The show and gaze o’ th’ times

By Razen Manandhar

A cheerful little girl, Priti Shakya of Itumbahal, gave continuation to the almost 720 year old tradition of choosing a flawless girl as the protector goddess, by entering the doorways of the artistic Kumari House at the now largely ceremonial Hanumandhoka royal palace two weeks ago.

After several examinations and final recognition from the king, the granddaughter of renowned traditional artist Siddhi Muni Shakya was made Kumari, a living representative of the royal deity Taleju. On July 10, she replaced the former Kumari, Amita Shakya, who "protected" the country for 10 years, some two and half months earlier than scheduled.

The world worships stones, carved into different shapes as saviours of mankind. They visualise all manifestations of Gods in the stones but the world finds it hard to accept a living person, with equal respect and love, as a god or goddess - this is human nature. They cannot accept anyone being celebrated in the same way a piece of stone may be. But Nepal might be the only country where a naive, little girl is. The girl is believed to represent the family goddess of the royal Taleju dynasty as a living incarnation with power to secure the throne s and the people’s prosperity. She is known as Kumari, the virgin one.

History has not yet traced the origins of the Kumari tradition. So far the chronicles argue that it started as early as in the time of a twelve-century ruler Gunkam Dev, to whom the credit of making this Kathmandu city goes. A chronicle, narrated by Daniel Wright in 1966 says that he instituted Indra Jatra festival by erecting the images of Kumaris. Further, Mary Slusser writes in her book Nepal Mandala that manuscripts written in 1280 and 1285 AD describe the method of choosing, ornamenting and worshipping Kumari.

There are several Kumaris in the Kathmandu Valley. Theoretically, each Bihar or the monastery should have one but many of them today have discontinued this tradition mostly due to lack of patronage. Kumaris can be found in Kwa Bahal, Kilagal, Tokha (Kathmandu). Sulimha-tol, Hakhaa Bahal, Bungamati (Patan), as well as Chaturvarna Mahavihar (Bhaktapur) among others.

Above all, the Kumari at Hanuman Dhoka holds the principal position for she is given an artistic house - Rajlakxmi Kul Vihara - with elegant woodcarvings and beautiful wall paintings. Her chariot procession during the festival of Indra Jatra is celebrated where the presence of the ruling monarch is a must. He receives ‘tika’ from her on his forehead and carries her divine sword to "recharge" the power of ruling for the next year.

According to Historian Dr. Chunda Bajracharya, till the Rana rule, the kings used to watch the festival from the stone paved platform in front of the Kumari House and follow the procession in a horse chariot.

The prime Kumari is selected from eighteen Viharas of Kathmandu. The girl must be born from "pure" Shakya families and free of blemishes. She is supposed to possess 32 "special signs" showing her divine nature. It is said that the candidate children are taken to a special dark room for a strenuous test, in which the little children has to sit in front of giant buffalo heads in puddles of blood where images of different unearthly creatures come and go in the oil lamp-lit chamber. The one, who can sustain the ghastly atmosphere bravely is selected.

However, Juju Bhai Shakya, the husband of the Kumari’s caretaker husband rules out any such criteria. "The only basis of selection are the family background, her physical characteristics and the stars. The jataa, or the birth-chart, prepared with detailed information of her birth stars, is sent to the astrologers for examination. If they permit it, she becomes the god," he says. He adds that a similar ritual is performed every year during the Dashain festival.

Chitaidars are hereditary caretakers of the Kumaris who live in the Humari House with the family. It passes from mother-in-law to the eldest son-in-law. She takes care of the god-child everyday. Bathing, doing make-up, feeding and also bringing other children in to play with the Kumari is her responsibility. The Kumari can play all day within her quarters but she is not allowed to go out of her residence except for 13 times in a year, during special festivals. The rule is that she should not even get the slightest of injuries. Any sort of bleeding, including menstruation would disqualify her from being a goddess.

There are numerous stories behind the origin of the tradition of worshipping Kumari. One says that an ancient king, Pratap Malla, used to play dice in his secret chamber with Goddess Taleju, the royal goddess and also seek advice in ruling the country. One night, perverted lust shadowed his mind and immediately the omniscient goddess vanished from his sight. Taleju, however, advised him in the dream that the king might select a Buddhist girl in whose body the Hindu goddess could dwell. The king followed the advice and received the power to rule from the goddess through the girl.

Jaya Prakash Malla, the last king of the Malla dynasty, was warned by the Kumari that his time of tenure would end soon and was asked to provide her with a permanent residence. He had the beautiful Kumari House built in just six months and also started the tradition of chariot procession along with two living attendant gods Ganesh and Bhairav - this gave him an extra 12 years on the throne.

