Kunzang Choden

The Circle of Karma tells the story of Tsomo, who is born in the mountainous kingdom of Bhutan in the 1940s/50s. She experiences a series of misfortunes—two unhappy marriages, a miscarriage, chronic illness—before she finally becomes a Buddhist nun. On the level of craft, this is not a particularly good book. I wasn't really convinced by Kunzang Choden's characters as people (characterisation is wildly inconsistent), and the book is riddled with typos (cooking with "cotiander", houses built with "wooden plants", "mani colleagues", etc.) and other basic issues (I lost track of how many times the narrative shifted from past to present tense and back, sometimes within the space of a paragraph). What interest the book has derives largely from the fact that, at the time of its publication almost 20 years ago, it was the first novel in English (perhaps the first novel?) written by a Bhutanese woman, and from its rich description of daily live in Bhutan before it began to open up to outsiders at all.… (meer)

This book is a series of short stories about the changing roles of women in Bhutan, the challenges they face, and their fears and strengths. Kunzang Choden is a natural storyteller and I very much enjoyed learning a bit about the cultural change occurring in Bhutan through reading these stories.

The first one is about an elder of a village. She practices the old Bon religion and acts as a spiritual medium. Her services are still sought after even though modern Buddhism has largely replaced Bon thoughout Bhutan.

Another story finds 18 year old Yeshima yearning for schooling. She watches her friend and neighbor go off to work each day and dreams what it would be like to travel to the city, work in an office and use computers. Even though the world is changing rapidly, culture and tradition dictate that she stay home to attend her ailing mother while her brothers receive the benefit of a good education. Her whole life is spent subservient to her parents and brothers until one day she hears about adult literacy classes and makes the decision to attend .

The title of the book is taken from the last story about an expert wool dyer, Tsheringmo, who teaches her grand niece the craft, art and folklore that she has accumulated over her lifetime as a master dyer. She was as well known for her stories as for the wonderfully colored wool she produced. There is a wonderful one explaining how sheep had wool of every color. A Tibetan minister had stolen a Chinese king's herd and the Empress in her anger issued a curse and all the sheep drowned except the black and white ones. And so today dyes have to be used to get the other colors. As Tsheringmo ages and becomes more feeble, the villagers reflect on what they are losing:
"But nobody could ever deny that just as Tsheringmo had colored the fabrics the people used to clothe themselves with, she had also brightened their lives with the tales she told them. Not simple tales but tales in colour."… (meer)