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As you drive by Paro airport’s runway, you might have passed by Lam Tshering tilling his paddy fields.
Nothing about the 59-year old sunburned farmer strikes one as exceptional. But ask him a little about his past – and it’s a bagful of surprises, including an incident involving having coffee with Indira Gandhi.
In 1969, Indira Gandhi hosted a gathering, says Lam Tshering, and he was on the guest list. How did he get to coffee with Indira Gandhi?
When Lam Tshering was 18, he was picked by the government, along with ten other boys from his village in Paro, to become mask dancers. These mask dancers eventually went on to journey around the world exhibiting Bhutanese culture in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
By the end of his dancing career, Lam Tshering had travelled to 17 countries, including Iran, at a time when only very few Bhutanese had the privilege to step outside the borders of Bhutan.
“It was a very hot place,” he says in Dzongkha on his visit to the middle eastern country. “And it was even hotter, because the only clothes we had were bura ghos.”
Today, Lam Tshering, who never had a formal education, is able to converse only in Dzongkha. On how he communicated with people, “We usually just smiled and looked at each other’s faces,” he says with a laugh.
He narrates an incident in Iran, where an Iranian came up to him and asked him what he was eating. “I had taken along some thingay (Chinese pepper) in my hemchu (gho pocket) for my gastric, which I would pop into my mouth occasionally,” he said. The Iranian man asked him for some. Lam Tshering pulled out a fistful of thingay to show the man. But to his astonishment, the man scooped the fistful into a palm and before he could stop him, gulped the thingay.
“I didn’t know how to tell him not to eat it, and that night I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking that I’d killed him.” The Iranian man had become silent after eating the thingay and run out the room.
“Japan and Australia were the cleanest countries I’ve visited,” says Lam Tshering. “But Delhi was my favourite because I could speak some Hindi.”
Back to his coffee incident, he says that he was surprised that he was only offered plain coffee. “We waited and waited for the milk and sugar, because coffee or tea without milk and sugar in Bhutan was considered a poor man’s brew.” He explains that they were baffled they were being offered such a poor man’s drink, when the prime minister had just told us that she was honoured to have them at her residence as her first Bhutanese guests.
After a long wait, they realised they would not be getting any milk and sugar and, not to offend their hosts, gulped down their cold black coffees. “Only later did I realise there was something called black coffee,” he says with a snicker.
Would he want to travel like he once did? Lam Tshering says he is satisfied, especially that, as a poor uneducated villager from Paro, he was able to travel the world free of cost. “Today I’m too busy with my family and farm,” he says.
Source: Kuenselonline
Nothing about the 59-year old sunburned farmer strikes one as exceptional. But ask him a little about his past – and it’s a bagful of surprises, including an incident involving having coffee with Indira Gandhi.
In 1969, Indira Gandhi hosted a gathering, says Lam Tshering, and he was on the guest list. How did he get to coffee with Indira Gandhi?
When Lam Tshering was 18, he was picked by the government, along with ten other boys from his village in Paro, to become mask dancers. These mask dancers eventually went on to journey around the world exhibiting Bhutanese culture in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
By the end of his dancing career, Lam Tshering had travelled to 17 countries, including Iran, at a time when only very few Bhutanese had the privilege to step outside the borders of Bhutan.
“It was a very hot place,” he says in Dzongkha on his visit to the middle eastern country. “And it was even hotter, because the only clothes we had were bura ghos.”
Today, Lam Tshering, who never had a formal education, is able to converse only in Dzongkha. On how he communicated with people, “We usually just smiled and looked at each other’s faces,” he says with a laugh.
He narrates an incident in Iran, where an Iranian came up to him and asked him what he was eating. “I had taken along some thingay (Chinese pepper) in my hemchu (gho pocket) for my gastric, which I would pop into my mouth occasionally,” he said. The Iranian man asked him for some. Lam Tshering pulled out a fistful of thingay to show the man. But to his astonishment, the man scooped the fistful into a palm and before he could stop him, gulped the thingay.
“I didn’t know how to tell him not to eat it, and that night I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking that I’d killed him.” The Iranian man had become silent after eating the thingay and run out the room.
“Japan and Australia were the cleanest countries I’ve visited,” says Lam Tshering. “But Delhi was my favourite because I could speak some Hindi.”
Back to his coffee incident, he says that he was surprised that he was only offered plain coffee. “We waited and waited for the milk and sugar, because coffee or tea without milk and sugar in Bhutan was considered a poor man’s brew.” He explains that they were baffled they were being offered such a poor man’s drink, when the prime minister had just told us that she was honoured to have them at her residence as her first Bhutanese guests.
After a long wait, they realised they would not be getting any milk and sugar and, not to offend their hosts, gulped down their cold black coffees. “Only later did I realise there was something called black coffee,” he says with a snicker.
Would he want to travel like he once did? Lam Tshering says he is satisfied, especially that, as a poor uneducated villager from Paro, he was able to travel the world free of cost. “Today I’m too busy with my family and farm,” he says.
Source: Kuenselonline
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