Children run around gleefully squirting each other with plastic water pistols, occasionally dashing over to the nearby chicken pen to refill with ammunition from its water trough. Others gather with eager anticipation to try their hand at the local lucky-dip, strutting away with peacock pride, toting the plastic jug, funnel, or other kitchen utensil that is the reward for their gambling efforts.
Little voices follow me with precise, if fragmented, English. "Photo madam? One photo please? Give me photo?" In Bhutanese belief, wherever your likeness goes, a part of you goes too. Understanding that belief, it feels somewhat of a betrayal to take their images away from this place, as the world I live in feels so tainted by comparison.
Dechen appears beside me in town on my last afternoon in Paro, her shy silence turning to little girl chatter. I watch with delight at her animation and sweetness as she speaks more English to me in five minutes than she had since we first met. She lives in a world of contradiction and what appears to be carefully managed change. She will have more opportunities available to her than even her most recent ancestors could have imagined, however, she risks greater individual loss of history and culture than any relations before her.
Bhutan may appear a Shangri-la in my eyes, but the West that I come from is equally a Shangri-la in hers. Filtering its intoxicating promise through her illuminated window of Buddhist understanding, may very well be one of the keys to Dechens cultures protection.
