Robin, Karma’s lead technician has been working at Athang since it started a year ago, but he’s been quite deferential and I haven’t had much of a chance to get to know him. Yesterday, away from Karma’s ears and with me chatting idly, he opened up a bit more. He’s third generation Nepali and hinted at the ‘Southern Bhutanese’ side of the split that happened twenty years ago. I’m not going to write that up here though because there are so many sides to the story and it’s still quite a sensitive topic.
He was also able to enlighten me about some of the aspects of Bhutanese culture that I hadn’t worked out yet. One was as a car approached us and flashed his lights. There was a car parked on the opposite side of the road and only room for one of us to pass at a time. My first thought was that he was telling me to stop and let him go first, but the gap was on my side of the road which should give me right of way, and he was far enough away that I was almost through before he even reached the gap. I asked Robin what those lights meant. ‘They mean stop or get out of my way.’
I fought down ire at the driver who thought that because he was driving a bigger car, he had right of way. Or was it simply that he flashed his lights first that would give him right of way. Either way, I glared at him as we passed harmlessly.
But that didn’t explain why people flash their lights at the soldier directing traffic outside the army barracks on the road to our old house. ‘Do they do that to say thank you to to the soldier?’
‘No. It’s to tell him that they’re going straight ahead.’
It gave me a laugh, but it has a certain Bhutanese logic to it. Blinkers are used more often (and by better drivers) to tell the cars behind that it’s safe (left) or unsafe (right) to overtake than they are to indicate turning. But if blinkers aren’t used much to indicate turning, how is the soldier to know where the approaching cars want to go? Answer, since most of them want to go straight, they can indicate that by flashing their (centre) headlights.