Relating to relationships

By Binaj Gurubacharya

"Till death do us apart," should not just be a vow taken when tying the knot but a pledge when getting into a relationship with your partner or a significant one. Getting into a relationship is just winning the battle, but the war is keeping it alive and going where not all emerge victorious.

Most people get involved in some kind of relationships or other but there are only few who actually succeed in keeping it alive and healthy. The key to a successful relationship is in being truthful, honest and most importantly being faithful.

For those who have a partner who loves you, respects you and above all is totally dedicated to you ... be thankful and thank the lord everyday. Because there are only few members of this elite club.

Winning is just not physically conquering over the one you desire but capturing the emotions and the heart one hundred percent. And to get to that point there are a few things that need to be done and kept in mind. Winning someone’s trust is winning the gold medal in the Olympics of one’s life ... it takes a lot of time, effort and dedication that does not happen at a snap like most people would want it to be.

Although most of us are aware that communicating is an important element of relationships, we do not realize the full impact of communication on our emotional and physical health.

Effectively communicating with your partner is not a luxury, but a basic emotional need. Still, learning the lessons that experience teaches us is not always smooth sailing. The ability to see the problem is one thing, while the capacity to make a change can feel to be out of reach. When communication breaks down, partners are vulnerable to disconnecting from one another at the very time they need each other the most.

Putting romance back into the relationship is even more important. For many couples, their relationship, after a while do turn stale and empty, and feelings of tenderness and passion are replaced with resentment and boredom.

There are a number of factors which are responsible for this phenomenon in committed relationships. First of all, it is crucial to recognize any unresolved resentments that are present in the relationship. Resentment is the cancer that will eventually eat away at the tender and loving feelings in a relationship. It is impossible to feel resentful and loving at the same time. Secondly, couples often take each other for granted as time goes on, and make the relationship a low priority in their lives relative to jobs and other activities. Thirdly, pleasurable and passionate activities which the couple used to engage in often drop out of the couple’s routine over time.

These issues can be resolved, though putting changes into practice requires some effort and commitment. Like resolving any past or present resentments. If you don’t know how to do so, learn how now. There is no greater gift for yourself or your partner than learning how to resolve conflict and resentments.

Creating special alone time for the relationship on a regular basis. This means time without TV, without computers, without distractions of any kind. Many couples find having a ‘date night’ once a week to be a fabulous addition to their relationship.

Review the things you used to do when you first met. How many of them are you still doing? Bring those activities back into your relationship on a regular basis.

Be willing to try new pleasurable activities. There is no reason why your relationship can’t be exciting, romantic and passionate.

Mistakes happen in life, and the potential to learn and to grow from them is our biggest ally against future heartache. Getting to the bottom of a traumatic event in relationships requires our best efforts to use communication to rebuild trust and prevent future disconnection. Increasing our capacity to express our needs when in conflict or under pressure is a key factor in avoiding feelings in a way that damage relationships. Deeper understanding and communication are essential to fight the glitches in any relationship.

There are many challenges to relationships; some of them come from outside of us and some come from within. Meeting these challenges takes commitment, time, and effort. But a good relationship is well worth this effort and a great deal of this effort can be fun.

According to experts, there is one very simple principle to keep in mind. The basic requirement for the care and feeding of a relationship is that partners must make the connection between them a priority in their lives. If they do so, the relationship will flourish. Anything that disrupts this connection will disrupt their relationship.

Even the most devoted of partners will have interests other than their relationship and they could form attachments and linkages elsewhere. This is an important part of life. However, if your primary linkage in life shifts away from your partner and remains elsewhere, it is likely to prove fatal to your relationship.

Relationships don’t just fall apart overnight. There are warning signs to look for, signs that your levels of emotional tension are rising and that the relationship is in trouble. These warning signs are the Four Rs. The Four Rs encompass the four stages of tension in a relationship. You pass through these stages frequently, and if you don’t learn how to avoid them, the four Rs will turn into the four stages of the death of your relationship.

The Four Rs are: Resistance, Resentment, Rejection, and Repression.

It is normal to experience some resistance in your relationships with other human beings, especially those very close to you. Resistance occurs when you notice yourself taking exception to something another person is doing, saying, or feeling. You feel annoyed, critical, a little separate from them.

Resentment is a more developed state of resistance. Now you no longer feel merely annoyed by something your partner does — you can’t stand it! While resistance caused annoyance, resentment causes anger. You feel angry, critical, hostile, frustrated, unloving. At that moment you have begun to separate from your partner and retreat behind your emotional walls.

