Holi-Day

I know, I’ve been gone for an unconscionably long time.  But…  I’m back with pictures?

Pictures I took on the same holiday LAST year, but…  Well, any taken today would have been very similar, and since I never got these up, I’m doing them now.

Today, spring began.  That is, Nepal celebrated its annual holiday that has marked similarities to spring celebrations around the world, since it features playing with colors and with water.  (Easter eggs, anyone?)

Pigments for sale at Pashupatinath a few weeks ago, on Shiva Ratri, with the prospect of Holi in mind.

Here, for Holi, the kids paint themselves with brightly colored pigments and then spill into the streets, tossing plastic bags filled with water at one another.  Or else they get very clever, like my neighbors’ kids, and go up on their roof with buckets, and fill those up and pour them instead.

Look out below! My neighbors' kids having a blast, surprising pedestrians with buckets of water.

But the kids only seem to rule the morning of Holi, and, a bit, the days before.  By mid-morning today, like last year, I kept hearing the roaring cheers as gangs of young men poured by, some on foot, some in motorcycle convoys, some in vehicle convoys.  I never caught any pictures of the latter, but I do have the former:

Gangs of colorful marauding youth take to the streets for Holi, attacking other gangs... with colors and water.

Another group of colorful Holi youth.

…and I know this is short, but it’s a start.  Maybe I’ll return to adding posts more regularly…

Nepali of the Day:

rang:  color

rangi-changi:  multi-colored

paani:  water

ramailo:  fun

raamro:  good

keta:  boy

keti:  girl

ketaketi:  kids

kelchu:  to play

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

No explosions tonight.  The snap and crackle of fireworks is gone.

I did hear a few this morning, but they were sporadic, lonely and sort of sad.

Several of my neighbors have taken down their electric lights.  The few that are still gleaming seem an oddity, in the dark.  And there are no candles.

No singing or dancing, either, other than the headphones in my ears and my fingers on the keyboard.

So Tihar has come and gone.  It makes me nostalgic, to think we probably won’t be here to see it again next year.  It’s such a pretty festival.

But life goes on, here in the Nepal Sambat year of 1130.

The eternal summer of Nepal continues.  While I was talking to people back in Indiana on Sunday, who reported a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit, here it remains cheerfully in the 70s.  Note all the green, along the path for our Sunday walk:

The greenery gracing the edge of the trail we hiked at Shivapuri National Park.

But, with some work, I managed to find one tree that was losing its leaves.  Granted, maybe that had nothing to do with the season.  Maybe it was a sick or dying tree, for all I know.  But it did make the path nicely, temporarily, dry leaf-strewn.

Dry leaves scattered along the path in the park.

Speaking of eternal summers, go check out the latest play discovered to have some likely input from Shakespeare.

Nepali of the Day:

kal:  era

yug:  era

sambat:  era

paksha:  fortnight

aunsi:  new moon

purnima:  full moon

barsaat:  rainy season

sharad:  autumn

shuru garnu:  to start

pachi:  after

Barsaat pachi, sharad shuru garcha.

Happy New Year!

…to all you Newaris out there.

Everybody else–sorry, but you’ve got to wait another two months.

Unless you use the more widespread Nepali calendar, in which case you need to wait until April.

Tihar is winding to a close.  No children came to ring the doorbell this evening.  The firecrackers didn’t pop as often.  I saw less gatherings outside; even the sparkling electric lights are starting to look a bit tired, somehow, though I don’t get sick of them a month into the Christmas season–here, they’ve barely been up a week.

I did see a little girl at one of my neighbors’ houses playing with a sparkler, though.  That brought back memories of 4th of July of long ago; I’ve never been too keen on large fireworks, unless they’re safely distant–out over the middle of the Ohio River, say–but, as a little girl, every year on the 4th, I waved around a sparkler.

