The Bhutanese Leading the way.
By Kinley Tenzin Wangchuk
Its September again, a graceful bridge between the vibrant energy of summer and the quiet cozy, reflective pace of autumn.
But September also represents for us, a spiritually sacred time of transition, completion and inner alignment as the year shifts from the warmth of summer to the grounding sedate calmness of autumn and eventual winter. For Thimphu, nothing encapsulates this inevitable change in the season than the Drubchen and the Tshechu. It is a solemn and befitting occasion for families to come together not only to celebrate but also a festival to invoke our protective deities and to reflect on impermanence and death through the ritual mask dances.
Over the years, apart from the customary religious significance, the Thimphu tshechu has spawned a noisy home-grown business quiddity that can be rightly dubbed the “tshechu sale.” The tshechu sales start from the beginning of September reaching fever pitch the week the tshechu unfurls. This is the week when the goods spill out into the streets and even pedestrian walkways with temporary stalls- some with colourful tarpaulin marquees resembling those of Chungking Mansion, Hong Kong and Khaosan Road, Bangkok.
It’s a no-holds-barred, open-to-all discount pitching mania that includes items from house-hold goods to electronics/electric appliances to shoes to garments to vehicles and what have you? The Thimphu street shop-fronts are festooned with banners and posters announcing the tshechu sales ranging from discounts of 20%, 30%, 40% to as high or low as 70%.
The discount announcements that began with posters and banners to newspaper advertisements and radio and tv infomercials soon emigrate to the digital social media platforms with TikTok being the most preferred medium. This is a new-found profession cut out mostly for the female shop owners and sales representatives and assistants who now take turns on TikTok displaying and pitching their wares. Little seen and less heard women and girls now take turns to pitch their wares on-line basking in the luminous lime light of instant fame as local digital celebrities.
Truth has never been an essential ingredient of viral content on the Internet and in the stepped-up race to attract readers and buyers, on-line sites are increasingly blurring the line between fact and fiction. Before rushing off to examine the goods, one may well pause to question, “is this all part of doing business in the rough-and-tumble world of online marketing?”
Having taken a stroll one late evening to soak in the festive carnival mood of the Thimphu streets, the lady parking fee collector approached me as I stepped into my car, any “tshechu discounts?” I mirthfully asked her. “Tshechu discounts?” she repeated with equal measure of mirth as she flippantly turned around and disappeared into the fading shadows of the darkening twilight, bursting into peals of uncontrollable mirthless laughter.
“In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to.”
-Bruce Barton, American author and advertising executive
