Karma Codes

There is that predictable stoicness in this karmic tale. But none of the impatience that it often generates. Kunzang Choden’s simple ta...

There is that predictable stoicness in this karmic tale. But none of the impatience that it often generates. Kunzang Choden’s simple tale of complicated journeys has a sense of intimacy tinged with sadness, much like the surrounding silent mountains. Protective but unpredictable. Mountains that are as much part of the physical landscape as they are of the mindscape.

In The Circle of Karma, Tsomo goes through the regular pains of what an imaginative girl in her times would go through. Working and weaving instead of reading and writing. The subject may not be new but the delicate balance between ranting and karmic acceptance that Choden’s first novel achieves is. It brings home a simple truth. Beneath our search of novelty and different idioms of expressions, the human condition is not all that unique.

Choden, one of Bhutan’s leading writers, touches the contemporary with voices from the past. At a funeral, Tsomo remembers her mother’s words when her brother had died, ‘‘Stop crying. Don’t you know your tears will turn into rain and the vapour from your mouth will turn into mist and fog and your dead brother will not be able to travel to his next life?’’

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Such lingering ancient voices are woven through the novel, accompanying Tsomo through her journeys in Bhutan, India and Nepal. Betrayed by her husband who chooses her younger and beautiful sister, Tsomo flees first to Thimpu joining road workers and finally to Kalimpong where her brother had joined a monastery years ago.

In the eventful years that follow, her travels take her to Bodhgaya, Kathmandu, Dehra Dun, Mussoorie. Cultural differences are pointed out gently. As Tsomo and her group of Bhutanese pilgrims huddle over their meal, the train compartment quickly empties out as they take out their knives to cut through the meat.

It is in Himachal Pradesh that Tsomo meets her second husband and through him the Rinpoche. He too leaves her and finally Tsomo returns home to her estranged family. Call it karmic acceptance or just a sense of letting go that comes with age but Tsomo makes peace with her situation.

Before his death in India, the Rinpoche had ordained Tsomo a nun. After going back to Bhutan, Tsomo returns to India for a final pilgrimage. She may or may not return. But for her friend Lham Yeshi, she lives on in a lingering image. A round faced nun limping along among the devotees circumambulating the chorten.

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