There must have been many family gatherings this morning, as sisters offered tika and flowered garlands to their brothers.  That’s another unique feature of this holiday–in the US, we have Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day and even Grandparents’ Day, (and, in many ways, Christmas borders on Children’s Day) but there’s no Sibling Day.  Essentially, that’s what this day of the festival is for, to celebrate the bond between brothers and sisters.

If you still haven’t had enough of all things Tihar, visit Nepal Vista to read more.

Nepali of the Day:

diin:  day

bahini:  younger sister

didi:  older sister

bhai:  younger brother

dai:  older brother

keta-keti:  boys and girls

choraa:  son

chorii:  daughter

choraa-chorii:  children

Naya bharshako subakamana!:  Happy New Year!

Climbing

I climbed up 296 steps today.

So what?

Well, I did it AFTER walking up this:

Note that this is taken from three-quarters of the way up the hill. See the distant prayer flags? Yeah, I didn't either. But that's where we went.

After a year of living in the shadow of Shivapuri National Park,we finally discovered the pedestrian friendly entrance, and the trails, today.  A fast hour and a half of walking, and we were near a summit–we tortured our thighs on all those steps and finally achieved a tranquil garden and amalgamation of buildings; men and women in red robes passed us, granting gentle smiles, or else they sat or stood in the shade, speaking in hushed voices.

In a grassy area, we had a lovely picnic lunch, and were visited by a puja-ed cow and her bull calf.

The bull calf, showing his pretty red tika.

We entered the sanctuary itself, and marveled at all things Buddhist.

The interior of the sanctuary in the monastery complex.

And then we turned around and descended all those stairs, and the slope itself, again.

Midway down, we peered through the trees at distant prayer flags on a peak–our jaws dropped as our smiling guide explained that was where we had just been.

The kids in our party repeatedly shouted the exact same thoughts going through the minds of all the adults:  How did we get up and down so fast?  It didn’t feel like we climbed that high!

Then again, I discovered it the moment I got home.  Since I’m tormented by allergies, I popped into the shower first thing, but it didn’t help enough; once I got out, I immediately had to lie down for four hours with a splitting headache, as bad as a migraine.  Light hurt.  Sounds hurt.  Colors hurt.  Moving hurt.  I put a pillow on my head and didn’t move for an hour straight.

But it’s thankfully already passed; it couldn’t have been a migraine, just the most severe sinus headache I’ve had in my life.  Food may not sound good still, but the headache’s completely gone.

Outside, Tihar continues, with all its happiness.  An hour or so ago, when the power cut out again, it hardly disrupted the parties at my neighbors’ houses.  Instead, all at once, dozens of voices shouted an excited, “Whooo!” when the entire neighborhood plunged into darkness.  Save for all the candles and fireworks, of course.

A while later, I found about thirty people, of all ages, gathered on the porch of one of my neighbors’ houses.  They all sang the traditional Tihar song I mentioned yesterday, clapping in time as one man sang out the refrain and the rest responded with the endless verses.  They sang as if they were very tired; it’s nearly 11:00.  But they still sang, and swayed with the music, as if they were having a marvelous time.

You live in Kathmandu, you make your own fun.

The Music of Tihar

I love this holiday.

We really need to adopt Tihar in the US.  Next year, make a promise to yourself to celebrate Newari New Year with all the attendant festivities.

Out of nowhere, at 10:30 at night, a full band has materialized on my neighbor’s front lawn, complete with guitar, singer on mike, and drumset.  They even have backup dancers.  And after just a moment of preparation, the singer is crooning a song to the music, and at least one inhabitant of the house is looking on from the front porch, with shockingly mild interest.  The entire group is adolescent boys.

Just as suddenly, five minutes later, they’re gone.

Earlier, we had our own visiting singers.  But they were younger, and we were excited to peel out of the house with the bag of Halloween candy we’d brought here in hopes of distributing at a Halloween party.  Now, we realized we had the closest thing Nepal produces to trick-or-treaters.

