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By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Thimphu |
“The divorce case is very, very common. If you go to the court, you will see most of the cases are all on divorce.”
It may sound like a comment from Scandinavia – but this is Bhutan and the speaker is a young artist, Barun Gurung. His own parents divorced 10 years ago, when he was 13 and his brother a little older.
“I think during their marriage they used to have small fights which, you know, used to have bad impact on us,” he told the BBC.
“They used to fight and you know my father used to put hands on my mother. So it was quite bad to see that.”
We meet in the studio where Barun works – a collective of artists in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, its walls plastered with brightly coloured pictures.
At least one of his colleagues joins in the conversation saying he, too, comes from a family affected by divorce. Marriage break-ups are common in this tiny kingdom. So, too, are love marriages, not arranged by one’s family. Continue reading Bhutanese take divorce in their stride