August through October is known as festival season in Nepal, and for good reason. We’ve had almost no school at all in the past few months, because it seems that every other day is a festival.
One week, there was a festival every day.
Day One
The day was a festival where demons come out and harass people for money. They roam the streets and if they pick you at random, you have to fork over a surprisingly large amount of money for them to go away. There is one very basic dance that they do, where they put their right hand on their left shoulder and then their left hand on their right shoulder.
Day Two
This one was actually really upsetting to me, but all my students loved it. This was a fake marriage ceremony where all the men and boys in town don traditional women’s apparel, as this was a day that they attempt to be “lovely” and “talk sweetly,” as one man described it to me. I couldn’t do anything but hate this festival, though because the first thing I saw was a man put a phallic-shaped balloon in his pants and chased around little boys dressed as girls and imitating sexual acts with them. The crowd laughed and encouraged it. I will admit there are serious limits to my ability to accept other cultures, because I still can’t see how anyone could be anything but horrified by that.
The wedding proceeded much like a typical Nepali wedding, except the bride broke down crying because he hated being treated as inferior to men. It was strange.
The bride and groom
Day Three
More demons harassing people from 5pm to 10pm, doing the classic demon dance.
Day Four
We went to a stupa (a small pointed temple used in Buddhism and Hinduism) and walked around it and sang a lot of songs. Then we walked through the village singing songs. The best thing about the songs was that they usually were just listing gods’ names. I really enjoyed that. “We pray to Ram, Hari, Krishna, Sita, Krishna, Ram, Ram, Hari, Shiva, Krishna, Shiva, Krishna, Hari, Laxmi, Shiva…” The song would last for a solid ten minutes and they really prayed to a lot of gods that way.
Day Five
I was awakened from sleep by the sounds of drumming. Curious, I got out of bed only to find the entire family had already left. There was a massive crowd in the town square, all watching a man dressed in all white and wearing a mask wander around. It turns out this was some sort of special god that comes out once a year in the form of a selected man. We watched him wander around for a few minutes then everyone went back to bed.
Day Six
A bunch of male goats were killed and their heads put on display. Then some men ate the goats’ heads and started shaking uncontrollably. The idea here is that within the goats’ heads, there is the power of the god Krishna. Krishna on this day manifests himself by the shaking. After they had been shaking for a few minutes, a group of men forced them to put on the demons’ attire. As soon as they donned that attired, they became the ghosts, performing the classic demon dance.
Day Seven
This was god Krishna’s birthday. On this day, Krishna had killed the demons, conquering evil. The masks of the demons were put on tall sticks and paraded around the village along with a small statue of Krishna. People would come out and put sacred powder, fruits, and money in Krishna’s little portable temple. There were kids who followed this whole procession and as soon as someone put money or fruit, they would reach in and grab it. It was like halloween- kids were carrying big bags that were soon filled. No one cared at all; I saw parents digging through the bags to get their desired fruit.
Related Posts
Comments are closed.
1 Comment
That’s a real eye opener-can’t see anything good about that.
Besides not attending school-does all work in the village get suspended as well?