Here I Yam: 'Tis the Season

Monsoon season has ended, and the days now are crisp and clear. I've been listening to the most pleasant sound--honeybees at work in the mustard fields. This gentle buzzing is made all the sweeter after weeks of sonic overload: firecrackers going off morning and night, loud music blaring from speakers, and the general chaos of 20-person family gatherings.

I just wrapped up my first major festival season in Nepal, celebrating two holidays, Dashain and Tihar, only a few weeks apart, much like Thanksgiving and Christmas. The festivities brought new family, new food, and plenty of new experiences. So, let's dive in!

Mustard in bloom

In my mind, the unofficial start of the season was Vishvakarma Puja. Although not part of Dashain, it was a glimpse of what was to come in the days ahead. Vishvakarma, revered as the divine craftsman of the universe (he forged Shiva's symbolic trishul), is associated with tools and heavy machinery. At my house, he was honored with vehicle worship: my host brother washed his motorcycle, tied on some ribbons, dabbed it with red tika powder, and adorned it with an auspicious swastika. That should keep the bike running smoothly for the next year.

Before diving into how I celebrated Dashain, I should probably share a bit of the mythology behind the holiday. Since I arrived in Nepal, I've often heard just how fun, memorable, and significant Dashain is for Nepali Hindus. Lasting 15 days, the festival celebrates the triumph of good over evil, symbolized by goddess Durga's victory over the demon Mahishasura, who had taken the form of a water buffalo. While Hindus in other countries celebrate Durga's victory to varying degrees, Dashain itself is a uniquely Nepali holiday.

Rayamajhi cousins @ Supa Deurali

Nepalis return from abroad and gather at their paternal homes to celebrate Dashain. Over a few days, my host brother's family started trickling in: cousins, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews. I finally had some twenty-something year olds to hang with, but those first few days were rough. I somehow found that I had very little in the way of conversation. Despite interacting with lots of people every day, my conversations in the village often fall into a predictable pattern, given the general interests of Nepalis and my language limitations: talk of weather, visas, the current crop, skin color, my salary. So when I found myself among people my own age, I realized how undersocialized I was. All I could think of was that old faithful: "This weather, right? Man oh man." But as we prepared meals together and went on a long walk to Supa Deurali Temple, I warmed up and made some good connections with my host cousins.

The days leading up to Dashain were filled with cleaning. Furniture was taken outside to wash and dry in the sun, all the old wares from the previous year were discarded from the storage room, and the house received a new coat of paint. The men of the village all pitched in on the landscaping around the local temple. Physically and spiritually purified, the festivities of Dashain could proceed.

The first day of Dashain is known as Ghatasthapana (the pronunciation eludes me). On this day, my host sister rose early and prepared five topari plates with barley (in Nepali, jamara) and soil. After watering them, she took the plates up to the attic and positioned them so they would remain in darkness. Keep the barley in mind, as it will be used in a later ritual.

Here's the barley all grown up

The next few days were mostly quiet in my village, business as usual. Although there was one incident stemming from the chaos of holiday preparations: the milk scandal. I've taken to drinking a glass of buffalo milk after dinner, as a digestif of sorts. One night, in the chaos, my host sister forgot to serve me the milk, and as I wasn't in the mood for it that night, I didn't ask for it. I retired to my room after dinner and soon heard knocking at my door and pleading for me to take the milk. As it was after 9 p.m., I declined.

The next morning my family was so apologetic, telling me they felt saddened and angry with themselves for being so forgetful. I had to assure them that all was well; I survived the night and held no grudge. I think this little incident illustrates how strongly my host family cares about being good hosts and my well-being (which I greatly appreciate), but to an almost stifling degree. I am not viewed as a fully independent and autonomous 24 year old woman.

The Dashain celebrations picked up again on Day 8, known as Maha Asthami. Together, with my host brother and his young sons, we cleaned and blessed the agricultural tools: kutto, kodalo, bancharo, hasiya, and khukuri among them (see, I do know some Nepali words!).

The next day, Maha Navani, was a jump in intensity. Dashain was now in full swing, which meant animal sacrifices needed to be performed. Our neighbor, the titled Pandit Buwaa, transformed from a herdsman into a Brahmin priest and scholar. He oversaw the sacrifice of four goats and a young water buffalo at the local temple. The goats were sprayed with water, blessed with tika, and then decapitated. Their bodies were dragged clockwise around the temple, leaving a perfect circle of blood, and their heads brought inside the temple as an offering to the goddess. The climax of the performance was the slaying of the water buffalo, the shape taken by the demon Mahishasura. It was struck on the neck, its body dragged around the temple like the goats, but the head remained outside the temple. I watched, somewhat horrifed but mostly numb. The anticipation is always worse than the act. The knife was sharp and cut easily; there wasn't any prolonged pain for the animals.

