Pashupati Briddhasram
The world has gotten itself in a big hurry and it shows no sign of slowing down. Kathmandu is no exception; in fact it is in the high point of this big rush. But no matter how hard the world outside is swinging, it doesn’t seem to get through to the insides of the walls that bound Samajhkalyan Kendra, Briddhasram, Pashupati (Social Welfare Center, Elderly home, Pashupati) , a century old elderly home built as the Panchdeval (five shrines) Pakshala in the Regime of His Majesty Surendra Vir Vikram Shah.
Situated amidst the temples of the famous Hindhu temple complex, Pashupatinath, this place really seems to manipulate time (at least in a personal level, if not in a universal level). Once you enter the premises of the Briddhasram, you can’t help but feel like you are transcended at least half a century back in time, where (say) even cell phone is alien. And here the world moves slow.
You see as many as a fifty grey haired, frail elderly citizens doing nothing but spending blissful moments basking in the sun for hours in the courtyard and on the shrine platform. Some curious eyes follow you as you walk pass the welfare gate. One of them is busy reading a laptop sized religious book rested on his lap and the other is trying hard to bend and dust off his trousers. All you hear is the steady sound of the wheeled metallic support of an elderly with crippled feet and a faint sound of TV playing nepali song. They don’t talk to each other much, which gives you an aura of wilderness where no word is spoken but they really live for each other. For some it is a depressing scene to see people at the end of human life cycle, away form their family, living (or rather dying) in the Briddhasram. But for many this is a place where they refuge from their ever speeding life and feel satisfied helping and sharing talks with the matured citizens.
Also known as Siddhi Shaligram Briddhashram (Home for the Elderly), the only governmental home for seniors lies 4.8 kilometers northeast of the heart of the city, surrounded by the Pashupatinath Hindu temple grounds. The temple Pashupatinath—a World Heritage Site–is a famous pilgrimage for Hindu pilgrims from around the world, and also an abode for frolicking monkeys and sadhu santas (meditating monks) with tangled hairs who come from across the Indian subcontinent. The holy Bagmati River flows quietly through the temple complex past the ghats where ghutiyars cremate dead daily, dumping the ashes into the river where they flow downstream, eventually to the sacred Ganges. For Hindu faithful, to die and be cremated means release from the cycle of repeated birth and death. In a country like Nepal where people lean towards religion, god and take on spiritual quests as they grow old, living in this religious courtyard is no bad deal for the elderly, for all they wish for is a peaceful place to live, worship and wait for salvation.
An elderly said “I don’t feel sad that my sons don’t care for me anymore. In fact I am happy here than I used to be with my sons. I feel like I am on the lap of lord Shiva.” Pointing towards their bhajan mandal, “I spend my days singing bhajans (hymns) there in our bhajan mandal.”
With the advancement in medicine people are living longer. This means more old people. In addition to this, modernization and urbanization is inducing people to adapt luxurious lifestyles. It has encouraged the young people to switch to nuclear families from conventional extended families. So, elderly are having hard time, as they are dependent on the breadwinners of the family and more elderly are or are on the verge of homelessness. This implies that the shelter for seniors could face the situation of ‘more people less money’ crisis. But with the donations and supports from the organizations and well wishers, this barely seems to be a point of concern.
Currently managed by The Woman, Children and Social Welfare (WCSW) and sustained mostly by donations that provide just over $200 per person—the average annual income for a Nepalese citizen–the Briddhashram residents consider themselves some of the most fortunate elders in all of Nepal. In truth, they are. Persons admitted here receive good food and shelter, and are given clothing twice annually. At present, 22 government employees run the home and take care of residents. Doctors visit every alternate day, and among the staff are two health workers. All medical expenditure is borne by the government. Following the death of a resident, the home covers all funeral expenditures.
This place really fills you with hope. What gives you hope is that even though they have lost families and possessions they still care. They care for each other and they retain a deep sense of humanity.
(This isn’t exactly what I had to say about this place, but it’s alrite, coz this is what people want to hear ‘the bright side of things’)
Neku Jatra-Mataya: Patan’s festival of lights
Your parade-sore feet ache less when you look up to see warm eyes upon you from the windows of the roadside houses; when you look ahead to see the pinnacles of the durbar square with the summit of Langtang range in the background; when you see elderly men in the waysides, with their grandchildren in their arms giving them their first lessons of faith; when you turn back and see a line of pretty women in bright matching dresses following you. A little foot weariness is a small price to pay for the joy you get from participating in the holy parade of Neku Jatra-Mataya, the ‘Festival of Lights’.
