The Mission for Instruments

The instruments are here! I celebrated by buying a daft leather cowboy hat, putting on my shades and being a rock star for a day. So, how did this happen? (The instruments – not the hat; that could happen to anyone.)

Looking a bit daft with Tshering Tashi Mdm Thinley

On Saturday nearly half the staff piled into the school bus and made the journey down into the sweltering furnace of commerce they call Phuentsholing. I've been down to the  border town 4 or 5 times now but I'm still struck afresh by the geological transition between Bhutan and India. The dramatic ups and downs of the deep valleys and steep forested mountainsides of the Himalayan foothills just stop all of a sudden and give way to an endless plain. On a clear day, like it was on Saturday, you really grasp how endless this flatness is. It just goes on and on and on and...

the endless plain through prayer flags

The bus wound down through the snakey twists and turns. The mountains out to the East form a sentry line, all of them choosing to lie down and go flat with near-military precision at the border. The raging rivers rush out of the Mountains and turn to placid ribbons of still silver, eagles circle the skies, scrutinising a landscape full to bursting with every shade of green imaginable. Phuentsholing sits in a little pocket in this otherwise uniform stretch of vanguard Himalayas. From within town itself, it doesn't strike you as so fine a setting, but from above, as you rattle towards it, Phuentsholing looks exactly how you'd expect a gateway to a hidden kingdom to look.

Bhutan on the left, India on the right...

The town itself is split by a simple fence but divided by much more. On the Phuentsholing side, you have the laid-back socialist welfare state of Bhutan; on the Jaigon side, the hectic, racy, caste system state of India, with dirty deformed and overtly forgotten cripples in the roads, cows parading holy in the streets and money money money moving everywhere. The fence is a token one, as the border is effectively open to anyone who looks like they belong here. Indians and Bhutanese pass through freely, the real immigration checkpoints being up on the road a few kilometers north. Phuentsholing town is the mixing pot, Bhutan's anteroom where cultures mingle, an airlock, a necessary decompression chamber.

Mr Gembo Passing
Through The Gate

The official business of the trip was the buying of musical instruments. With a grant from Bhutan Canada Foundation and money raised at the charity concert by the kids and staff of Chepstow School, my aim was to buy everything the school would need to run a music club, have bands and do performances. The school already had some traditional instruments, and more were on the way, so we needed to secure the classic combo of keyboard, bass, drums, guitars. Unfortunately, drums were just way too expensive. After 2 ½ hours of me trying everything they had in the shop, we came out with:

• flashy keyboard with pitch bender (fun fun fun), lessons, and all sorts of beats and sounds
• bass guitar
• electric guitar
• semi-acoustic guitar
• 2 mics (one a performance mic, the other a bog-standard pa mic)
• cube amplifier, 25W, but battery operable for outdoor stuff
• capo, tuner, strings (millions of E-strings for when they all get broken by enthusiasm), leads etc

Mr Subodh in his Shop

I did well, but I'm sure the principal would have pushed our money further. His powers of negotiation are a thing to behold. And his rule for Jaigon – begin with half of what they say and work from there. It worked for my hat – 360 Ru down to 100 Ru, but only because my friend Tshering had just bought the same hat and had paid that price. I was less successful with my negotiations for the instruments;

'I can't take anymore off – I've reduced everything as far as I can.' Said Mr Subodh.

'But this is Jaigon, a place of miracles, where the unexpected happens.' I replied, to no avail.

But aside from the drums, we got what we came for and we were in budget, so all was good.

Mr Subodh

Here he is - Subodh Kumar of Modern House Music, the kindly man who indulged me for 2 ½ hours and was very gracious when I tuned a guitar string so much it snapped (this has happened to me three times in Bhutan and never before). Thanks for your help Mr. Subodh.

We finally got back to school at 23:30 on Sunday after a 2 hour delay at the checkpoint regarding furniture and tax (over-zealous checkpointer). Now I have to decide how to fairly and effectively share 4 instruments among 550 students, balancing the pressure of the eventual performances with the desire to get them into as many hands as possible. Ayeesh. Luckily I'm teaching the music/noise chapter in class 10, so it's all immediately useful, and it's great to have an excuse to take a guitar back in the classroom!

I refuse to go anywheere...