Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

“Favorite band?”

“Jimmy Eat World. Oh, and Daft Punk.”

“Favorite TV show?”

“Dragon Ball Z.”

 “What about politics? What are your thoughts on politics?”

“What are politics?”

I am on the balcony of the Kuzoo youth radio station in Thimphu, Bhutan, asking questions to a 13 year-old boy named Sora Tshewang. Wearing skater shoes and a hooded sweatshirt, Sora is a DJ for the station’s popular call-in request show, "Youth Unplugged." He spends his afternoon fielding requests for Britney Spears and similar American artists, and filling the airwaves with the sounds of Western pop.

“Like political parties and stuff,” I say. “Do you know anything about political parties?”

“Not really,” says Sora. “But I heard that birthday parties are very popular in the United States.”

I let the misunderstanding slide.

My family recently moved to Thimphu, a town of 50,000 people in the heart of Bhutan. Residents here are proud to live in the only capital city in the world without a traffic light. The city’s main street is lined with monks in stunning robes of deep red and orange, and vendors in traditional Bhutanese dress. By contrast, the young people that move up and down the main thoroughfare have their own dress code—jeans, leather boots, hoop earrings, and hip haircuts. They are ambassadors of modern "cool" in a land of deep traditions.

Bhutan is in the midst of transition in more ways than one. After a century of rule by monarchy, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck recently declared that the Kingdom should become a Democratic Constitutional Monarchy, so as to keep up with the rest of the world. (Incidentally, he also recently decided to legalize TV and the Internet.) With democratic elections slated for the spring of 2008, the Bhutanese government is now forming political parties and holding mock elections to help citizens understand how democracy works. It’s a dramatic change for a place where, up until recently, political debate was considered taboo.

I walk the streets daily, from the hospital, where my father is volunteering, downhill to the National Chorten, a Buddhist shrine visited by a daily flow of circumambulating worshippers, chanting and spinning prayer wheels in deep devotion. Mahayana Buddhism is the state religion and everyone—young, old, urban, rural—practices these rites.

It was at the Chorten shrine where I met my first Bhutanese friend, 18-year-old Pema Dolma, a radio host at the youth-run station. I had always been interested in radio, and I was itching for something to fill my days in Thimphu, so I showed up at Kuzoo radio the next day.

“Kuzoo is the youth of Bhutan. Kuzoo is ours; the future is ours,” reads the mission statement of Bhutan’s first independent radio station—scarcely over a year old. The programming is a combination of interviews and feature shows focused on youth and Western pop music. Mostly, it focuses on the latter. On several occasions I find myself in the ironic position of hosting shows like "The Top Hits" or "Love Songs Hour," where I am responsible for putting forth onto the airwaves the worst of American pop music, in my opinion, for thousands of people to hear.

Here, an identity has been created for me—that of the token young, hip American. But in reality, I know close to nothing of the young, hip American culture that Bhutanese relish. I try to imagine the future of this traditional society resting on the shoulders of these Jay-Z-listening, designer-purse-toting, entertainment-news-reading hipster DJ’s—and I simply can’t. More than half of Bhutan’s population is under the age of 25, meaning that Bhutan’s democratic future lies in the hands of its young people—people like Sora and Pema.

So I’ve started asking questions, trying to uncover how the members of this youth vanguard envision their future.

“We’ve had the monarchy for the last 100 years,” Pera Llamo, the 18-year-old station manager, tells me as we sit near her desk. Earlier today, I walked in to find her browsing for handbags on the Neiman Marcus website and editing her online profile on the hugely popular Bhutanese social networking site, Kuzoo.net. “I would like to continue being a monarch-kingdom, but it’s the King’s idea to have democracy, so we should respect his decision.”

Looking at her, I can’t help but wonder if Pera’s loyalty to the monarchy has something to do with the dreaminess of His Royal Highness Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. At 27 years old, he will be the world’s youngest head of state when he inherits the crown later this year. Pema’s tiny desk is filled with pictures of the soon-to-be King who, after a state visit to Thailand in 2006, was dubbed the "Red Hot Prince Charming" by the Thai press.

Pera continues, “If that is what he wants, we should go for it. I’m sure it is for a good cause.”

Thujee Paul Lhendup, a stylish, 19-year-old Kuzoo volunteer, approaches.

“What do you think about the transition to democracy?” I ask him.

“We’ve had benevolent kings up until now,” he says. “Beloved, very good kings. Well-respected, loved, more than anything—which is very different from everywhere else. We’re happy with the system that we live in now. For Bhutan, democracy has come from the top down, not from the bottom up, so that’s the difference.”

Whether savvy or innocent, excited or anxious (and perhaps all of the above), I have realized that these young Bhutanese are guiding their country’s first steps toward the 21st century. As Namgyal Dorji, the only young person I met who wanted to become a politician, put it, “The time has come to realize that we have to elect the government—to put into power people that we can trust. It is in our hands.”