My husband insisted on bringing Alaska out, too.  I was hesitant, knowing that many Nepali children are nervous around dogs.  But, just after dark, the doorbell by the gate had rung, and Alaska was just as anxious to see the visitors as we were, so Sean attached her to the leash, and he opened the gate, as I clutched the jack-o-lantern bowl of candy.

For a moment, we and our young visitors stared at one another, unsure what to do.  Last year, during Tihar, we hadn’t really understood what was going on; we were startled to hear our guard yelling through the gate, in Nepali.  “They aren’t Nepali!  Go away!”

A few hours into the next night, with the guard gone, we guessed what was going on, with so many troops of kids trekking from house to house, with young voices singing, with our own rarely-used doorbell ringing.  But we didn’t have any candy handy, and we weren’t sure how many rupees to give them.  At some point, Sean did manage to catch a group and hand out some lollipops or small candy bars we happened to have.

This year, we were more ready, if a bit nervous when actually face to face.  My hands were busy holding the bowl, but I’ve long since realized a bright smile and “Namaste!” can do wonders here.  It broke the children’s surprised ice at once.  Automatically, they all chorused back, “Namaste!”

There were four of them, two girls about twelve, one slightly younger, and a boy around eight.  One of the girls wore the most beautiful clothes, like a miniature of the traditional Newari wedding gown.  And the girl who looked the oldest, clearly the leader, gestured inside the gate, and I remembered we were supposed to invite them in to have them sing and dance for us, not simply dispense the candy in return for a phrase, like Halloween in the U.S.

They were unsure of themselves, facing sudden Westerners.  But they tried a few words in English, and we did the same in Nepali–they tried to ask us if we had musical instruments to play while they sang and danced, and we were surprised, and said we had none.  But then the leading girl took control of her young charges, and started up one of the tunes already familiar to me from hearing it chanted out the window.  The others were more uncertain, at first, and never very steady, but then the girl in the beautiful dress relaxed more and started clapping in time to the music, moving through the steps of a small dance.  They flinched back from Alaska a few times, and that broke their concentration.  But they also regarded her with shy smiles, as if they wanted to dare to pet her; they finished two or three songs before the leading girl said confidently, in English, “It is finished.”

And I held out the bowl of candy.  And they seemed slightly surprised again, but, sure enough, a couple of them carried pillow cases like trick-or-treating American youngsters, in which they’d clearly been stowing their goods of the night.  Their eyes bulged a bit, when they saw all the candy–when we gestured for them to take some, they grabbed a handful, far more than the one to three pieces I used to accept for my “trick or treat!”  But then again, I’d said three words, not sung several complete songs and did a dance.

Then again, we’d heard other singing voices start in the midst of these children’s presentation; another group already hung just outside the gate, and in fact the gate hadn’t been completely shut when they arrived; the boy had shut it all the way, to avoid the competition.  But the other group filed in as the first filed out, and they were a much bigger crowd, with about seven or eight of them.  None of them wore a beautiful dress like the one girl had; they just wore normal clothing, like t-shirts around the world, including one boy in a “Death Note” anime t-shirt.  But they were also more confident, singing in strong, firm voices–I was startled to find what looked like one of the younger girls taking the lead in what seems the uber-traditional Tihar song, the simple, haunting call and response that seems to have the exact same tune as the country-western song of the American prairies, “Circle to the left, the old brass wagon, circle to the right, the old brass wagon…”

But of course the song is in Nepali.  And the part matching “circle to the left” in fact stays the same with each verse; the part matching “the old brass wagon” is what changes, with brief snatches of words that I frustrated myself with trying and failing to understand.  I only picked out a few fragments, which seemed to reflect the idea of wandering around Kathmandu, and something about a house, and one clear piece, featured in the other song, too, about “Laxmi puja gaeko” which means “after worshipping the goddess Laxmi” which is, largely, what this entire festival is about.  She is the goddess of good luck; sure enough, my same neighbors that had the full band on their lawn earlier tonight have already decorated their steps and front porch with a trail of powder and flowers that leads to their front door and probably beyond, to their family shrine for Laxmi.  Like American children expecting Santa to come and enjoy their milk and cookies and leave behind presents, the Nepalis expect Laxmi to follow the trail to their house tonight and bless them for the coming year.

