Forget Kathmandu

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Kathmandu 4th of May 2009

ABD - We have been in Kathmandu for two weeks now. The capital, with its pollution, crazy traffic, load shedding and constant strikes and road blocks is sometimes hard to find charming.

Yet there is another side to this seemingly chaotic city. If you know those little secret places, where you can take refuge from the continuous honking and smog, where sometimes you are lucky enough to meet other likeminded people, then this city becomes quite a gem.

One of those places for us is the Pilgrims bookshop in Thamel. Otherwise noisy, polluted and beggar infested Thamel, is not the most pleasant place in the city. But as soon as you enter the doors of this Bookstore, the world outside seems miles away. I get lost every time I go in there. Every single Book, I want to read. They have thousands of books divided into hundreds of sections and many of them are their own publications. Books on History, Religion, Spirituality, Gardening, Cooking, Kids Books, coffee Table Books, Books on Architecture, Languages, the list is never ending. Then there are the sections with the thankas, singing bowls, jewelery, postcards, maps, incense sticks, nepali paper products and finally a little secret garden, the ‘Feed and Read’ coffee shop in the back of the building,. I’m not into advertising or anything but this book shop is the best one I have ever been to and I have been to a lot around the world. And like all things that enthuse me, I want to share it with you: www.pilgrimsbooks.com

Andy and I spend much of our time at the Lazimpat Gallery, a delightful little café in Lazimpat. The walls are lined with paintings, artwork or photographs of any such exhibition currently on at the café, bringing international and local artists to the limelight of the little community that frequents its space. The comfy bamboo couches, overflowing with pillows on the inside or the sunny little garden on the outside, make for a really cool place to hang out. There is Free Wi-Fi which goes super well with their homemade Apple Pie and they play extremely classy Jazz music. My all time favourite feature of the gallery is their big red pin board which is always covered with really interesting little snippets, ranging from salsa classes to people searching for a flat mate, to nepali lessons and volunteer opportunities. On Saturday nights, its movie night, the selections are always tasteful and the crowd is a lovely mix of expatriates to Nepal from all corners of Europe, Australia and the Americas. A week or so ago we met up with Marianne at the Gallery for the movie night and watched a very British comedy ‘Run Fat Boy Run’. Half way through the movie, although it was Saturday night (a non load shedding night according to the schedule) the power suddenly went off. The crowd took it really well and hung around for a while just incase the confused authorities would realize they had made an error. No use. We all sat in candle light, finishing off our drinks and then Marianne suggested we go to Baluwatar (we only live around the corner from her) to watch the rest of the film.
We have been extremely lucky with our power cut situation as the are in which we live is so close to the Prime Ministers residence and thus we rarely get it. Speaking of which, it’s really bizarre that as I am writing this blog, we are faced with a power cut, because we haven’t had one in almost a week.

Then again, the political situation has changed dramatically today as the Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (formerly known as Prachandra), resigned from his position after a dispute between his party in government Unified CPN - Maoist and their coalition NC (Nepali Congress). The whole story began in April last year when the elections, shockingly, resulted in the Maoists, who have been fighting a guerilla war for over a decade in the jungles of Nepal killing thousands and recruiting CHILDREN to their cadres, coming to power in government. Their ‘fierce’ leader Prachandra, swapped his military outfit for a suit and tie and donned the peoples ‘topi’ (traditional Nepali hat) literally!

Part of the deal for the big guy to come to power was that his Maoist army would integrate into the Nepali army (the army that had served the king and all the governments before this one and was, the official Nepali military).
Needless to say, this never happened. And when a few weeks earlier, when Andy and I had first arrived to the capital, the Chief Army Staff Rookmangut Katawal had voiced his dissaprovement of that very fact in a not so friendly manner to the ‘mighty’ Prime minister himself, he was threatened with suspension. This took a while, as the coalition party NC had stamped its foot down in disagreement and yesterday the Prime Minister, wanting to show everyone who the boss is, over ruled his congresses decision and replaced the Chief Army Staff with his second in command. This did not go down well with the President Dr.Ram Baran Yadav (NC) who intervened “for the sake of democracy!” and called the supporters of the Nepali Congress to demonstrate in the streets. The supporters, mainly young students with too much testosterone, didn’t disappoint. They burned tyres and blocked streets. The Maoists of course couldn’t be left out so they called for a ‘celebration’ of the sacking. So Ratna Park was filled with little and pretty big red flags and thousands of people rejoicing while the cops took to the streets with bamboo sticks and big plastic shields. Andy and I along with Spanish Sandra (A volunteer at the Squatters School) where just on our way to Thamel and Baluwatar after a tiring day of teaching at the School when we saw them deploy into the streets.

