Circle of Karma
Authored by Kunzang
Choden, a native of a small village in Bumthang District in north-central Bhutan, Circle of Karma is the first English novel to emerge from the land
of the druk (Bhutan), the mythical dragon. Published
in 2005, the novel instantly courted fame far and wide, and has since been
translated into several languages. The novel had been short listed for the prestigious
Elle Prix des Lectrices too. Choden
was born in the year of the druk, or
the year of the dragon, corresponding to 1952 in the Gregorian calendar. Since Choden
was born into a prosperous family, her parents sent her to a convent school in
Kalimpong when she was nine years of age. Choden recounts the initial
difficulty she encountered in the school because, as is prevalent in Bhutan,
she did not have a surname attached
to her first name. Moreover her father’s name was Kunzang Dorje and the
Reverend Mother of her school refused to believe that the father and the
daughter shared the first name but the surname was different! How could that be
possible? After finishing her school Choden
went to Delhi and joined the Indraprastha College for further study. She did
her B.A. Honours in Psychology from this College. Later on she also did B.A. in
Sociology from the University of Nebraska, USA. Presently she lives in Bhutan
with her husband, a Swiss gentleman, two daughters and a son. She is a
prominent member of civil society in Bhutan and she is held in high esteem.
(Kunzang Choden)
The Circle of Karma
The central protagonist of
the novel is a poor village woman named Pema Tsomo. The novel’s narrative is
woven around this woman’s life and time in the then contemporary Bhutan about
seven decades earlier. In some way the story is autobiographical because many
of the incidents depicted in the novel mirrors the author’s personal experiences
in a subtle manner. There are such resonances in the narrative that could be echoes
from her early life.
Pema Tsomo is one of the
thirteen children of her parents and, amongst them, she is the eldest girl
child. In a traditional rural household being the eldest girl child meant that Tsomo
had to do all the domestic chores along with her mother. This practice is
widespread in all societies that give preferential treatment to the male
progeny. About seven decades back Bhutan did not have formal schools hence most
of the male child of the day joined monastic schools to become monks. In those
days girl child was never encouraged for education. Instead they were taught to
be responsible house wives, to take good care of their husbands and bearing and
rearing children. Tsomo, as a child, wanted to study but her father would not
allow her. Her brothers and other children of the village used to study under
her father but she had to be busy doing unending round of domestic chores.
At the time of Tsomo’s
birth the astrologer had said that the child would enjoy a long life and will
travel extensively, but she will have a chequered life. Later, Tsomo asks her
mother, “Where is the furthest I can travel to?” The mother replies, “…where
can a girl travel to? Perhaps as far North as Tibet, and as South as India.”
Tsomo’s mother dies while giving
birth to the thirteenth child and the responsibility of looking after her
siblings falls on her tender shoulders. Her maiden journey begins with the
first death anniversary of her mother. She decides to go to Trongsa Monastery
to offer prayers and to light butter lamps for her mother’s soul. It is on this
journey she meets Wangchen whom she marries upon return from the Monastery. In
due course of time she becomes an expectant mother but, sadly, gives birth to a
stillborn child. Tsomo also develops an ailment with a swollen belly that gives
her much pain and anxiety. Due to these reasons Wangchen starts disliking her
and, to Tsomo’s utter consternation, falls in love with her younger sister,
Kesang! Conjugal life soon becomes excruciating for Tsomo. She leaves her home
without letting anyone know of her intentions.
She starts working as a labourer
in a road construction projects far away from her village. But when the
construction team moves closer to Thimpu she decides to go to Kalimpong as she
is afraid of meeting someone from her village or relatives and she resolves
that she would return only when she proves of her worth and becomes a
successful person. Besides her brother was
a disciple of a monk of great renown, Karsang Dorje Rimpoche, and was staying in Kalimpong. But she does not stay long in
Kalimpong, she moves on to Bodhgaya, and from Bodhgaya she moves to Kathmandu.
After some time she travels to Tso Pema, a holy Buddhist site in north India
and visits the holy lake at Rivalsar. Here she meets Lhatu whom she marries in
due course of time. Tsomo comes to Delhi with her husband and stays in the
Indian capital for a while. Lhatu, her husband was once a protégé of a great
Tibetan Rimpoche who is currently settled in Dehradun. This connection takes
her to Dehradun and to the famed Rimpoche whom she serves with great devotion. Noticing
Tsomo’s pestering abdomen ailment the Rimpoche advises her to go to a white doctor
sahib in Mussorie. The white doctor performs a surgery on her and she is cured
at long last. Once cured, Tsomo and her husband travel back to Kalimpong. But
as luck would have it, Lhatu also turns out to be a deceitful husband because,
as Tsomo finds out, he had married again
with a young girl in Phuentsoling. For
the second time Tsomo separates from her husband and decides to become a nun.
Causality, the central
theme in Buddhism, is the leitmotif of The
Circle of Karma. As per the Buddhist concept of causality, or karma, our present life has an inalienable
connection to our past life. Thus the happiness and the sorrows we enjoy and
suffer in our present life are proportionate to the quantum of merits or demerits
we have accumulated in our previous lives. Human beings wade through their respective
realm of existence in a perennial cycle of births and deaths until one accumulates
enough merits that pave way for the person’s nirvana. But it is also believed
that, sometimes, all our karmas, good and bad, get manifested in a single life.
Tsomo’s life is a singular example of this rare phenomenon. Tsomo had married
Wangchen without realising that he was already a married man with a child. It was
Tsomo’s deplorable action, or bad karma, to marry Wangchen without verifying
his antecedents and cause miseries to his wife and the child. The bad karma thus
earned by Tsomo results into her two unsuccessful marriages. Thus, burdened by
her bad karma, she goes on a pilgrimage tour of holy places, serves high lamas
and monks with unstinted devotion, and receives blessings from them in return. Merit
thus earned results in her being cured of the pestering disease and, even
though for a short period, enjoys happiness in her second marriage.
Circle of Karma is a novel with a powerful feminist voice. Contrary
to the conventional belief that our traditional tribal culture has ingrained
safety mechanism for the welfare of the womenfolk, Kunzang Choden questions the
very foundation of this myth that is so deeply entrenched in our society’s
psyche. The author skilfully highlights the appalling marginalisation of women
in every segment of society dominated by masculine value system.
Kunzang Choden has
presented a fictionalised version of the Buddhist Way of Life in a simple, but
effective, rendering of the plight of the feminine gender. Although the novel do
not display high literary techniques and basically is a realistic one the author
is quite successful in weaving a paradigm of a multi-structural narrative. Readers
can find simultaneous descriptions of the rural Bhutan, a subtle introduction
to the Buddhist Way of Life, the position of women in the traditional feudal
Bhutan, and, lastly, the searing saga of a woman who struggles to rediscover
herself and her realisation that for any person whosever he/she might be that the
only relation that remains is to oneself only.
The Circle of Karma remains with you long after the
novel is put on the bookshelf for a revisit.
Pempa Tamang
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