Despite the electricity shortages that had us all in a blackout a few hours ago, most of the houses around here now shine with strings of what, to me, look like Christmas lights, in gold and red and hints of green.  Simple multi-colored strands flash from all the balconies, even the roof, of my nearest neighbor.  Firecrackers continue to sizzle and pop and light up the sky, while a dazzling array of candles trace the balconies and eaves of the houses of several of my other neighbors.

It’s too bad I’m no good at night photography.  All the glow is very beautiful.

Tihar Comes But Once a Year…

…but when it does, it brings good cheer!

After 16 months here, I’ve decided, definitively, that Tihar is the closest analogue, in spirit, to Christmas in America.

It’s not just the lights, scintillating everywhere, draping from every house and business.

It’s not just the stores, brimful of excited shoppers, hunting through the latest selection of the typical goods of the season.

It’s not just the streets, choked with traffic–of the car, bus, van, motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian variety–as all those shoppers hurry home.

It’s not just the candles, casting cheery lights from window panes.

It’s not just the children, wandering from house to house to sing traditional songs.

It’s not just the family gatherings.

It’s not just the ready smiles–Nepalis feature those daily, as part of their normal culture.

It’s… the entire spirit of the holiday.  There is such a palpable aura of joy in the air that it seems like it ought to get its own color named after it.

It’s beautiful.

Of course, there are differences.  Around me now, firecrackers snap and pop and sizzle for brief seconds in the night sky.  Today, people must have celebrated Kahg Tihar by setting out food for the crows.  Tomorrow, many people will be flagging down the local street dog to offer it a special treat and then rub vermillion powder on its forehead as a special puja.  Households will soon feature trails of red powder from their gate to their front door, to welcome the goddess Laxmi to bring good fortune into their homes for the coming year.

Still, all of this is slightly disrupting my month-long celebration of Halloween.  I’m not so interested in reading scary stories or designing a costume with so much… well… Christmas spirit around.  I’m really very tempted to jump forward 2 weeks, and start my personal, annual, 2 month-long celebration of all things Christmas-Yule-Winter.

Then again, autumn began less than a month ago, and all the trees here continue to be happily, stubbornly green.

Living abroad can be such a strange mixture of experiences…

Om Mani Padme Hum

I have a song–er, mantra, er, song–stuck in my head.

Thus the title.

Nepal is a strange place, a grape balanced between two massive stones.  The stones, of course, are India and China, both far larger in area, population… and even in the amount that people in the West know about them, which is still, admittedly, often not very much.

But to be even more specific, Nepal is in between India and Tibet. I’ll decline to even try to go into the Tibet issue in much depth here–if I so much as tried, in order to give some decent perspective on the subject, I’d probably need a “Tibetan Politics 101″ series that would be even more infinite than my “Nepali Politics 101″ series.

Instead, I’ll just point out something that’s incredibly obvious to anyone who lives here:  while the majority of Nepal’s people are Hindu, a large minority are Buddhist.  And, in general, the people go with their regions:  the closer you get to the Indian border, the more likely that the people are Hindu; the closer you get to the tallest Himalayas, on the Tibetan border, the more likely that the people are Buddhist.

Especially Tibetan Buddhists.  In fact, a significant portion of the villages along Nepal’s border with Tibet historically had far closer ties with Tibet than they did with Kathmandu.  Maybe I’ll do a Nepali Politics post on that later; the trade caravans (of yaks!) were fascinating.

Right now, just note that those ties are there.  And that, when China got a little too eager with their whole “Cultural Revolution” thing–and even earlier, when the Chinese government emphatically claimed supremacy over the Tibetan government in the early 1950′s–tens of thousands of Tibetan people scrambled down the slopes on their southern border, streaming into Nepal.

