When Paradise comes closer

During our village school days, while we used to graze our cattle on the vast rice field, we often witnessed a glowing range of hills on the northern horizon illuminated by the evening sunlight; it was the Land of the Thunder Dragon, officially known as the Bhutan Kingdom in the eastern Himalayan foothills.

- NAVA THAKURIA

We also encountered a group of Bhutanese traders, who came every year to participate in Makhibaha Sabha (an important annual socio-religious fair in western Assam) to sell their domestic products in the Eighties. An endless curiosity developed among us about the mystical place (then we had no idea that it was a neighboring country to our north named Druk Yul in the Bhutanese language Zongkha). Later, whenever I visited the land of Buddhist Gompas with less than one million cheerful Bhutanese nationals nurtured by a range of dark green mountains, fertile hills with vegetation, clean river streams, picturesque valleys, and the paradise on earth unfolded astonishing experiences every time for me. When I arrived in Thimphu soon after our marriage, my wife was mesmerized with the eternal beauty of the land and proclaimed, if we have a daughter, she would be named Shangri-La.

Now the Himalayan kingdom comes absolutely closer to us in socio-cultural and economic fronts, as Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma recently paid a four-day visit to Thimphu following an official invitation from the Royal Bhutan government, where he discussed a series of bilateral issues with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who serves as head (locally known as Druk Gyalpo) of the South Asian country, and the democratically elected Prime minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay, serving as the head of the government in Thimphu. Being the first chief minister of Assam to receive such an invitation and subsequent greetings from Bhutan's monarchical democracy, Sarma also attended a number of programs, including their 117th national day celebrations, during his stay from 16 to 19 December 2024 in the capital city.