Bhutan discovers charms of idiot box

Thimphu, May 27: After sitting cross-legged around their wood-burning stove for a dinner of rice and butter tea, the Penjor family used to chat a bit and then go to bed early.

Nowadays they eat quickly, clean the dishes, then assemble in the living room where they will spend the next three to four hours on the couch and floor, gazing at flickering images. Shangri-la, meet the boob tube.

Bhutan, once so resistant to the outside world that it rarely let in a foreigner, got TV two years ago. And not just a government-run channel of its own, but the whole gamut, uncensored — MTV, HBO, Indian movies, National Geographic, and, of course, commercial breaks. Already TV is changing speech patterns, topics of conversation, children’s behaviour. And with it come the laments all too familiar to parents everywhere.

‘‘I come home after work and my wife and kids don’t look up from TV to greet me,’’ says Tashi Phuntsog, secretary of the nation’s Parliament and a father of five. His 3-year-old daughter, he complains, has already picked up Indian songs off TV, ‘‘but she can’t sing a Bhutanese song’’.