After all, many of those Tibetans–or their families–already had some experience with travel to Nepal, even as far as Kathmandu, for purpose of trade… or pilgrimmage.

Which ties back into the mantra currently stuck in my head.  (Though, honestly, Rihanna’s remixed “Umbrella” is starting to give it some competition, since I’m listening to Rhapsody while I type.)

In Thamel, much of what’s sold is indeed authentically Nepali.  Some is Indian.  But another, prominent, part is Tibetan. And from a bewildering array of Tibetan bookshops, Buddhist paraphernalia stores, and general CD shops, as you wander through Thamel, you hear the endless recording of Tibetan monks sing-chanting “Om Mani Padme Hum.”

And you also, especially, hear it at Swayambhunath and Boudhanath, the two largest Buddhist stupas in Kathmandu. I’ve now–finally! after already being here 7 months!–visited them both.  Today we were at the latter, and I promise, we took plenty of pictures.

And I’m finally getting over being sick.  My voice is still scratchy from the latest round of cold/laryngitis, but I’m less tired now, so the poor voice quality will have no effect on my posts.  And February just began today… and this year, February 25 is Losar, the Tibetan New Year Festival.  So it seems appropriate to finally post my stupa pictures.

Granted, I’m still getting over being sick today.

I’ve managed many words.  Pictures… maybe not so many.  But I’ll start with my current wallpaper image, a picture of a *small* stupa just south of Thamel.

The first stupa we ever circumambulated, after stumbling upon it when we wandered too far south of Thamel.

Tibetan/Sanskrit of the Day:

(your regularly scheduled Nepali of the Day will return soon)

Om:  indivisibility; universality

Mani:  jewel

Padme:  lotus

Hum:  limitless compassion

* This chant is commonly translated into English as “The Jewel in the Lotus,” which is the literal meaning of the pair “Mani Padme” in Sanskrit.  But, around about India, Nepal, and Tibet, “jewel” and “lotus” each take on LOTS of symbolic meanings, and the harmonic “om” and “hum” make things even more complicated.  And when you put them all together, things get even more complicated, to form a short phrase that many Buddhists can meditate on throughout their entire lives.

Khukur Tihar

(I’m afraid the presence of the puppy may be causing L’Orange to regress.  Just this evening, I’ve had to yell at her to get her off the kitchen table — which she KNOWS she’s not supposed to walk on! — and I’ve seen her perched on Sean’s chair the better to knock a package he just got off his desk, and just a minute ago she leaped on my keyboard in order to try knocking pictures off the wall!  And then she came over and curled up in my lap and is now purring loudly.  She is very sensitive, and still young herself — less than two years old, she’s equivalent to a sixteen or seventeen-year-old human.  And I don’t think she’s sure what to think of her new little sister.  She’s spending more time curled up in my lap than she has in months, as if to say, “I’m still your baby, too!”)

We adopted our puppy at the perfect time.  As I mentioned a couple days ago, there have recently been exciting happenings in Nepal.  Tihar was the most amazing holiday I’ve seen here, a bizarre mix of Christmas, the Fourth of July, Halloween, and New Year’s Eve.  The last makes the most sense, since it is a New Year festival.  But American children don’t go around caroling on New Year’s, or expect candy or money in exchange.  And there aren’t continuous fireworks for three days then, either.  But then again, every house was decorated with garlands of marigolds and strings of Christmas lights — sometimes literal.  I spent some time on our roof surveying the whole scene, and the merrily flashing lights on one of our neighbor’s houses distinctly played “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” over and over again.

A string of marigolds adorns a store for Tihar.

This was the more ironic because I knew the festival centered on welcoming a visit by Laxmi, the Hindu goddess of good fortune and prosperity.  On the third day of the festival, I saw the line of red powder leading from the gate of one of my neighbor’s houses up to their front door — and assumedly inside to the traditional Tihar money chest.  The red powder path is meant to show Laxmi in so she can bless the family for another year.