Very few cities in the world compares with Patan (Lalitpur) in the richness of its cultural heritage—a claim that really makes sense, especially when you are talking about something with the unmatched wonder of Neku Jatra-Mataya. For Patan’s Newari community in a city where festivals function as rites of passage throughout the year, the series of festivals during Gunla [DM1] (the ninth lunar month) has become a way of life. The highest point of this greatest of all Buddhists months is Mataya (and its twin procession, Neku Jatra, both celebrated as one) which follows the day after Gai Jatra. This day-long journey around the historical city starts at the dawn, on the third day of the dark fortnight of Shrawan (August).
From Neku Jatra-Mataya, neku (in Newari) means a ‘buffalo horn’, jatra is ‘festival’, mata means ‘lights’ and ya (from yatra) refers to a sacred ‘journey’. Neku Jatra is also known as Sringavheri Jatra, which also is associated with the buffalo horn. The name itself says it all, for the most significant feature of this festival is the blowing of buffalo horn in each lane and baha (courtyard) and at every corner along the way. Men and women walk in a line of thousands between these musician groups and do puja at the votive shrines (chaityas) carrying lighted candles and torches.
The preparation for Neku Jatra-Mataya begins on the first day of Gunla, after the celebration of yet another popular Newari festival called Gathamugha. After mid-night on this day a group of some hundred people with nava bajan (traditional Newari musical ensemble) gather and follow the exact path that they are to follow on the day of Mataya. They don’t finish the whole route on a single go, but gather every night for a few nights and mark the shrines and courtyard with vermilion, husked rice and coins as they pass. In doing so, they are preparing the path for people to follow during the great procession so that they won’t get lost in the narrow and confusing lane-mazes. This ritual help make the final day go smooth and better.
On the big day of Neku Jatra-Mataya, massive number of devotees, sometimes as many as several thousand, gather at the locality that is in charge of the festival for that year. There are ten different localities which take turns to organize the festival by sponsoring instruments, musicians and all the other expenses. This year’s (2008) Mataya was organized by the Bu-Bahal locality. They gather at the lead locality dawn and start their yatra with a hint of excitement and uncertainty in their cheerful faces; for they must walk all day long often bare-footed and fasting. It is a great scene to watch people prepare for their procession around the four principal Ashoka stupas (the bigger shrines attributed to the 3rd century BC Indian King Ashoka) spread in and around the four corners of Patan/. The group assembles with the neku (horn) players accompanied by a percussion section. They must all visit all the 1400 private and local votive shrines scattered in the city on their way. Groups of friends participate, dressed alike—Maharjan women in the traditional haku patasii dress; men in traditional daura suruwal and dhaka topi. Some of the men dress up as demons or ghosts (lakhe) or wild animals such as monkeys and lions. The devotees offer rice, grains, vermilion, incense, guru patra (a gift cup for a guru or religious teacher) at the shrines. The offering of oil or butter lamps signifies the enlightenment of Sakya Muni Buddha.
Inhabitants of Lalitpur are obliged to participate if they have lost a relative during the preceding year. Those who are particularly going through austerities for the merit of their deceased loved ones wear sacking over their near-naked bodies to protect them as they prostrate themselves before each shrine that they visit. It is believed that this helps their dead ones rest in peace. Despite the seriousness of this parade, connected as it is to death and tragedy, it is carried on with a carnival atmosphere. People gather to observe the fun and give a helping hand to the participants of this holy parade. Since helping the participants earns religious merit for oneself even if one does not join the procession, people gather at intersections to offer assistance to the devotees. Friends and relatives stand by the roadside with rice and coins to replenish their stock. Some guide the traffic while others stand with containers of cold water and first aid. It is an interesting and inspirational sight to see people with spray cans dousing water on the marchers to cool them down, as the going gets a bit too hot.
“I was really excited, though this wasn’t my first time and I knew my legs would hurt,” said Rina Shahi, a local of Thapa-Hiti locality, who shared her experience of Mataya this year with us. “It is, in a way, a strange experience. We had to walk past the houses of many people, and we even walked in through the bedrooms and kitchens of some houses.” When asked about her overall feelings she puts it this way: “It was irksome at times when we had to walk so long and back just to visit a single shrine which was a bit off the track. But it was a fun experience, overall. Guys just couldn’t seem to help but tease and flirt with us girls, which was a bit annoying. I made some new friends on the way, and the people were really helpful. I hope I did well enough for my Maiju (aunt) to rest in heaven.”
