Preparing for the Rabney

In Buddhist tradition, every new building needs to be blessed before it is inhabited. But even though JSW’s new campus officially opened about a year and a half ago, the school has not had a consecration ceremony yet, though there has been a desire and plan to do so as soon as feasible. So the blessing ceremony, or the Rabney, is now scheduled to happen on October 5, and there has been a literal mountain of preparations happening in anticipation of what is turning out to be a ginormous celebration.

The law school has been the provenance of the Princess, Her Royal Highness, who is the president of the school. She was commissioned to take on this project by her brother, the Fifth King, nearly 13 years ago, and so the consecration, or inauguration as she refers to it, is a kind of coming out party, not just for the school, but for HRH as well. It is her gift to her father, the Fourth King, whose appearance at such an event is apparently very rare. So we will have not just the Princess and her brother, the current king, on campus, but her father the Fourth King, her siblings and much of the rest of the royal family, 74 in all. As well as the Prime Minister, other VVIPs, and several hundred other guests. It is a Big Deal.

 

Which is why the grounds crew has been working non-stop to clean and green the campus. But the law school is a recovering construction site. Being only a little over a year old, the scar on the mountain has not had time to heal. Much of the preparation for the Rabney is about trying to speed up that healing process, even if it means covering up the scars or pretending they are not there. 

 

Carved into the side of a mountain, the campus has a lot of places in need of recovery and restoration, more square acreage than the small crew can do. So the entire campus has been pressed into service for this mission. Working on the campus “greening” has now taken precedence over classes and schoolwork. In addition, nearly half the students have been ‘volunteered’ to perform during the ceremony, either dance or poetry, and have spent many hours in the last 2 weeks rehearsing under the guidance of a famous Bhutanese dancer/actress, who, according to the students, is an intense perfectionist. These students have been physically exhausted and emotionally drained by the end of each day they rehearse, and not really capable of focusing on schoolwork at night.

 

I recognize this is a historic event, but I vacillate between feeling fortunate and frustrated. Grateful that I get to experience this very unusual event, to witness the drama of this incredibly celebratory moment, rituals performed by important Buddhist monks from around the country, and to even get sort of close to the royal family - as close to any royalty as I will likely be in my lifetime. But frustrated that the students are being worked much more in preparation for this event than for their classes, that they are falling behind in work and it will be really hard to get classes geared back up after all of this is over.

 

Some days have been mandatory work for everyone. As internationalists we are not quite required, but when we show up it is very much appreciated, so we have tried to participate as much as possible. I certainly don’t mind planting, weeding, clearing brush, mending fences, whatever. But some of the work has gone to the absurd.

 

The craziest thing going on is painting rocks. No, not a rock you can hold in your hand, but 20- to 30-foot-high bluffs of red clay, sand, and rock. Students have been pouring charcoal mixed in water onto cliffs that were created when the roads leading to and around the campus were scraped into the hillsides, in an attempt to turn them black instead of red. They do as much as they can from the bottom, and then clamber up and around to the top to pour the slop down the face of the cliffs. I don’t have any understanding of why, and to my relief, neither do the students or anyone else involved in this messy process. Especially since we are still in the tail end of the rainy season, and much of this stuff has been washed off the cliffs almost as soon as it has been applied. One day they were out doing this while it rained. I was told that there is some kind of erosion control intention in this effort, but these banks will just continue to erode, black goo or not, until – as Jay keeps saying – they reach the angle of repose.

 

There has also been a unit of the Royal Bhutan Army on campus to help out. They have taken over some of the rock painting work, and have also done a lot of work digging up plants and grass from the surrounding woods to replant onto the campus, in an effort to green. One day they took a truckload of students nearly an hour’s drive from campus to dig up sod, which was replanted at the new entrance sign to the campus and may or may not survive. But they have also been cutting small trees to stick into the ground to create screens for various buildings and structures that are deemed unattractive. If they were digging up trees to replant them, that would be one thing. But just hacking them off to use for a few weeks until they die is something else. Oh wait, that sounds like the annual Christmas tree ritual! Maybe I should not be so judgmental  But as a lifelong environmentalist, it is sad to me to see young trees that should populate these forests being chopped down – at least Christmas trees are a crop, not an ecosystem.

 

I’ve also watched groups of students picking rocks and stones from along the roadway, because they look “distracting”. They pick up rocks, and toss them a few feet further off the road, and repeat and repeat. Over and over, as if there were a finite number of rocks and stones on this mountain. I am crystal clear that this is not a better use of their time than being in class. 

 

What’s also not clear is whether HRH has really requested these things, or if there are people in charge who believe that this is what she wants. We don’t really know where the standard that is being communicated to the workers on the ground is coming from, in an extreme effort to ensure every possible place that the royal family may pass through is visually perfect. In fact, by all accounts HRH is reasonable and pragmatic, and not so enamored with the trappings of royalty.

 

Actually, that was my impression when we had a chance to meet her a few weeks ago. She has been wanting to meet us since last semester, and I was told early in this semester that she was planning to have a meeting with us. I think she is not only appreciative of people who come from the outside to work here, but also truly wants to know from us how things are going, what our experiences have been, and what we think about the future possibilities for the school. But the meeting we had was with a few others also, so it was less of an opportunity to have an open conversation with her than it was a meet-and-greet. We both hope we have another chance to sit down with her before the end of the semester.  As we all know, the longer you spend in a place the more you see below the surface, and that is certainly true of Bhutan. But the imperfections get glossed over. Painted over with charcoal. Screened with dead trees. It’s all a metaphor.

 

Flags are being planted along all of the campus roads and around the buildings

And all of the buildings are being draped in finery

I look forward to experiencing this celebration, which is now just a few days away.