Hours later the President send a facsimile to the Army Chief’s residence, where the apple of iris was receiving many a party leaders supporting him, that ordered him to hold fort and continue office in his capacity as CoAS. Ouch! That must have hurt Prachandra, who earlier today, around 3 pm to be precise, resigned form the post of Prime Minister! Now, normally, a development such as this would make everyone who understands the malice of Maoism, sigh in relief. However, as our Prem (our landlord) very wisely said tonight while we where cooking pasta in his kitchen, “No one leaves the ‘chair’ so easily after they have gained power”. What is yet to come? No one knows.

Marianne called this afternoon to warn us about the cumbersome situation with the blocked streets. We already realized earlier today that something was going on when we got the golden bus to go to the School in Koteschwor this morning but got stuck in a massive traffic jam half way there. The Bus turned back and we found that even in the opposite direction the streets where jammed. So we walked for a while and hopped onto another Bus and finally made it back to Baluwatar. This whole operation took us two whole hours and resulted in us not being able to teach at the school. According to Marianne, the over excited American embassy has raised a high alert to its citizens and poor Marianne was trying hard to explain to a German Embassy worker and friend of hers that the situation isn’t half as bad as it sounds.

Andy and I feel very safe and intend to try getting to the school again tomorrow; things like these happen frequently in Kathmandu, they are part of the crazy capital’s nature. The electricity is back on now. I jokingly said to Andy “maybe Prachandra changed his mind”. It’s all possible in this country. Shame though, because if it wasn’t for these old bamboozles that compose the political elite of Nepal, this place could do really well for itself. It has so much potential, it could be doing as well as Switzerland. All it’s natural resources plus its excellent location could make it a power in its own right. Instead it is 40% dependant on international aid for its annual budget and has more than 40.000 non governmental organizations working on the ground to save its dying children.

Andy and I were walking to Lazimpat the other day, leaving the Australian Embassy and heading home. The roads where cleared by hundreds of policemen and Andy was even asked by a policeman to walk on the pavement and not on the street. It was the strangest thing, since in this part of the woods the norm consists of people casually walking on the streets, often babies in tow, as scores of vehicles push their way passed them. Now the streets were empty. Our tuk tuk had been stopped by the cops earlier and wasn’t moving so we decided to walk. We were really puzzled by the strangeness of it all and so I asked a flower shop keeper what was going on. He said that the President and the Prime Minister were going to the Army Headquarters (that was before the brawl) to celebrate Republic Day and so the roads had been blocked in a very public flexing of muscles, for the procession to drive through.

We wanted to watch this thing and stood by the side of the road where hardly any other people apart from police officers stood. The citizens of Kathmandu had very openly stated their contempt for both men by simply being absent! Bravo!

It didn’t take long before the elaborate procession whooshed by us with remarkable fanfare. First there where little cars with little policemen inside them. Then there where larger cars with larger policemen inside them. Then followed truck loads of policemen. Then truckloads of military. The came the police motorbikes. Then a Mercedes Benz with a funny looking man wearing a “topi” in it. We assumed it must have been the President. Then came more motorbikes and police cars and then…then came the star attraction in a stretch JAGUAR limousine, Ladies and gentlemen, the man himself, Prachandra...Oops! Sorry…Pushpa Dahal Kamal the “people’s” prime minister. More motorbikes, more trucks with cops and military, more Mercedes Benz and then finally, it was over. Within seconds the streets where again restored to normalcy. Tuk tuks, buses, micros and motorbikes, took to the bitumen, people running about their daily business trying to make up for the time wasted by their useless administration. It was one of those rare days were I loved the chaos around me. It made me feel alive and somehow real.

ATD -
Kathmandu is an interesting place. I think like most other major cities in developing countries, there exists a huge gap between rich and poor. We have been living among some of the richer Kathmanduites in the suburb of Baluwatar. Several embassies are nearby, along with the official residence of the Prime Minister and one of the only large supermarket/department stores in the city - Bhat Bhatteni.
We have been staying in Kathmandu with some friends of Alexia’s named Prem and Minu. They are a recently retired Nepali couple who seemingly spend most of their time gardening, laughing with each other and generally being cheerful. They have been pottering around getting their house ready for their daughter’s wedding which is coming up in June. Prem and Minu have ensured their children have a good education, and three of them have joined the exodus of young Nepalese leaving the basically defunct country for better opportunities abroad.

