, or the new green roofed government buildings positioned as mandated by the Thimphu structural Plan, building where bureaucrats devoted to the Principles of Intellligent Urbanism lived and worked. Yet the twinkling buildings did not reach very high up upon the mountains. He was surrounded by the black shapes of trees, solemn in the distance, stretching to the peaks in every direction. Thimphu was a little world contained in a little valley. Tashi had left the city and the country before, of course – left to film in Arunachel Pradesh, left for the arduous inconvenient journey to Delhi to get his US visa – but leaving to cross the ocean was different, it left him different, had had left and now he was left somewhere else. He did not feel entirely returned; he did not feel like he was wholly inside this little valley anymore.
From: Holly Jean Buck, “Over the mountains my true love waits”, 2012
a) Comprehension:
1) Summarise what Tashi and Karma are talking about. Write 80–100 words.
2) Describe in your own words Tashi’s feelings after he has returned. Write 120–140 words.
b) Analysis:
1) Characterise Tashi. Write around 180 words.
2) Examine the descriptions of Los Angeles and Thimphu. How do these descriptions contribute to the atmosphere of the text? Write about 180 words.
c) Evaluation:
“He did not feel like he was wholly inside this little valley anymore” (l. 85). Discuss whether experiencing different cultures and lifestyles in a globalised world enriches one’s identity or inevitably leads to a loss of identity. Write about 300 words.
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