August 6, 2025
THIMPHU – A white cloth billowed in the summer wind, painted with flowers and prayer flags, dzongs and distant peaks. It marked the entrance to something more than an event—a threshold to language, memory, and meaning.
Over the weekend, Bhutan Echoes: Drukyul’s Literature and Arts Festival came to a close in Thimphu. But even as tents were folded and chairs stacked away, what lingered was less the form than the feeling, a quiet resonance of voices, stories, and shared silence.
For three days, the festival grounds became a convergence point of poets and novelists, artists and academics, youth and elders. There were 88 speakers in total, 36 from Bhutan and 52 from 13 other countries.
Over 32 sessions, along with film screenings and workshops, they explored identity, balance, and the role of the imagination in a shifting world.
Held under the royal patronage of Her Majesty the Queen Mother Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, the festival, formerly Bhutan’s first literary celebration, was renamed Drukyul’s Literature and Arts Festival by His Majesty the King, which continues to be supported by the India-Bhutan Foundation.
This year’s theme, The Great Fourth’s Wisdom of Balance,Harmonising Heritage, Nature, and the Human Spirit, honoured three decades of His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck’s mindful vision in sustaining Bhutan’s cultural heritage while thoughtfully guiding modernity and environmenta preservation.
This year’s Bhutan Echoes paid tribute to His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck’s enduring vision — one that bridged tradition with modernity, and heritage with nature, long before such harmony became a global refrain.
The inaugural evening, hosted by the Indian Embassy, set the tone. Dignitaries and dreamers gathering beneath soft lights and mountain skies. The opening gift was a book — Footsteps of Compassion, a tribute by His Eminence Vairochana Rinpoche Ngawang Jigme Jigten Wangchuck to Her Majesty the Queen Mother.
Published by Tarayana Foundation and Roli Books, the proceeds will support rural communities.
Ten book launches followed, seven by Bhutanese writers. Outside the main halls, student poets performed under trees. Artists danced and drummed, their rhythms echoing centuries of culture. Nearby, an open mic stage turned shy voices into song.
And new seeds were planted. Beginning next year, two annual prizes — the Jigme Singye Wangchuck Prize in Literature and the Jigme Singye Wangchuck Prize in Arts — will honour transformative work by Asian creators. Both aim to recognise depth in a region often defined by tension but rich in reflection.
Yet, what many perhaps will remember are not the headlines but the quiet encounters: a reader whispering thanks to a writer whose story “felt like home”, a child cradling a signed book, an elder moved to tears by a forgotten dialect sung on stage.
People came for the programmes. But they stayed for something harder to name — a pause, a connection, a breath.
And now, as the grounds fall silent and the gateway cloth is taken down, something remains.