Arranging for people to leave Nepal seems to be one of the biggest businesses in Kathmandu. Every available centimetre of advertising space proclaims opportunities for study in Australia, Germany, USA, Canada and…Cyprus! I reckon that there are more Aussie flags in Kathmandu than in Sydney!

Like its counterparts in other developing countries, the poverty in Kathmandu is obvious and extreme. The most striking example is the glue sniffers in Thamel. This is the most touristy area in the city; the place to come for a western food, laundry service, trinkets of any variety and generally hanging out or being around other travelers. A group of filthy boys live on the footpaths of Thamel. They have a dazed look on their face and wander about with a bag held against their face like an oxygen mask.
In contrast to this are the restaurants in the city, which are all of very high quality. There is a Tandoori Kitchen not far from our house. We have been several times because the food is so good, the service excellent and the bill very cheap. Lately we have also discovered the ‘Hot Momo’ bar around the corner, where a plate of Momos (small Tibetan pasties) costs about AUD$1.
We have been in the capital during a tumultuous time for the government. The story of Nepal’s leadership over the last few decades is as pathetic as it is long. Leader after leader has swept to office or the throne on promises of finally bringing some badly needed reform and direction to the country. The latest lot to disappoint the Nepali people were the ‘Maoists’. From what I have read and observed they are a bunch of political and ideological morons scheming to power on bogus claims of implementing outdated and obsolete philosophy. Their leader ‘Prachandra’, resigned as PM a few weeks into our stay, citing unconstitutional behavior form by the President in disallowing his move to sack the head of the military. Unconstitutional it may have been, but few seem to doubt that the sacking was the first step a grand scheme the Maoists have in mind to completely do away with the military so they may control autocratically. To make the situation worse, India is thought to be in secret collusion with the army as a means to keep tabs on the Maoists. As with all political power games, the losers are the people of Nepal.

Alexia took me to the place where some of the biggest losers in the whole mess call home - the slum school at Koteshwor. The shanty town is a collection of corrugated-iron shacks mixed with some cinder-block boxes. It runs alongside a river which is little more than a flowing rubbish dump, choked with tonnes of the city’s waste and pollution. Scrawny ducks and dogs mix with snotty-nosed children, disheveled men and amazingly refined-looking women.
Amongst all this is a school: Saraswati Primary School. If you ask the ‘Maoist’ Nepali government, there is no school, and no shanty town for that matter. It and they don’t exist. I bet those people in power who claim to be there ‘for the people’ wish they didn’t exist at all so their job would be easier. The school is an amazing place. It says something amazing about the human spirit that these children can happily skip through the mud and filth to school and be so enthusiastic about learning, and life.
From photos I have seen and what Alexia has told me, the school has come a long way since she first visited 18 months ago. No one could visit the place and say that it’s not a project worth supporting. Hopefully though the years to come we can continue to support and visit the school and help to ensure that it continues to grow and improve.

As for the sightseeing in Kathmandu. Swayambhu ‘Monkey Temple’ was my favourite. It sits on top of a large hill which pokes up in the middle of Kathmandu. It gives great views in all directions of what is a surprisingly beautiful city from above. As the name suggests, the place is swarming with monkeys. Sunglasses are a must as eye contact will be considered a territorial challenge and will in turn be challenged. In the last decade three huge statues of Buddhas have been erected which were very impressive. In fact the whole place was well maintained and had a great aura about it.
In contrast to this was Durbar Square. This ancient Hindu temple complex is an absolute shambles. The beautiful Newari woodwork is all but covered in pidgeon shit. Cars and motorbikes beep their way through what is a world heritage site. The Nepalese seem either unaware or negligent about preserving what is a rich history.

ABD -
Bouddhanath Stupa, is my favourite place in Kathmandu.
It is the biggest Stupa in Nepal and one of the most sacred places for Tibetan Buddhists. Therefore it is more crowded with Tibetan Lamas than other Buddhist sites.

I don’t know if this has something to do with my new found fascination and amour of all things Tibetan or not. Whatever the case, this is one of my all time favourite places on our planet, purely because the energy of the place is so wonderful.
During Losar festival (the Tibetan new year) which falls between the second half of January and the first half of February (according to the Gregorian calendar) each year, many Tibetans visit this stupa on a pilgrimage.
Architecturally, according to a leaflet that is handed out after you have purchased your 100 Rupee ticket, ‘the stupa stands on a three tiered platform raised over crossed rectangles in order to bring out the Yantra form’
There are 108 small niches all around the stupa. At the bottom level, three large prayer wheels embossed with the mantra ‘Om mani pedme hum’, the mantra used for Avalokiteshwara, (the compassionate Buddha, whose reincarnation is the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, of Tibet) are found.

