Lately

I haven’t written anything lately because I’ve been going to class, hanging out with white people, and sleeping a lot. I lived through a fever that made my cheekbones hurt, and now I am on the mend. I’ve been sitting out some of the shedra trips to spots around the Kathmandu valley for two reasons. The first, and most relevant, is that I have reached my tolerance limit for group trips. The second, and perhaps more reasonable, is that there are landslides everywhere during monsoon. I don’t want to die swallowing fecally contaminated mud, and, more importantly, I don’t want to hike across landslides during the hottest part of the day, when the clouds invariably part and allow the sun to swelter and cook the inhabitants below. So, I stay in Boudha and wait for the (relatively) cooler and drier month of September to do my wandering.

There are too many calendars to keep tracl off here, so I’m in a constant state of confusion regarding the festival schedules. We just started a new Tibetan month, there are two more weeks left in the current Nepali month, and I have no idea how the Newaris reckon time. Newari Buddhism is a type of religion here, but also a language and ethnic group. So, there’s a lot going on. Apparently I missed huge (well-endowed) straw effigies at the stupa last Friday. A classmates has promised to share pictures. I saw pictures of similar effigies in the paper, but they were in another part of the city, fairly far away from my little neighborhood.

During this Nepali month, Shravan is taking place, which means people collect water to offer to Shiva. The largest shiva temple is close to my neighborhood, so I have seen many worshipers carrying their water to offer. (I know nothing about Nepali culture, so my descriptions here should not be confused with fact.) There seem to be two types of participants in this activity. One consists of a long, single file line of people, separated by gender (ladies first) who carry brass pots of water on their heads, preceded by a marching band. The other, and my personal favorite, are groups of men and boys dressed in orange t-shirts (often bearing an image of Shiva, or Om), orange shorts, orange scarves, and orange headbands borded with sparkly cold tinsle, and carrying tiny orange backpacks filled with plastic water jars. They either walk barefoot, or ride around in pick-up trucks or the tops of buses, pumping their fists and yelling happily. I like to yell at them. They’re very enthusiastic. I will try to get photos. but they are usually moving too quickly, and I get wrapped up in shouting with them.

I went with a group of friends to Pashupatinath (a huge shiva temple) on Sunday to see the light offering ceremony, which happens everyday at sunrise and sunset. There are three Brahmin men who make the offerings of incense, candles, and whisks of hair and peacock feathers, while musicians sing praises to Shiva and play music (on flutes, harmonium and tablas). There are huge christmas tree-shaped metal candle holders, and, later in the ritual, small bowls of fire attached to handles with brass snakes rising over them. (It was dark, and my camera can’t see very far…so the pictures aren’t great. I will try to go back in the morning to get better pictures.)

The whole ritual was very pleasant in and of itself, but there was some unexpected excitement as well. At one point, many of the attendees stood up and ran over to one of the small (7x7 feet) temples – or ran away all together. Someone told us there were snakes “over there.” I thought they were kidding, so I kept watching and listening and enjoying the music. But people kept acting strangely, so I walked over to the crowd. I assumed if there were snakes, a saddhu would be holding them. Everyone was pushing and jumping around. Young guys were making hissing noises, and periodically everyone would run back away from the temple. When I got close enough to the front of the crowd to see, I saw a snake come around the corner of the temple on the ground. It was about as big as a good-sized rat snake, but of course when everyone freaked out, it would back away from the crowd. I wondered if its presence was a good sign, since Nagpanchami is coming up on Thursday.

On the festival day of Nagpanchami, Nepalis offer bowls of rice to the nagas (snake gods) and they change the pictures of the snake gods above their doors. My land lord says that there are usually holy men walking around with snakes in the neighborhood. But he also started yelling about how some association in Nepal is trying to takethe snakes away because they are not being treated well….and he wasn’t very specific about it. He went on lnoger about how this has been the culture for years and years and people shouldn’t meddle. I asked if there would be guys with snakes at Pashupatinath that day, and he of course. People around here tend to respond in the affirmative, whether they know the answer to your question or not, so I’ll see. Hopefully there will be some interesting snake activity.