Rejection means separation: emotional, physical, or both. This stage of the Four Rs occurs when so much resistance and resentment have built up that it is impossible for you to be comfortable staying emotionally connected to the other person, and so you separate yourself from him or her.

Repression is a state of emotional numbness. You enter this stage when you are tired of resisting, resenting, and rejecting. You successfully repress all of your negative emotions, numbing yourself to them in order to be comfortable. You may repress your feelings consciously or unconsciously.

There is only one solution for preventing your relationships from moving through the Four Rs: The moment you notice some emotional tension between you and your partner, tell the complete truth about how you feel. If you tell the truth about feelings the moment either of you notice them, you will nip resentment and rejection in the bud. It’s a lot easier to resolve a small conflict than a big one that’s been brewing a long time.

Rekindling The Past

Anjali Shrestha

Many of us have forgotten the story of the origin of the Kathmandu valley. Let me rekindle the tale for those who are still unaware of the amazing past. As the legend goes there was once a lake called the Serpent’s lake (Nag-hrad) for Kartonag, the serpent’s king dwelt in it. All water plants except the lotus grew in it. One day Vipaswi Buddha came and threw a root of the lotus into the water. Buddha then declared that when the root shall produce a flower, then Swayambhu, the Self-Existent One, shall be revealed here in the form of a flame. Then the water in the lake shall go and there shall be a valley.

Finally one day the mystical lotus bloomed with a wonderful flame of five colours. Another Buddha, the Sikhi sat down to meditate on the top of the mountain. Sikhi Buddha later plunged into the lake and was absorbed in the spirit of the Self-Existent One.

Many years later, Visambhu Buddha arrived at the lake. Then he declared, "A Bodhisattva shall duly arrive here and let the water out of the lake."

Bodhisattva Manjushri, a Chinese saint of North China when meditating upon the world events, came to know about a Self-Existent One in the Serpent’s lake; he along with his followers set for the holy lake. With his scimitar he cut a passage through the hill, and the water gushed out draining the lake. The Bodhisattva then told his followers to settle down in the newly formed valley, and departed leaving Dharmakar, one of his followers to become Nepal’s first ruler. The place near Kathmandu where Manjushri cut the mountains to liberate the water is known as Chobar Gorge.

The Valley’s mythological past blends into history with the founding of the Gopala dynasty. The Kirats followed the Gopalas. Nepal’s history comes into sharper focus with the arrival of the Lichhavis, a north-Indian clan who took over from the the Kiratas around 200AD and established their capital at Deopatan, near modern Pashupatinath. During the Malla period when Jayasthiti Malla took over in 1380 AD, the valley was divided into four states - Kantipur or the city of glory, Bhaktapur or city of Devotees, Lalitpur or city of Art and Kirtipur. Prithivi Narayan Shah, the Gorkha King conquered in 1768.

Kathmandu derived its name from a temple named Kashthamandap(Pavilion of Wood). This is said to have been built by King Laxmi Narsingha Malla in the 16th century. Legend has it that it was constructed from the wood of a single tree.

The Valley now has more than 3,500 temples and 2,500,000 shrines dotted all around the city. Throughout the region, Hindu and Buddhist deities live side by side, and often overlap. By the third century B.C. some of the most famous Buddhist shrines in the valley were made. The stupa of Swamyambhunath in a hill near Kathmandu where the first lotus took root and flowered is one of the main stupas. In form it has a hemispherical bottom, the garbh, representing Buddha’s body. At the top of the hemisphere is a cube supposed to be Buddha’s face. All the faces of the cube are painted to show the Buddha’s eyes. His nose is often represented by a question mark that is usually interpreted as the Sanskrit symbol of "one" as in the "oneness" or "uniqueness" of Buddha. Above the face is a series of coils, sometimes in metal and sometimes in stone that represent Buddha’s hair. According to mythology, Once when Buddha it occurred to him that he was losing time away from his contemplation by the necessity of getting periodic haircuts. At once, the story says, his hair became tightly coiled and turned blue, and no further haircuts were required.

Another famous stupa is at Boudhanath, the largest Buddhist Stupa in the valley and one of the biggest in the world.

The heart of Kathmandu is Durbar Square, often referred to as Hanumandhoka by the locals. King Pratap Malla built it in the 16th century. It is here that the Kings of Nepal are crowned and their coronation solemnized.

Located in the vicinity of Hanumandhoka stands Kumari Ghar, the temple of the Living Goddess, built by Jaya Prakash Malla, the last Malla king of Kathmandu. The Kumari Goddess (the virgin goddess)is required to be from the Newari caste, a virgin with no body marks or injuries. She actually represents Taleju, the tutelary deity of the Shah Dynasty.