On that same day of Tihar, cows are especially worshiped and honored.  They’re garlanded with marigolds, and their foreheads are dabbed with a red powder like that many Hindus often wear, making the mark of a tika.  It’s really interesting to hear Kathmandu urbanites talk about the festival.  One of my Nepali friends laughed, “It really made more sense when everyone lived in the country, on farms.  Here in the city… in my neighborhood, there’s just one cow.  So on Gai Puja, there’s a line of about 40 people outside waiting to give puja to just that cow!”

What does this have to do with our puppy?  Well, we adopted her on the first day of Tihar, which is called “Kahg puja.”  On that day, crows are appeased so they’ll be happy and not interfere with the safe arrival of Laxmi and the New Year.  I doubt anyone can catch them to give them garlands or tika, but they’re offered seeds or other good food that they like.  Crows — much like in the West — are often viewed as messengers of death, so the offer of food is meant to make them happy and less likely to bring any bad messages.

Several examples of kahg. The word is translated as crow, though here they always have those distinctive brown heads.

And the second day of Tihar is “Khukur Tihar,” which is much like the days described above — except set aside for dogs.  It’s too bad I wasn’t out with my camera.  I could have taken many pictures of street dogs running down the road wearing beautiful garlands.  The garland always served as unescapable proof that someone had managed to flag down the dog that morning, offer it some tasty food as a snack, and then give it a tika and garland as a mark of respect and honor.  On Khukur Tihar, dogs are symbolically thanked for their role of guarding homes.

This street dog in Pokhara still showed her tika a week after Tihar!

So to recap briefly, the days of Tihar are:

1:  Kahg Tihar

2:  Khukur Tihar

3:  Laxmi Puja, Gai Tihar

4:  Maa Puja

5:  Bhai Tika

I know, I haven’t described the fourth and fifth days yet.  Those are set aside for humans — “Maa” literally means “me,” and for the Newars in the Kathmandu valley, it’s a day to honor yourself.  (Some bars in Kathmandu have decided to capitalize on this by offering drinks at reduced prices for the day, but I don’t think that’s the traditional way to celebrate!)  Most Nepalis I talked to said it was a day to feast on good food and do what you like best.

The next day, Bhai Tika, is a day when sisters honor their brothers, giving them the same kinds of garlands and tika that were offered to dogs and cows earlier in the week.  Then the brothers honor their sisters in return and give them small gifts.

And all throughout, all the days, everywhere, there were the garlands on the houses, and the flashing strings of lights at night, and dozens and hundreds and thousands of candles, and candlelit processions, and popping firecrackers, and constant singing and dancing… it was a very beautiful festival to see!

Hmm… maybe we should try naming the puppy Tihar?

Nepali of the day:

Kahg:  crow

khukur:  dog

gai:  cow

puja:  worship

tika:  mark on the forehead, usually made with a mixture including red powder

maa:  I, me

bhai:  younger brother

dai:  older brother

didi:  older sister

bahini:  younger sister

The Past 3 Weeks, in 30 Seconds

Yes, once again, I have disappeared for a suspiciously long time.  The truth is, again, I’ve had computer issues.  And I’ve been sick.  And I’ve been busy.  For example:

Nepal celebrated this:

Tihar is a Nepali festival to welcome the New Year with light. For non-Nepalis, it's an excuse to be a pyromaniac for three days straight. Whee!

Our household celebrated this:

L'Orange uses her strong cat magic to summon glowing jack o'lanterns all the way to Nepal for Halloween.

We adopted this:

Oh, dear. There are already calls to add her in the title, too. As if it weren't long enough as it is...

And we saw this:

The Himalayas rise over Phewa Lake in Pokhara.

But, as you see, I took pictures all along the way.  So — as long as the computer and internet continue to work — I will be very busy with posting once again.