As the girl reaches 12, or sustains any injury, she is sent to her home after a special ceremonial pooja. She starts her family life normally - studying, marrying and conducting a career as well – afterwards, but she is generally called by the name of Kumari, rather than her own name.

The tradition has continued, no political change or natural calamity has ever affected the unbroken chain. However, the set traditions are being modified along with time. Amrit Man Shakya, the father of the former Kumari, worked hard to grant formal education to her inside her residence and also urged the government to provide her with monetary allowances.

Today, he is grateful to the god for providing him with this opportunity.

The 84 year old Hira Maiya Shakya, the eldest among living former Kumaris did not know that studying was even necessary. She lives with her 87 year old husband at Bijayeshori.

But the parents today put emphasis on the child’s education. Rina Skhaya, the present Kumari’s mother said she was ready to send her daughter to become the goddess as the priests said that the girl would still get a proper education.

Twenty-two year old Rashmila Shakya, a Kumari till 1992, is now a modern girl. The career-conscious girl is now waiting for the results of the Intermediate Science examination. "That was quite fun. Playing and playing and no working at all," she said, remembering her merry childhood.

Juju Bhai Shakya of Kumari House says, the Kumari in position receives Rs. 6,000 as allowance, Rs. 1000 for education and plus much more. After retiring, they get life allowance of Rs 3,000.

About the present state of the Kumari tradition, Naresh Bir Shakya, a central member of Shakya Foundation said that the tradition of Kumari is at stake due to the people’s prejudiced attitude towards it.

"Some throw conservative rumours against it and others attack it with human rights propaganda, without even finding out the truth. But the tradition will continue as long as the Shakyas are ready to send their daughters to be Kumaris and I don’t think it will ever stop," he said.

The list of the former kumaris so far possible collected

The names of the Kumaris of earliers days could not be found.

Courtsey: Durga Shakya, Kumari House

Tears shall drown the wind

By Nitya Nanda Timsina

Deprivation takes many different forms. The deprivation of the tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees of their birthright to citizenship is one of the cruelest forms of deprivation.

Politically, socially and culturally the unfree citizens of Bhutan are deprived of a basic constituent of human lives - what Amartya Sen calls "good living."

The Lhtosampas or the Southern Bhutanese are the minority groups who had to keep their voices muffled for fear of the tyranny of authoritarian government officials and are impoverished and tortured by the state.

This was a decade in which mankind made steady progress but for Bhutanese people this was a decade lost in terrible memory. It was also a period in which these refugees suffered untold hardships in the camps swarming with mosquitoes -a place they called home.

At first glance, camps are a strange place where tens of thousands of refugees have a single room to live in and a void sky overhead but the next glance takes us across the far-stretched clusters of tarpaulin roofs to simply a wall.

Imagine a life without a living room, tarpaulin roof overhead, burning summers, wounded daily by epidemics, and a mind-boggling series of frustrations. That was what the Bhutanese refugee camp was like when I last visited. What touched me more was that they still kept their hopes up while they didn’t know when the humanitarian suffering was going to end...

Goma, a tiny child stares at the sky just incase an airplane was hovering about and after finding that it was a vulture, she swiftly turns away in repugnance. When evening draws closer, hundreds of children clogged in some battered jeans and rugs hurry up to their huts. These children play on the bumpy dirt roads from daybreak until dusk.

Up the river lies their camp- Beldangi. When the monsoon sets in, Ratwa roars and rumbles down and flows to its brim threatening to sweep every hut built on its banks. Winter is no easy- it brings dust and cold.

The monsoon has not yet begun and a small stream gushes down its zig-zag path. Goma rejoins her companions of refugee children who frolic about the upstream. Back in her camp, women folk hover in the kitchen-cum-bed room cooking rice only occasionally to come forward to serve tea.

The year was 1990, it was heartbreaking to see several thousands of refugees drifting along the Nepal-India border with babies on their backs, seeking warmth, safety, and shelter, still increasingly hard for them to find.

They started pouring in 1990 with nothing but simply the clothes on their backs and have continued to live here for the last ten years...claiming the future and struggling for human dignity after the government aggressively pushed the country towards ethnic cleansing where fifty thousand ethnic Nepalese were forced out of their hearth and home in a week. They were dumped like commodities at Kakarvitta by Indian trucks.

The advocates of authoritarianism in Bhutan think political freedom is not conducive to development and denied giving voice to the deprived and the vulnerable and that brought turmoil in the Dragon kingdom, also known as the last Shangrilla.