Situated on the banks of the Bagmati and occupying an area of 281 hectares, lies the Pashupatinath temple, one of the largest Hindu temple complexes and also the most sacred Hindu Pilgrimage site in Nepal. Pashupati means protector of all living beings. According to the legend, milk gushed from the teats of a cow in a forest near Pashupati. On digging the mud where the milk used to flow, a flaming lingam was discovered. Now the richly ornamented pagoda houses the sacred linga, or phallic symbol of Lord Shiva. Jaisingh Ramadeva built it in the 13th century AD. Surprisingly, the priests are not Nepalese but Nasmboodripad Brahmins from South India. Dharmashalas have been built there for the old and dying who, to attain salvation, wish to die with their feet dipped in the sacred stream.

Another famous Hindu shrine is the ten feet long black stone statue of Vishnu Narayan reclining on a bed of snakes built in the fifth century during the Lichhavi period.

The story of Kathmandu remains incomplete without Patan and Bhaktapur. The Durbar Squares of both the cities are unique and beautiful in their own way. It is believed that Patan is the oldest city of the Valley. Manjushri is supposed to have founded Manjupatan, right after he enshrined Swayambhu. Bhaktapur is Nepal’s most perfectly preserved city. Bricks everywhere, streets paved with bricks in herringbone and parquet patterns, houses built of bricks and carved wood.

Nepal is the only Hindu Kingdom in the world today. Exploring the Valley’s fabled past is something that anyone can enjoy.

Beggar me, beggar you

By Dinesh Adhikary

It was a Wednesday, I guess. I had been to one of the country’s dailies to collect a crossword prize. Nothing had been worth recalling till I passed Sinamangal from Teenkune some time after I got on the bus for Chabahil. At Sinamangal a young boy, hardly more than twelve years old stepped into the bus. On his left hand was a sarangi, the instrument of the famous gaaines of our country. For me it was more of a surprise when he, in spite of the plenty of vacant seats that stared at him, opted to sit on the bus floor, his back resting on a supporting vertical metal pipe of the bus. And he started playing the instrument. A friend of mine had told me of such "beggars with a sarangi" but I had yet to see one. My friend’s account had actually made me eager about them.

The tune he played was not a familiar one. Though it was melodious. He faced towards the front of the bus and I was on the last bench. I knew that it was a good opportunity for me to thoroughly study him. Thoughts came to my mind faster than the speed of light.

I saw a poor fellow, just stepped into the city of his dreams but with the other half of his dreams vanished in the so many drenches and the heavily polluted air and water in the city. I saw hopes that had been crushed to tears- they had dried already; I saw life torn to rags, I saw dreams ending in threads. I saw hopelessness. I saw desperation.

I heard cries. I heard children humming their dreams. And then the shouts of the devil. And then the cries, the children’s cries!

From head to toe he was a stringy, dirty body inside a torn T-shirt reading, "Who’s blue?" and a ragged Levi’s without the e, and the s partly absent. Their absence gave way for my eyes to realize that he had no underwear underneath. Against my dreadful expectations, he had no peeping shoes on his feet. The great toe crushed to a black nail was obvious under the thin layer of dust that covered his right foot. The left was rather dirtier and happened to fall in the shade for me to see clearly. They looked totally black with the falling sun in the sky veiled by a huge dark cloud. And still the foot maintained quite a bit of contrast with the bus floor. The shape was nature’s art. Nothing more than that. Nothing on the feet.

My mind flowed with the background music of the sarangi. And suddenly a rush. The bus had stopped at Tilganga. The rush was not an unexpected one. I’ve rather been used to the struggles of getting onto or out of local buses- the most number of humans in the smallest space.

Soon Pashupatinath. The sarangi continued. I heard the boy singing something like "Protect us lord Pashupatinath." The back of the bus was now the more crowded part and the boy came towards the back. He was coming closer to me. And I saw his left hand holding the body of the instrument. He had a watch on the wrist. Seiko 5 Quartz. I could read its "Made in Japan." It was a watch drawn on the wrist -looked like a blue Today’s pen- the brand that advertises with a "Got to win Today". I felt the depth of the fall of the heights of dreams.

