The people marching at that big boy's birthday party reminded me of those goats walking after the crude procedure -- stiff, self-conscious, and careful not to let anything swing too freely (an unconscious nod to the country's situation at the moment?).

For the next few days, the goats walked with slow, deliberate steps, careful not to let their emasculated endowment dangle and hurt.

Now it's the occasional eucalyptus, ficus species all of which I love, golden penda in this post-bloom glory, and a host of trees. Some samples from the Himalayas & Australia.

I’m running off to K-mart to get myself those kid gloves. Please touch softly, because I’m an insecure, self-inflicted wound. And by the way, thank you, mr president, my cow has calved. Thanks to your all-caps deliria.

Oh, I was told that if you don’t thank them or fail to praise the Supremo on social media, you’ll have your visas refused—if you ever want to go to that glorious country. Well, of course, they will. And one’s dying to go there.

And no, I don’t see how someone is growing better by the day to pale Ayatollah Khomeini and Mr. Kim Jong-un in their flagrant intolerance of ideas and views.

That's pretty close! Congratulations.

India would not tolerate that state coming down across the Himalayas & conducting stealth murder operation, would it? By India’s repeated offences abroad kind of lents some legitimacy to such operations in the name of the state?

As much as India justifies its covert operations outside its borders in the name of India’s security interests, I’m certain it wouldn’t want such things happening on its own soil. It’s a home to a significant population of people who are considered separatists or troublemakers by another big power.

& with a very small economy… small salaries… unrestrained inflation, the mood isn’t one that will warm up couples any time soon.
Time we thought about GDP now, while keeping GNH as a fling?

Many parents have their children enrolled in schools in Australia. Likely these kids won’t go back to Bhutan to work. So the low fertility rate coupled with a massive outmigration is a serious threat for Bhutan.

But PDP’s pledge isn’t motivating one. It’s expensive to raise kids in Bhutan…

The majority these people come to Australia. Many of the younger lot are already looking for ways to make it here instead of going back after a few years. They study professions courses that lead to PR. Even those with professional degrees & years of experience are enrolling in PR-relevant courses.

Dasho Kinga’s book isn’t a serious scholarship though. As a reviewer points shorturl.at/hBJ58, it is highly partisan, at times very flimsily argued, and confrontational in tone. Nonetheless it provides a cache of valuable information with which you can make your own conclusions.

A good point of entry to understanding Bhutan would be Lopen Karma Phuntsho’s “The History of Bhutan”. And these volumes would add meat to that historical framework. To
understand democratic politics, Dasho Sonam Kinga’s Democratic Transition in Bhutan: Political Contests as Moral Battle is useful

The books would be very useful references to those who already know Bhutan and want to know more about it. Our written history is mostly framed as biographies of ruling elites and the state itself and social dynamics remain mostly ignored. These volumes fill the gap, sort of.