Bouddhanath Stupa was enlisted as a world heritage site in 1979.

Durbar Square fascinates me only due to the fact that it is the neighbourhood of the living goddess Kumari. According to the legend, the King of Nepal was very good friends with the goddess Taleju and always sought her advise on important matters within his kingdom. One night as the goddess and the King where sitting in the palace in a small candlelit room the Queen came into the room in her nightdress and threw a jealousy tantrum. The goddess was so offended that the Queen had not recognized her that she got up and told the King she would not advise him on anything anymore and disappeared.
The King pleaded with her by making offerings all throughout the following day and finally the goddess forgave him or at least partially. She came to his dream that night and told him “If you wish to see me again, choose a young virgin girl of the Shakya caste, beautiful and unblemished, with the 32 signs of perfection. Worship her as you would worship me. In her I will appear to you. But I will ever forget the insult that I suffered”
And so after consulting his priests the king did her bidding. A four year old girl of the Newar Shakya caste was found who met all the criteria. She was taken to the Taleju temple and installed as the living embodiment of the goddess. She was worshiped by the king and adored by the people at festivals. A little later (1757) a small ornate palace and temple where she could live was built for her just across the kings palace. Once a year, during the great Indra Jatra festival, the king went to her temple to receive her blessing in the form of tika, a red mark on his forehead.
Known as Kumari, the virgin goddess, or as Dyah Meiju to her own Newari people, as soon as she began to approach the are of womanhood she was replaced by a similar girl in order to assure that she would always be pure and unblemished and would never grow old. And so it continued throughout a change of dynasty, several centuries and many Kings.
The book I am reading now “From Goddess to Mortal” is the true life story of a former Royal Kumari named Rashmila Shakya. She was Kumari from 1984 to 1991.
In this book she dispels the myths that where made around the secret lives of the Kumari and also describes the difficulties she faced after being removed from her deity role and had to pull her weight within the realms of a normal household.