There are two famous schools of belief of how this festival originated, one is a local belief and the other is famous among the cultural scholars in town. According to the local belief, this is the festival commemorating the victory of Shakya Muni over the Maras. When the Shakya Muni Gautam was in his deep penance to become Buddha, The Enlightened One, the Maras disguised themselves as demons and damsels in order to corrupt him. The day of Mataya is the day when Shakya Muni overcame his temptations and attained Nirvana.
Who’s better a person than the expert himself to hear the second story of Mataya from? Here is a version of story on origin of Mataya told by a culture expert, Mr Satya Mohan Joshi:
Once upon an ancient time, even before The Buddha, there lived a king and a queen. They were perfect, meant for each other. The only difference between them was in their notion about animals and how they should treat them. The king was a violent man and liked hunting and abusing animals, but the queen was otherwise–compassionate, peaceful and believed in worshiping animals. Their life went on, happily in fact, until they grew old and died. The queen, being a religious person, was re-born as a Brahmin’s priest’s daughter, Sulakshyana; and the king was reborn as Shringaketu, a buffalo in the same Brahmin’s farm. The priest’s daughter, being a holy person, realized that the buffalo was her husband in their past lives. She looked after him and nourished him. Under her care the buffalo got healthy and sizeable. Sulakshyana even refused to marry, as she knew that the love of her life was Shringaketu.
On one unfortunate day Shringaketu fell off a cliff and died. Sulakshayana, all mournful, preserved the remains of her husband’s body in a shrine and worshipped it. From one of his horns she made the gajur (pinnacle of the shrine) and she used the other horn to water the shrine. One day she made a hole at the sharp end of the horn and tried blowing it. The sound of the horn was so deep and mournful. She kept blowing it with all her heart to reach her dead husband, meaning “Where are you? My Love!” Finally, after a lot of one-sided futile effort, the king answered from the other horn “Here I am! Here I am!”
This is the reason why people blow horns. It is believed that the sound of the horn reaches to the dead. Till to this day two horns are played, so that during Mataya their words are believed to be parallel to those of Sulakshayana and Shringaketu.
Though this festival appears to be nothing more than accruing merit to the deceased, an insightful essay by Mark Johnson shares more of its significances (and of the series of festivals during Gunla[DM2] ), “This time of year,” he writes, “has a purifying effect in the city of space. The Mataya procession and those that precede it are intended to reestablish the sacred city space.”
As monsoon is the lifeblood here in the city of god, and there is a lot of rain, people believe that these festivals help keep them safe from disasters. As an elderly Tamrakar has put it: “At this time there is so much rain it is likely to flood. No one must sleep during this night, otherwise the world will turn over. So the nava bajan players go around keeping people awake.”
This is the time, moreover, when the dark shadows, illness and epidemics fall upon the city. Traditionally, Nepalese took sickness to be caused by ghosts, witches and deities (like the chwasa aajima, the Remains Deity). This array of festivals is believed to have a curing effect also.
There is laughter and there is song. But there is also sickness and death. And cure and victory.
(This story’ll hopefully appear in the October issue of ECS)
Bollywood is a time machine (no kiddin’)
Chris Bohjalian’s new blog says ‘everybody’s a critic’. Now, this post of mine has nothing to do with what chirs had to say in his, and I’m not going to start with what my daughter thinks about reviews on my new novel in amazon.com and bn.com. Why? Firstly because I’m not a writer, I mean not yet. And secondly I don’t have a 14 yr old daughter.
Jokes apart, I’m a critic too, a movie critic for now (can’t seem to part joke from my writing). Hindi movies are crap. And I know it isn’t the first time you are hearing this, they really are, except for few (very few). But here I am taking this challenge to write against this cliché. No kiddin’.