By the way, are you American?  Is it November 4th your time?  Then VOTE!!!!

(And if it seems like a bother, just think of poor little me, and thousands like me, filling out our requests for absentee ballots months ago, and then going through the ballot itself weeks ago, and getting it stamped and mailing it through the U. S. Embassy.  Look, just drive to your local polling place and pull the lever or fill out the bubbles or whatever!!!)

Nepali of the Day:

Ma baraami thiyo:  I was sick.

Ahile ma baraami lagdaina.:  I’m not sick now.

Nepal Sambat:  native Nepali calendar, mostly used by Newars; New Year starts on 4th day of Tihar

Newar:  ethnic group native to the Kathmandu valley of Nepal

puja:  worship

biraalo:  cat

kukur:  dog

himal:  mountain

tol:  lake

Dasaiin, or Dashaiin, or Dashain, or…

I know, I’m afraid I got distracted from posting again, for a few days.  When the internet argues about working, I get exasperated and tend to give up.

Dasaain has actually now ended — the tenth day was last Thursday.  But here’s the information — and pictures! — I meant to post then.

First, a note about the name of the holiday itself:  it’s a fifteen-day festival, but the first 10 days of it are the most important, so the name comes from “das,” the Nepali word for “ten.”  After that, transliterating it from devanagiri (the script used to write both Nepali & Hindi, and other related languages) into Roman letters becomes a bit tricky.  It’s actually pronounced so that I want to write it phonetically as “duh-sigh.”  That is, the 1st syllable has a schwa sound, and the second sounds exactly like the English word “sigh.”  Writing the word with one i or two i’s makes little real difference — unless you recognize that many versions of transliteration systems favor repeating a vowel twice to distinguish a long vowel from a short one.  But the devanagiri letter used to represent the “s” sound in Dasain actually can also represent the “sh” sound — and in Nepali, any word with that symbol is equally acceptable when pronounced either way.  So the word can in fact be said like “duh-shy.”  Finally, don’t let the “n” confuse you — in the Nepali word, no actual letter “n” is written at the end.  Instead, the “n” is supposed to represent that the vowel right before it — the long “i” sound like in English sigh or shy — is nasal.  That is, it’s pronounced through the nose, like many French vowels.

The story behind the holiday is as complex and twisting as the written form of the word.  Most simply, the holiday is said to commemorate a 10-day fight between an evil demon and a goddess.  The goddess won, defending the people, so that the holiday honors her victory.  The five extra days at the end of Dasaiin are meant for celebrating the victory.

If you’re happy with that, great.  If you want details, I’ll warn you the below could turn confusing.

First, the goddess:  It’s easiest to identify her as Kali, the fierce Hindu goddess, commonly described in English as “the goddess of death.”  It’s likely a little closer to the mark to describe her as “the goddess of time and change.”  You know — like the third of the Fates in Greek mythology, charged with snipping the thread of life and bringing on death.

Except, a Nepali is not likely to identify the goddess of Dasaii as Kali.  More likely, the name of the goddess honored by the festival that you will hear from a Nepali is “Durga.”

So who’s Durga?  Again, wikipedia can help.  Briefly, she’s a fierce form of Shiva’s wife, Parvati.  (Remember Teej?  That festival had to do with Parvati, too.  Apparently Parvati/Durga is highly important in Nepali Hindu religion, since the two biggest festivals I’ve seen here, so far, center on her.)  And she defeated the buffalo-demon Mahishasura.  This all also has to do with the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, in which the lord Ram defeated the demon Ravana, “the fiendish king of the demons.”  [see the description for the holiday on the nepalhomepage]  And, by the way, in the midst of the festival, the Taleju temple in Kathmandu is opened for the only day all year, in which the Royal Kumari is carried into the courtyard of the temple and over a hundred water buffalos are slaughtered — because the Kumari, a young girl from a Buddhist clan, is considered to be a form of the Hindu goddess Taleju, you see, who relates to Durga and Kali in a way, but…

The giant Taleju Temple in Durbar Square, open a single day in the year.