These refugees had been put to years of stewardship and victimization in the dust and soil of Bhutan’s rugged landscape. And now they think they are losing their future. They have come to Nepal in order to stay alive when the country they were born in turned into their own enemy.

It was a boiling summer afternoon; refugees were seen sprawling on the road side and on the grassy lawns. I could see a group of around six men huddled in a corner gossiping. They were recalling their nostalgic past.

Not all Lhotsampas had to flee their country in order to stay alive. Tek Bahadur Gurung and Dadi Ram Rijal of Sallary VDC did not fall prey to the Bhutanese crackdown because the eviction order was lifted after they promised the authorities that they would eat beef, refugees were arguing aloud.

As happened with America’s Indians, Australia’s aborigines- the Lhotsampas of Bhutan are on the verge of becoming the lost generation after the government of Bhutan pushed forward the ethnic cleansing, under which southern Bhutan was deemed empty.

I could only remember that the group was arguing endlessly after which I left. In Sanishchre camp alone, some 20,000 refugees fill squalid camps. The WFP and other INGOs were threatening to halt their operations in the refugee camps day after day bringing more havoc.

From corner to corner, I found that the citizens of the world’s remotest Himalayas were wondering if it all would ever end. Back in Bhutan the same old political structure is in operation. Economically, some of the country’s most pressing needs have yet to be fulfilled. Around 10,000 houses were burnt down to the ground in less than a week, who will rebuild them? The Bhutanese government says it is not responsible. The best incentive that the government can give is to provide jobs so that the refugees can get their lives going. But the nation’s dire need looms in fundamental rights even before housing schemes can be thought of.

Nepal might accomplish its mission of breakthroughs in dialogue process and liberate refugees from statelessness but not from the misery, the ignorance, the hunger and above all the fear that looms in the wake of the Joint Verification process for repatriation. But for Bhutan’s long suffering people, that mission cannot be accomplished through repatriation which involves simply a give and take between Nepal and Bhutan.

Turn terror into sport

By Ashutosh Tiwari

How would you like to close your eyes and fall headlong from a bridge, stationed at a height of 160 metres . . . into an ice-cold, boulder-filled and ragingly foaming Himalayan river? If that sounds like a fun way to spend a part of your Saturday afternoon, then welcome to the sport of bungy jumping, available, since early 2000, at a price in this country of mountains long known for, well, heights.

It was late last year when three friends and I, looking for a way to escape Kathmandu to finish up the year on an adventurous note, decided to go bungy jumping. We knew very little about the sport, of course — except that, on and off, we had caught a few bungy visuals on a foreign TV show or two (most memorably in an Aerosmith music video). The idea that seemingly sane people would climb up to insane heights only to come crashing down to the earth with nothing but elastic cords tied to their body parts was frightening and exciting. We had to explore this fright and the excitement for ourselves. That we could explore all this not too far from Kathmandu in one afternoon and still be able to make it home by the evening to sleep off the ‘jump-lag’ only added to our thrill.

And so we left, at seven on one chilly December morning, for The Last Resort in Sindhu Palchowk district. From Thamel, our bus, carrying about 20 potential jumpers, wound its way towards the northern directions, through the bazaars of Koteswor, outer Bhakatpur, Dolal Ghat and others. The final stretch of the Kodari Highway was uneven, thereby rattling the bus sideways and up and down, and giving us all a good workout on our seats. But around midday, the bus did reach — like a caterpillar completing, at last, that lurch towards the end of the leaf it’s chewing on — our destination, within 12 miles of the Nepal-Tibet border.

Getting off the bus to stretch our legs, we soon forgot our hunger upon seeing the wiry mesh of the 166-metre-long suspension bridge atop a yawning gorge. A fast, furious and cruel Bhote Koshi river swirled below. The whole scene came upon us as though it had sprung to life from the Marlon Brando movie Apocalypse Now. As the sun shone warmly high above, turning the jagged grey peaks of rock yellow on one side of us, and as crisp air from Tibet blew in our faces, all we could do was shudder in silence with nervous anticipation.

The Last Resort folks — two New Zealanders, one Nepali and one Israeli — did their best to make us feel comfortable. After welcoming us with coffee and a light lunch of noodles and potatoes, they gathered us all together, and started rattling off the procedures, before weighing each of us. It was obvious that these bungy-masters had done the explanations hundreds of times (a la the flight attendant who tells you about those emergency exits just as your plane is about to take off), were thorough in the mastery of their methods, and knew how to have fun helping people throw themselves off the bridge.