Hindi movies have a special place in our (Nepalese) hearts. Cheesy as it may sound, but it’s true. Whether you like it or not, whether you admit it or not, it has become a way of life for almost all of us. I don’t mean bollyhood movies when I say ‘it’, I mean our secret admiration for the cheep, corny bollyhood movies. Now, don’t tell me you don’t, once in a while, feel like doing nothing but sit back relax and watch a hindi movie channel. The fact that those channels stretch an hour long movie into what seems to be for ever with their advertisements matters less. You just want to get hold of the remote and turn off your mind and watch. The ‘mind turning off’ part wasn’t figurative, you can literally turn it off since you already know (not guess) what’s next in the movie.
I’m a huge fan of, say, Ron Harward or Steven Spielbergh. And I’m not kiddin’ when I say I watched this movie, as recently as a few months ago, in which the so called ‘hero’ is a dancer, singer, super-man, every good thing you could possibly imagine, and of course romantic at the same time. My point? Is that I don’t ‘not watch’ them. Reason? I feel damn good. Not good as in “wow!!! WTF” good, but “good day, sunshine” good. Now, don’t get me wrong, no, the director of photography of these movies aren’t at all masters, most of them are crap. Well, I know you are dying to know (LOL) where my talk is heading. Ok, here is what I mean.
Imagine yourself as me. No don’t do that. Imagine you as yourself but you are a 10 yr old and you feel swell as hell because you just learned how to ride a bicycle by yourself though you sit on top tube instead of the seat coz you aren’t tall enough. You rush to tell your sister that you didn’t even notice you were riding by yourself and that you are “awesome!” Your sis gives a damn coz she is a Sarukh Khan fan and Zee TV’s showing ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hei’. And you go and lay flat on the couch and start watching, though the sound of people cycling and playing cricket just outside your room in the courtyard makes it impossible for you to fully hear the movie. These are the days when movies start making sense for the first time in your mind. These are the days when you have your first of crushes on a girl in your school. Not because she is a John Petrucci or a Blink-182 fan, but because she doesn’t cry on the way to school or she has neatly cut fingernails.
The movie ends… You stretch yourself up (coz hindi movies are at least 2 hrs long and with the advertisements they are 3 to 4 hrs at the very least) and you dab your tired eyes and you open them to find yourself in the present.
span style=”color: black;”> Enough of time traveling. Basically, what I mean is that it’s obvious that hindi movies are the first movies that we relate to. We weren’t born movie critics. We can’t watch the first movie of our lives and tell that the plot of the movie was shitty and all. So, we have no choice but to feel fine watching these movies of our times missing our sisters and our brothers (he was the one backing up my bicycle LOL).
IN AN OCTOPUS’ GARDEN WITH YOU…
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden in the shade
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been
In his octopus’ garden in the shade
I’d ask my friends to come and see
An octopus’ garden with me
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden in the shade.
We would be warm below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves
Resting our head on the sea bed
In an octopus’ garden near a cave
We would sing and dance around
because we know we can’t be found
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden in the shade
We would shout and swim about
The coral that lies beneath the waves
(Lies beneath the ocean waves)
Oh what joy for every girl and boy
Knowing they’re happy and they’re safe
(Happy and they’re safe)
We would be so happy you and me
No one there to tell us what to do
I’d like to be under the sea
IN AN OCTOPUS’ GARDEN WITH YOU.
IN AN OCTOPUS’ GARDEN WITH YOU.
(This is a song of squids n seahorses….)
I mi-mi mine
I-I-mi-mi mine,
I-I-mi-mi mine,
I-I-mi-mi mine,
I-I-mi-mi mine.
Not sure if it makes sense to everyone… but sure does to me.lol
Eighty Six
Some things make me happy for no reason. Like a sektch i made the other night. It wasn’t all that good but till it made me glad that i tried it. Well, it’s the same with this pic. Though this pic makes me feel depressed at times, it remindes me that there are people whose lives are even more fucked up than mine.
Badam Budhi
Greyness says it all. Behold if you may.
The hard up and dull life she knows. Yet she hopes.
Emptiness is all there is at the end of a hard earned day.
The future, it seems, is bleak and void. Still she hopes.
A Flawed nutcracker
Here is one good way to get an internet connection.
You go to the internet head office once a day for a week or two just to get them ready to set up a router or switch or what ever it is. They agree to install not because they think they should, but because you don’t seem to give up trying and they are sick of seeing your face on a regular basis. Then you wait for a month without any signs of connection.(That’s the length of time between two full moons.) The cause? Only god knows. In fact you don’t wait. You call the office every single day for twenty days and technicians come every other day to fake an endeavor to make it work. Each time they come, they have an excuse for failure. Someday they don’t have a clamper (an instrument used to staple the head of a RJ-45 cable, which looks like a nutcracker), other days they don’t bring a ladder or they simply can’t tell where the problem is.
