Locally known as Bomena, the traditional culture of meeting the ladylove and romancing stealthily at night is known as Night hunting among the English-using Bhutanese today. Prevalent in many parts of eastern Bhutan even today, it is a rural version of urban dating, in which a young man enters a girl’s house in the wee hours at night for courtship with or without prior consultation. In fact, the original words can better be rendered as Prowling for girls by night. The prowling can be solo or in groups depending on whether or not the young man has a fixed date. However, though they set out as a group, they disperse gradually as they find a suitable partner.

In fact, the uniform design of the Bhutanese houses with the same type of doors and sliding windows, make the task easier for the young lovers, but the traditional two storey buildings are difficult for prowling and not all boys would be lucky enough to find an easy entry to it. Nevertheless, successful infiltration into the house does not always give a guarantee for successful rendezvous, as there always remains the chance of rejection from the side of the girl.

Some rigid fathers, especially fathers of the beautiful girls, remain notoriously sleepless or irritable, as all the eligible boys from the village would desperately try to visit their daughters. At the slightest rattling of the window would make them spring out of their blankets and force the lovesick young man to jump off into the darkness of the night, without thinking about the breaking of his femur bone.

However, some parents pretend to be asleep even if they are aware about the presence of the intruder, especially if they personally know the prowler and like him. As soon as the secret rendezvous becomes an open secret, the respective parents start to discuss about the affair as a precursor to a happy marriage.

During the gloomy past, the night prowling was not very easy. Apart from sleepless nights, it involved twisted ankles, fractured shins, and long walks to gain a girl. In fact, it was an act of gallantry for the young men. Some of them had to walk for hours, across difficult terrain, even to another village to meet their girls. Neither the dreaded wild animals, nor the horror of the so-called evil spirits could hold them back. Their act probably spoke more of gallantry than romance.

However, the traditional nightly hunting for possible courtship is gradually fading today, with the spread of modern education and the consequent socio-economic changes in the country. The use of electrical lights also created a huge problem for the young men, as they miss the chance to hide in the darkness. Added to it, the modern houses are being constructed with safety measures to keep the unwanted intruders in abeyance. Today, even the girls in the rural areas have become cautious and practical, as they have become aware about the necessity of having a marriage certificates and the necessity of having the name of a father to register the birth of the child.