Chapter 28: Literature In Bhutan

I am from Bumthang but I now live in Thimpu. I potter around a lot, volunteer work and in between that, I write. I think I grew up in what was still the feudalistic period in Bhutan, the medieval period.

The literary scene is still in its infancy. It has yet to develop. In terms of religious literature, we have files of them, but they were inaccessible to a population that was 90 percent illiterate. The monks were the creators, holders and interpreters of this writing. So we come from a tradition in which we do not see literature as something everyone does. The idea of literature as something to enjoy, something through which to express yourself, this is something new in Bhutan. So in the beginning, all of us [writers] were a little bit stilted; we used a lot of clichés. It is only now that it is beginning to take a Bhutanese character. The safest ground at the beginning was to write about something we knew—compiling facts. A lot of us went into folktales because that was what we knew about. We were used to hearing folk stories. Creative writing is very new.