Bhutan: The Unremembered Nation, Volume 1: Community and Livelihood

by Karma Ura 

The process of modernization has brought discontinuities in collective memory. This volume and its sequel provide an act of collective remembrance, knitting together many voices and stories. It shows the readers a world of the past before modernization began in the 1960s. Volume 1 unfolds accounts of births and rebirths in the household, making of houses and matrimony, rearing of children and livestock in a village, and husbandry of lands and forests. After sketching these fundamental aspects of existence, it details seasonable migration, backpack and caravan trade, and travel over different climatic and linguistic areas. Colours, sounds, and other sensory experiences of ordinary people are described before ending with the rhythm of the farming of major crops such as millet, rice, and wheat.