Meantime, their good-natured ribbing was enough for some of us to start reconsidering the sheer lunacy of what we had set out to do. After all, think about this: who in a right frame of mind in Nepal would pay a little more than 3000 rupees (that too, at a heavy discount for Nepalis) for the pleasure of diving headlong from the side of a bridge into the yawn of nature? But happily, as I saw it with my own eyes that day, around 20 or so Nepali and non-Nepali men and women - each with a varying degree of interest in adventure tourism - would really put themselves in that ‘lunatic’ frame of mind to pursue the ultimate adrenaline kick, and, to the best of my knowledge, survive well enough to tell the tale to all who would listen. Considering that the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York is only 92 metres tall, and that a 25-storey building is about only 76 metres tall, it was no small achievement to have jumped off a height of 160 metres.

So how did the jumpers — forgetting careers, families and everything else - choose to make the plunge? Good psychology certainly helped. Knowing that that the Swiss-tested and New Zealand-managed safety standards would work just fine put all first-timers mentally at ease. And the suspension bridge, we were reassured, was not going to snap under the weight of our collective excitement. That was because it was designed and constructed with a loading factor of 41,500 kg. Plus, the fact that the bridge functioned as a jump-platform for jumpers, a backstage for the bungy-masters to pull up the pulleys, and a balcony space for onlookers to cheer at his each jump while remaining a short-cut for Tamang villagers to get to the other side of the river in less than three minutes (earlier, they used to trek up and down for five hours) made all feel like they did not want to let it down by not, well, jumping down from it, especially after having come all the way from Kathmandu for bungy-jumping!

And so, with the issue of ‘hardware’ settled safely, it was easy to turn attention to the science behind each jump. Each jump takes about 15 minutes from start to finish, and once your turn comes, the bungy-masters beckon you to the middle of the bridge. There, they strap you onto a chair that is locked tight against the bridge linings so you can sit but can’t move. And once you are seated, the bungy-masters wrap, with velcro, the y-shaped end of a thick manufactured-in-Malaysia but made-and-knotted-in-Nepal elastic rope onto those parts of your legs, where the ends of your socks hug your calves tight. Since the rest of that mammoth rope, which looks and feels as if it were one long anaconda, is already down the bridge forming a U-shape under the bridge and over the river, all you do is quiver as you sit alone to feel the unmistakable pull of gravity on your legs and then on your whole body.

Meanwhile, to maintain balance, the bungy-masters drop down a vessel that’s slightly more than your weight, and take great care to keep a pulley-like system in place. Soon, the lock to your chair is open, and you are able to stand and walk about four paces forward onto the foldable iron mat, which juts out from the middle of the bridge. You grab on to the railings that are now behind you, and you take a deep breath as you look sideways, front and down. Sideways, you see your friends and onlookers cheering you on; up ahead, you see calm, green hills, majestic in their remoteness; and, down below, you see the blue and naked waters of the Bhote Koshi River, and hear their roar amplified all the more by the big boulders.

And then, you open your palms to let go of the railings behind, and think of that Van Halen number as you move forward into the river from a height of 160 metres. Only then, you know that you have jumped . . . from one of the highest bungy-jumping heights on the planet. As your whole body, respecting Newton’s laws, lurches headlong into the river, the U-shape of the rope quickly morphs into one giant elastic band so that you are soon turned into a yo-yo. As your heart beats like crazy, and blood seems to rush out of your system, and you feel as though you are going to smash yourself into pieces at that boulder below, you suddenly feel a gentle tug, which soon takes you back to the way of the bridge up above.

No uncomfortable jerks. No abrupt pulling and pushing. No spinning out of control, and no swinging wildly from side to side. But a bounce so soft and gentle that you feel as though you have been pulled up to float (yes, float!) all the more on air. Then the gravity pulls you down again, followed again by the upward bounce, and this up and down bounce goes on very gently for less than a minute until you become completely suspended, as it were, in a sort of an orgasmic bliss. Only then the jump-masters up on the bridge start using the pulley-system to pull up the vessel so that you can be lowered to a sandy patch by the river.

Soon, you are able to wave at your friends below you, and grab hold of a long stick, pushed in your way by one of the Last Resort folks. Once you grab the stick, it’s only a matter of minutes before they help you land, and open up the velcro straps on your legs so that the rope can be pulled up to strap on to the calves of another jumper up on the bridge.

Finally, we Nepalis have long prided ourselves on being citizens of a country of tall mountains. Indeed, mountaineers among us have long appreciated the heights from which they can go around the world. But for those of us who have neither the time nor the inclinations to be a mountaineer, spending an afternoon bungy-jumping from a height may well be one adventure through which we can experience the world within ourselves. (Ashutosh Tiwari plans to go paragliding later this year just for the hell of it.)

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