After twenty fucking days of futile effort, they decide that they are a little more than dubious about the 83 meters of RJ-45 cable which connects the switch on the electricity pole to my computer. Which means, an extra charge of Rs.83X20 if you had paid for this faulty cable, fortunately you hadn’t. You had decided not to pay a dime until you assure of the connectivity, which was an apt thing to do.
Now this is where things get really freaky. You call the office to say how peeved you feel at what is going on. And instead of being sorry, the man on the other side literally yells at you for not paying the dues. He wants you to pay rite away if you want the cable replaced. But he wouldn’t say more than “it seems to be the only problem, can’t you see?” when you ask if he was certain that the new cable will work. You hang up confused and enraged.
After ten days or so when you call the office to check if anything was going on, they send the same old fellas over. This time it takes them no more than a few minutes to fix up the connection. Flabbergasted by what you’ve witnessed, you ask the man to explain. And all he says is “It was the damn clamper. We were using a shitty clamper last month.” Then you forgive them for wasting your month, for not treating you good enough, for being careless, for wasting your telephone calls, for still not being sorry. Finally, you hope that your little tale ends up happy. But you are still disgruntled, for the speed of internet connection you get can only be called glacial. You have already paid and you are helpless now.
Well, I’m confident that by now you have learnt that this is not a good way to get an internet connection. Now, the part that you might not know is that this is an anecdote of mine, which I thought deserves to be written. So, all the ‘you’s in the story are in fact ‘me’s. And the moral of the story? It is that the thing that looks like a nutcracker is actually a clamper, and it can sometimes be a pain in the ass. And that ’sometimes’ is more sporadic than we imagine.
No more Mr.(just)Writer
Finally, i’ve decided to do, well, what everyone has been doing with their blogs. Though my interest in photography hasn’t been life long, it didn’t take me all that long to discover my love for the art. So here i am flip-flopping my previous impressions of how my blog should look like (obviously like Chris Bohjalian’s, who happens to be one of my favorite writers) and posting a few of my works of photography(well, here is just one for now).
This is a picture i took a few months ago. I call it ‘the city of god’.
My name is Ashesh (with a capital ‘A’)
There aren’t quite a lot of people who pronounce my name rite. Its not that my name is impossibly difficult to pronounce, it’s just that (well I think) people take it for granted. For them it’s nothing more than a tag which says “Ashesh” scribbled under a picture of a lanky young fella in their brains, with which they have nothing to do except to utter with utter negligence. Well, if you think it’s tough, then try “Mimansha” or “Vilakshan”
There are times when I hear my name and I’m drenched in this utmost desire to point a gun to the utterer’s temple and make him say my name a zillion times correctly, and of course with (Itl)love(Itl). People keep surprising me (well, they used to but now I’m used to it) with newer versions of my name. “Ashesh” with an ‘aah’ that sounds nothing like the beginning, a ‘shee’ that sounds nowhere near the middle and a ‘ssss’ that’s not bad an ending, of my name. Some, specially westerns, come up with such extreme variation to it, they induce me to imagine a folk of donkey like little creatures with feathers, circumambulating my skull. Some simply remind me of yucky, flabby rarer ends of our body which we sit on. I just don’t get why they seem to relate it with the word ‘ass’ and not ‘us’, which indeed is a better word and phonetically related to ‘Ashesh’. Well, what’s even worse, is when I meet new people and the few weeks that follows, they seem to try all the possible permutations of the word, until they finally settle with one. I have to respond to such words, which I just can’t remember where I heard before and suddenly I realize, that it sounds somewhat like my name. And an interesting thing about it, they make me feel like one of those people with nome de plume in detective movies.
Well, life isn’t all that bad when you have friends who know just how you like your name tongued. There are fortunately some people who keep me from being a full time imaginary murderer. Even some of my new acquaintances make effort to verbalize those three syllabuses, and perfectly manifest my name. And at times I have a notion that they have been thinking of those three syllabuses for at least 5 minutes before letting out. I suppose most of us take moment like these for granted. Well, I don’t. I cherish each of them. To you guys, my saviors, my buddies, my whatevers…… Thank you. And to my new pals thank you for those 5 minutes you spend on my name.