I felt the distance between me and him getting smaller and smaller. He was coming closer to me. And by that time, he had turned towards me. I felt him looking at me with expectation. I had by then started thinking what to do with him. If I gave him something I would be establishing him as a beggar. And I decided not to care about him. But I couldn’t resist. More so when I, despite my head turning not exactly his way, saw that the first person to whose knees he threw his hands didn’t respond. From the man’s knee he took his hand to his own forehead- that was perhaps the exact begging part. He repeated this a few times for the first person to whom he begged in the bus. But to no avail. He shifted himself to the next man who cared not to either. Then there were a few teenagers who I heard scolding him saying that he had made their clothes dirty. Now the longest route that he could take to come to me was only begging past two more people. And he had got nothing as yet. It was a general tendency. I thought that had the first man responded positively most of the others would have done the same too.

Before he came to me the bus stopped at Gaushala and the bus almost emptied. And the boy was still empty too.

The conductor used harsh words to tell the boy to sit on a seat. He sat so near me that I was prompted to go right up to him.

"What’s your name?"
"Arun".
"Home?"
"It’s a village in Sindhupalchowk".
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen".

I had not guessed his age right. I sensed the reason. He was one who had grown up in poverty and deprivation; my guess had based itself on the common sizes and looks that I had seen of guys and gals of his age living in the city. I remembered my ten-year old brother shouting at my mother in the morning, "If you don’t give me money for buying marbles I will sit in the hot sun on the streets, beg the whole day through and become sick and you will see".

My heart had melted. But it longed for more of such bitter realities.
Taking a pause to help myself hide the tears, I decided to continue.

"You beg all day?"
"Yes. I have to beg to live".
"How long have you been begging?"
"Two months".
"Have no parents?"
"They are at home".
"Ever been to school?"
"Ran away from home when in class three".
"Where do you sleep?’
"In Thamel".
"Where in Thamel?"
"On the road. Where else?"
It hurt me deep and I felt my heart swell but feeling was all that I could do.

"Had your meal today?"

"Yes. I had begged twenty-five rupees by two O’clock. I have already had my meal".

The honesty was remarkable. May be because he was still new in the begging business.

And it’s a business after all. His -a worse bet than mine, a stricter one.

I felt myself too a beggar-a much-equipped one than him in the journey of life through time.

A goddess crowned in Patan

By Prakash A. Raj

One of the unique features of Nepal is the institution of Kumari or the Living Goddess. She lives in her own residence near Kathmandu Durbar Square and is worshipped by many devotees. She is also called the Royal Kumari as the King of Nepal receives blessings from her during Indra Jatra in September.

But there is another Kumari in Patan or Lalitpur. She may not be as famous as the Kumari in Kathmandu, but she has an important role to play during festivals in Patan.

On the 6th of April I had a chance to see the selection of Patan’s new Kumari. A group of people from Patan had come to the home of Badagurujyu of Nepal accompanied by three candidates for the post of Kumari. A few days earlier, the present Kumari of Patan, Chandrashila Bajracharya aged nine and a half years old, had her period and was no longer eligible to be a living goddess as she had shed blood. A new Kumari had to be urgently selected as important rituals were necessary for the worship of Machhendranath in Patan. The former Kumari was selected when she was only one and half years old in B.S 1993. Her Kumariship lasted for eight years. There are similarities in the institution of Kumari in both the cities of Kathmandu and Patan. Both are ineligible to remain Kumaris after menstruation. However, the process of selection is somewhat different.

The Pujari of Taleju temple in Patan Durbar Square, a Newari speaking Rajopadhyay Brahmin, shortlists the candidates based on rituals. I was told there were about ten to start with. Unlike Kathmandu, where the Kumari comes from Shakyas, Patan’s Kumaris must come from the family of Bajracharyas, the priests of Buddhist Newars. It was interesting to note that they were required to come from Ratnakar Mahavihar in Patan, situated near Gabahal southwest of Patan Durbar Square. There were three candidates left who had come to the home of Badagurujyu where the final selection was to be made. One girl was six years old, another was two and the third was barely a year and half. Badagurujyu’s wife was to interview the three girls and recommend one to be the "Living Goddess". The parents of the girls were also there, the Pujari of Patan’s Taleju temple and representatives from the Guthi Sansthan who had come to witness the selection. All three were interviewed and the recommendation for the installation of Patan’s new Kumari was made. It was the eldest of the three, Sanira Bajracharya who was selected. She is six years old. Her aunt had also been a Kumari at one time. Her father is a good painter. Some rituals still needed to be performed before she was to be installed in her house in Patan.

As I was present when the final selection was made, I felt I was watching the making of history in an ancient ritual. Ancient rituals are sill alive in the Kathmandu Valley and the institution of Kumari itself is indicative of this reality which has prompted some foreigners to call Nepal a "living museum".

The Kumari is then worshipped by Newars and non-Newars, Hindus and Buddhists.

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