Okay.  You can open your eyes again.  Stop hurting your brain.

A:  If you didn’t know, Hindus like epics.  The Mahabharata, their most famous epic, is roughly TEN TIMES the length of the Illiad and the Odyssey — COMBINED.

B:  At heart, Dasaii is a harvest festival.

I point out (A) to note that everything here is surrounded by a swirl of stories, and those stories are virtually incomprehensible to most Westerners — because we weren’t raised with them.  Yes, there are exceptions, but most Americans and Europeans grew up hearing religious stories from The Bible and folklore from the brothers Grimm or Greek or Roman mythology.  The stories here largely draw on completely different sources.  This is part of the “confrontation between East and West” which can be pursued ad nauseaum if you want to start in on the several centuries’ worth of books already written on the topic.

(B) seems to have nothing to do with the description of Dasaii offered above.  If you ask an American why we celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving, or a Brit or Canadian what’s up with Guy Fawkes, (or even a Mexican, about Los Dias de los Muertos) they aren’t likely to start by identifying those as harvest festivals, either.  Likely Thanksgiving comes closest — but we tend to peg it to a specific harvest instead of noticing the overall tendency, world-wide, for farming peoples to celebrate when the last of the year’s food comes in, and animals are slaughtered, in the last hurrah before winter.

It helps to also know that on the first day of Dasaiin, in every household, seeds are planted, of barley, I think.  By the tenth day, a small plant has sprouted and grown about half a foot high — and that plant is cut down by the oldest member of the household and ceremonially given to younger members.  On the 8th and 9th days of Dasaii — referenced previously in Got Your Goat? — most households slaughter a goat.  Wealthier families, as in the legend about Durga, slaughter a water buffalo.  Poorer families slaughter a chicken or whatever they can afford.  Some of the many Hindu vegetarians — or more queasy Hindus, like my own Nepali language teacher — symbolically break an egg or two, sans more bloody slaughtering.  Yes, it’s all supposed to be an animal sacrifice, blessed by a priest and infused with religious meaning.

But then the animal is eaten for supper.  And for lunch the next day.  And supper again.  And so on and so forth, like Americans stuck eating turkey a week after Thanksgiving — except goats and water buffaloes tend to be significantly larger than turkeys.

Even the tie to the Kumari, a young girl revered as a goddess, echoes harvest festivals.  The burning effigies of Guy Fawkes are identified with a Catholic who tried to blow up Anglicans 400 years ago… but the nearness of Halloween, and centuries of stories and records, mention Europeans burning effigies in the autumn for as far back as we can trace — and the burning of effigies likely did replace human sacrifices once meant to thank the gods for a plentiful harvest.  The Kumari witnesses buffalo sacrifice on a vast scale — all identified as in her honor, and in commemoration of a great battle fought by the goddess housed within her, but I’m willing to speculate that at some point before the 1300 years we know Kumari worship dates back, in the autumn, a pure young girl may have been sacrificed herself.

The window of the Royal Kumari Palace in which she sometimes appears to look out over Durbar Square.

Now, many of those trappings have faded away.  Some hints remain — more noticeable here than in the West — but I’m sure most of my Nepali neighbors most heavily associate Dasaii with time with family, gift giving, and the smell of roasting goat meat.  It’s more temperate here than I’m used to, but the cornfield and ricefields next to my house have already been harvested.  The nights are becoming more chill.

My Halloween decorations are up.  I’m aching for a pumpkin.  And in a month, I’m getting my turkey!

Nepali of the day:

puja:  worship

mandir:  temple

tika:  the powder that forms the red dots many Hindus wear in the center of their forehead

pariwar:  family

ghar:  home

khanaa:  food

chimal:  uncooked rice

bhaat:  cooked rice

bokaa:  he-goat