I’m adding a few interesting excerpts:
“I was taken to see the King because I had been chosen, all unknown to myself, to be the next Royal Kumari, or living virgin goddess, emanation of the fierce and powerful goddess Taleju Bhawani. For more or less the next eight years, I would live in my own palace/temple, be venerated as the human form of the goddess, be revered by crowds at our biggest festivals, be worshipped by the king himself and be gaped at by foreign tourists. ..”
“… a girl can continue as Kumari only until roughly the age of puberty and as my predecessor had reached the age of 12, her caretaker - who soon was to become mine - had decided that it was time to choose a new goddess. You might read in the guidebooks or articles that the royal Kumari is disqualified the firs time she sheds blood: a cut, bleeding from the loss of a tooth or first menstruation are the usual reasons given. But in fact, it is much simpler. Before any of these things happen, Kumari’s caretaker goes around to Newari families of the Shakya caste who live inside the old city of Kathmandu and who have girls the right age, looking for new candidates.
We Newaris are the ancient people of the valley with our own language and culture. Some of us are Buddhist and some are Hindu and we are tolerant enough that many of us participate in both Hindu and Buddhist festivals and we share our temples. In some ways I was to become the most prominent symbol of this tolerance. The Shakyas are Buddhist (in fact we believe that we decent from the same clan as Gautama Buddha, another of whose names was Shakya Muni, the “Sage of the Shakyas”) but I was to become a Hindu goddess.
The criteria for a potential Kumari are not nearly as strict as many people think….
….. In addition to our fathers being members of the Kathmandu baha, there must not have been any inter-caste marriages in our ancestry. The girl herself must be around 3 - 5 years of age and must not have scars or other marks on her body. Another condition is that she must not have been through either two mock marriage ceremonies we have for little girls. In one called ihi, which we usually do between the ages of 4 and 10 we are symbolically married to a fruit called a bel fruit. It is a growing up or rite of passage ceremony and afterwards we are expected to behave in a more mature manner. In the other, bahrah, a pre-menstrual ceremony, usually done when we are between 10 and 15, but sometimes much younger, we are kept in a dark room with no males (but plenty of girlfriends and female relatives) allowed inside for 12 days, then symbolically married to the sun. These “marriages” are considered so important that a girl who has gone through either of them is no linger considered to be completely a virgin and so is ineligible to become Kumari, Virgin Goddess”
“… The guidebooks and some articles will sometimes tell you that prospective Kumaris are subjected to rigorous physical examination to determine if we are in possession of the 32 bodily perfections….
….actually these 32 perfections all come from our horoscopes. Most importantly there must be no conflict with that of the King.”
“The living Goddess Kumari is a Supreme Goddess….and she does not undergo any lessons or teaching. She also does not have any playmates. Her caretakers keep a watch on her day and night. Very little light comes through the traditional carved wooden windows of my bedroom in the morning….”
“The long afternoon stretches before me…I drift to the first front windows where I look out onto Durbar square and the people passing by….My view is very limited since I am not supposed to stick my head right out….I shrink back a little from the window so the foreigners will not be able to see me. In a few minutes, after the trinket lady finishes with them, I will probably have to show myself to them from the window in the back. My eyes go up to the window of another temple across the square where I see the lord Shiva with his arm around his wife Parvati. Like me they are looking out of the window and down at the square, but they are even more trapped, for as wooden images they cannot even leave their window. Then I hear one of the women of the house call, “Dyah Meiju, some foreign visitors.”
It is not an order, for no one orders a goddess around, but I understand that because they will leave an offering on a small pillar in the courtyard, I have a duty to show myself at the window just as I understand that I have a duty not to smile when I am there. Sometimes it is a bother, if I am playing with my dolls or dancing with the other children, but just now I don’t mind. If I am not doing anything else and like the looks of them, I might appear even if they have not left an offering.
I put on my serious Kumari face and step to the window. Sometimes the foreigners applaud, some of them do Namaste and some just stand and stare. Sometimes I stay longer than others, depending on how curious I am. Where are they from I wonder? Why are the women dressed so strangely? Is their hair that way naturally? Most of them, men and women, have cameras around their necks, but I know that if they point them at me I should step back. I wonder what country they are form and wish I could just shout down and ask their Nepali guide. What is that country of theirs like? Would my teacher know if I asked him? Will I ever visit it? And what do they make of me? Don’t they have goddesses in their own land? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just ask them whatever I wanted? Of all of them, the ones I like most are the ones I am told come from a country called Japan. They always applaud when I come to the window and something in the way they look at me makes me think they understand me. “
“Throughout this narrative I hope that I have made it clear that when I was four years old, I was not forced to spend a night in a room surrounded by 108 freshly severed goat and buffalo heads in order to prove my courage.
I am not entirely sure of the origins of these misunderstandings…as early as 1880 a British residency surgeon in Kathmandu, in his “Sketches from Nepal”, told the story of the Kumari, complete with the little girl alone in the room with the severed animal heads. What his sources where he did not say…
….In June 2001 my successor as Kumari was replaced and this was the occasion for a new spate of articles that seemed almost to go out of their way to misunderstand the nature of the Kumari tradition. It was particularly disappointing that respected international media outlets like the “Guardian” and the “BBC” would do such poor research. This time a new theme was “human rights” and all the old clichés where wheeled out yet again; “
“…There are many aspects of it (Kumari tradition) that can and should be criticized but the criticism must come from an informed stance. A campaign to stop locking up a child in a room full of buffalo heads is likely to accomplish little, when nothing like this happens in the first place”
“Now that I am no longer a girl but a young woman undergoing higher education… I have to say that first of all I have absolutely no regrets about having been Kumari…it is wonderful to think back to those times and it is remarkable to think that at the time everything seemed so normal. Women came to pray to me for the health of their children, the king came to worship me, people came from all over the world to see me and huge crowds came out to see me at Indra Jatra yet it just seemed part of my childhood… Of course I knew very little of the outside world at that time, but that could be said for any number of nepali children living in the villages….I have never either then or now thought of Kumari Che as a prison..”

I think I will stop here with the quotations from the book as you have gotten the most important bits and I don’t want to bore you to death.

In November last year, my friend Kathleen and I went to see the the living goddess. We went to Durbar Square twice in a bid to be there at the exact time the goddess would appear at her newari carved window. We stood in the small courtyard of her palace with a bunch of other tourists and waited until she made her appearance. The girl I saw at the window of Kumari Che, the recently selected three year old child (she was selected in September) looked very serious and very mature. I think there is definitely some sort of re-incarnation or something going on there as no child at that age could be so dutiful without any training.
She looked beautiful.
She gave us a look of superiority, almost intimidating in a way and I was surprised by the determination of this young child.
We paid the obligatory ‘donation’ of twenty rupees into the stainless steel ‘donation box and Kathleen banged her head on the low wooden arches on our way out.
‘Told you she is bad luck’ she whispered to me, rubbing her head. I chuckled.
I guess nobody will ever know or understand what is really going on inside the mind of a living goddess, for a goddess she is, if not to me and you, but to many thousands of Hindus across the world.
And I will be the last to doubt it.

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