Over the last few weeks there have been numerous articles in the press about Sultan Qaboos bin Said and the slow transition to democracy in Oman. It is easy to dismiss such news as far removed from India, but this distance may be a result of false optics. For example, bin Said did part of his schooling in Pune with Shankar Dayal Sharma, who would go on to be the President of India. And that is not the only connection between Oman and South Asia. In 2005, I met Michael Rutland, who had recently received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Queen Elizabeth II. It was a rare honour for a Physics teacher. But as we sat that day and the day after, and during the following years that I worked on my book on Bhutan, Rutland’s story came to exemplify to me much more than the honour conferred on him by the titular head of a former empire.

Rutland’s story begins with his parents and their unexpected meeting. Rutland’s father was a member of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, and was sent by Kai-shek to study agriculture at the University of Oxford. It was at university that he met, married and had a son with a British wife. As World War II came to a close, and the war between the Kuomintang and the Communists heated up, Rutland’s father returned to China, leaving his family behind. He did not survive. The Chinese Communist Party triumphed on the mainland, and the Kuomintang was forced to retreat to the island of Formosa, which we now know as Taiwan.

Although Rutland (and his mother) fared better than his father, the Britain he was raised in was living through an age of austerity as the island-nation recovered from the massive expense of the World War, and the destruction by aerial bombardment. National service was compulsory, and Rutland opted to serve in the Royal Air Force, spending five years on the island of Malta.

Coming back home to England, he gained certification as a Physics teacher. It was a fortuitous meeting of talent and opportunity. Rutland shone in this new avatar, and was teaching at the St Edward’s School in Oxford, when he met a lady from Sikkim, and a job offer followed soon. The lady had been an envoy of the then Queen Mother of Bhutan, Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck, who wanted a tutor for her son, the crown prince.

The Queen Mother was the first person in Bhutan to have studied at Oxford, and her brother had been the prime minister of the Himalayan kingdom until his assassination in 1964. Six years later, she wanted the best education possible for her only son, but was unwilling to send him out of Bhutan. Rutland, of course, knew nothing of this. He did not even know where Bhutan was, but he was 35, and he decided it would be a fine adventure. And so for a year he taught an elite group of schoolchildren in a school created just for one class in the beautiful Paro Valley, with the then Crown Prince of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who would become the longest-serving king of the country, as his principal student.

Returning to England later, Rutland resumed his life as a Physics teacher, until the travel bug bit him again. The Sultanate of Oman was in need of Englishmen, specifically former Royal Air Force personnel, as bin Sa’id faced the Dhofar Rebellion (1965–1975). Rutland went there as a squadron commander, helping the Sultanate quell the rebellion and negotiate with tribal chiefs. During one of these negotiations he was stung by a scorpion, and his hilarious recitation of how he sat stiff-lipped as the formalities were completed, and the tribal chiefs inspected the sting before he could leave, has to be heard to be believed.

He returned once more to England, continuing his stint as an educator, but found time to travel to Bhutan again and again, staying in a cottage with his adopted family, and becoming a part of the education system there. Before the fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, abdicated unexpectedly to make way for his son Jigme Khesar Wangchuck in 2006, he granted Rutland citizenship of Bhutan.

Today, as Oman struggles with the issue of succession after bin Said, and Bhutan stabilises and deepens its nascent democracy, Rutland’s story reminds us how one life can straddle civilisations — civilisations considered irreconcilable, yet often bound in ways that become apparent if only we bother to scratch the surface.

(Omair Ahmad is an author. His last book was on Bhutan)

@OmairTAhmad

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