Pashupati ... where to begin?

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Finding the words to describe Pashupati, the people who live there, the people who work there, and the overall energy of the place takes me through pretty much every range of emotion I can think of. Although the residents I help with are located in a separate community welfare center, in general, Pashupati is the large, sacred temple grounds where the Hindu people of Nepal are cremated literally hours after their death. As I walk in through the entrance every morning, I’m greeted by the Hindu people gathered for prayer sessions (more like chantings), complete with tambourines, drums and a few other musical instruments that I'm not sure the names of.

The residents of the temple compound are either severely deformed, mentally impaired, a combination of both, or extremely sick and dying. They’ve either been left there by their families after visiting the grounds on pilgrimage from far-away places or they’ve been living on the streets of Nepal and were finally taken in due to their condition.

It's been pretty difficult seeing such deformity, poverty, and horribly decrepit living conditions. For as strong as I thought I was - thinking that I would be prepared to deal with all of this - it's taken more resolve than I could have ever expected to return morning after morning... It's amazing to me that the nuns dedicate their entire lives to these causes and never utter a word of complaint... Come to think of it, the people living there are also some of the bravest and most humbled souls I've ever seen... They have to live in such extreme conditions and yet still, it's almost like they've made peace with all of it.

Normally, mornings begin with cleaning the living areas (men and women live in separate sections). I can only compare the living areas to those of medieval dungeons - I have to duck to walk through every doorway, the long corridors are dark and dank with low wooden rafters, and the “beds” are essentially basic metal cots in long rows (head to foot fashion) pushed up against the walls with thin, hard “mattresses” and old, matted comforters and blankets. Ironically enough, the thought that “beauty can be found everywhere” still applies here - the nuns hang bunches of plastic flowers above each bed - is it possible that this slight addition of color and offering of love can make the place look pretty in an almost unbearable way?

At any rate, most of the residents are awake and sitting in the outside courtyard areas by the time I arrive, but there are a few who take longer to wake up or are so paralyzed that we need to either carry or wheelchair them outside.

Most of the limbs of those paralyzed have hardened and are tucked closely to their bodies - they almost seem like little statues of stone; thin, dark legs folded tightly beneath and bent, emaciated arms sealed to their sides. Of those who can still walk but need help, one old woman who is totally blind - her eyes are a whitish blue and she shuffles along with short steps when she finally gets out of bed - goes through the same routine every single morning... I think that she has Turrets syndrome or something very similar - she says the exact same mantra (in Nepali) over and over and over again with a repetition that reminds me of when the record player would skip and return to the same line in a song when I was little. She’s still very gentle and in the mornings we’ll touch her shoulder, greet her with “Namaste”, and rock her arm to let her know it’s time to get up. She’ll stop reciting her repetitive verses, sit up and become quiet. She keeps her old, worn out dark brown slippers at the foot of her bed hidden underneath her blankets...

When she sits up in bed, she rummages under the covers, locates each slipper individually, fumbles to put each one on, shakily stands up from her cot and holds on to my arm as I slowly walk her outside. Once we get to the end of the corridor, I’ll pause and tap her arm to let her know that there’s a wooden plank nailed to the floor in the doorway and that, as we turn right, there are three slightly slippery and worn-out steps leading outside .. The nuns normally ask that the residents sit in the same areas outside every day, so I leave her to eat breakfast or to be bathed, and return to finish cleaning the sleeping area.

A few mornings every week we bathe the sick and elderly on cold, concrete slabs in the courtyard area - washing their hair and bodies with bars of white soap as they shiver because even though the water is lukewarm, the air is still cold in February. There’s not a single day that I wonder how it would be possible to change these conditions and outline lists of “how to make this place better” in my mind; the handful of nuns who work there are overloaded and even just small additions in support make a world of difference …

At the very least, I wish that there could be proper discreet bathing facilities with warm, dry towels; I wish that the residents didn’t have to eat their meals sitting on the cold ground. It takes financial resources, people to care and a reason to help… which really if you think about it, are all pretty basic requirements.

All of the student volunteers have left, so it's just basically been me with the nuns, but a new volunteer arrived yesterday - her name is Sonam and she's here from Korea by herself and will be working for the next two weeks. We briefly exchanged stories and it's funny to see her response to the place is so similar to what mine was (and still is in a lot of ways). After the first morning we worked together, we left the temple area about the same time and continued chatting about our thoughts on the work. Ironically enough, the first thing she said was "Life looks so different to me now after spending the morning in there ..." I was floored b/c that was EXACTLY what I thought when I left the place after the first or second day.

Life really does look so much more beautiful, colorful and full of possibility the second you step out from a morning inside those living areas.

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