After the sacrifice, I spent a nine-hour marathon day with the extended host family. I don't know if I've ever put that many continuous hours in with my own family. I was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of new faces (19 people in total), so I picked a corner and peeled garlic cloves for hours as people drifted over to chat. Dinner that night was the blessed goat meat and rice, and as I don't eat meat at my site, I was served paneer instead.

The next day, Vijaya Dashami, is the most important day of Dashain. It was also a nine-hour day for me with the family. I rose early, took a shower (quite a literal interpretation of pure body and mind), and dressed in a kurta suruwal. On this day, the oldest member of the family applied Big Fat Red Tika and jamara, a symbol of the bond between family and community. After being left for 10 days in the dark, the barley had grown long and pale; the absence of light means the absence of photosynthesis, and therefore the barley was a light yellow rather than a dark green. The tika ceremony was a lively affair, lots of yelling directions and on-the-fly choreography, which had me asking myself a few times, "Have you guys ever done this before? It doesn't seem like it." I was exhausted from the socializing and fell into bed at 8:45 p.m.

Big Fat Red Tika

Dashain was capped off with a performance of the Sarai Nach dance, a local tradition for Arghakhanchi and some of the surrounding districts. Each village seemingly performed their Sarai Nach on different days; I could hear the music move across the hills in the days before and after ours. Sarai Nach is, finally, a time for the men to show off their dancing rather than standing around and watching the women. They paraded back and forth between temples, chanting and sorta dancing, swords held aloft in a tribute to Durga (or maybe Ram? There's not too much information out there on the symbolism of this tradition. I have to put on my anthropologist hat.). To end the dance, men carried offerings and flags with yak tails to a clearing, where a symbolic sacrifice of a pumpkin was performed. I imagine that this dance originated as a show of dominance on the battlefield and has since evolved into a practice that allows men to play act as victorious soldiers.

Dance, boys, dance!

Sarai Nach procession

Soon after, the extended family returned to their homes, the kids went back to school, and I had a three-week break until the next holiday, Tihar. But the days passed quickly, and I was thrown into a holiday mood once again. Tihar is probably more familiar to Americans as the Indian holiday Diwali; while both holidays are a celebration of lights at roughly the same time (sometime in Oct./Nov.), that's pretty much where the similarities end. Tihar is a five-day festival honoring important animals in Hindu mythology--crows, dogs, cows, and oxen--as well as humans themselves. I found Tihar to be a much more joyous holiday than Dashain, with traditions more whimsical and less solemn than the Dashain proceedings. The streets of Sandhikharka were filled with vendors selling colorful tika powder and gift baskets. In my village, people decorated their homes with flashing, multicolored lights, and kids set off firecrackers (to my knowledge, illegal in Nepal, but I'm no snitch).

Vibrant tika powder

The first day was Kaag Tihar, dedicated to the crow, a messenger of death. My host brother told me that a crow cawing from a green bough is a good omen, but cawing from a dead, dying, or yellowing plant is bad news. The idea on this day is to leave offerings (i.e., rice) out for the crows to distract them. Unfortunately, a member of my village passed away in the early morning of Kaag Tihar. If only she had held out for a few more hours, maybe the crows would have been too busy to deliver their messages of death. My young host brother played cawing on the radio for half an hour in order to attract crows to our house. While it wasn't successful, it did succeed in driving me crazy.

Offering on Kaag Tihar

Kaag Tihar is followed by Kukur Tihar, a glorious day dedicated to dogs. I loved seeing the village dogs running around with tika on their foreheads, wearing marigold garlands--all of them looking very dapper. I'm sure they were surprised by this sudden reversal in treatment too. A day where they were fed rice and pet instead of kicked and hit by rocks; I'm sure the dogs could hardly believe it. On Kurkur Tihar, my host sister returned to her paternal home to celebrate with her side of the family, while my host brother's sisters and female cousins came to our house. The women were tasked with making garlands, topari plates, and many types of specialty roti for the celebrations in the days to come. The household's wake-up time became 5:45 a.m., and since everyone seemed to decide the best place for a conversation was right outside my door, I was up with them.

The third day of Tihar is dedicated to the goddess Laxmi, who is associated with cows and prosperity. On this day, Laxmi is welcomed into Nepali homes after dark. We lit candles at the home shrine and at the two walkway entrances so that Laxmi could find her way. We also created a rangoli, a design made with colored flour. Well, "we" is not quite accurate; I was relegated to flashlight-holding duties while one of the cousins etched out the design.

Rangoli

A debonair gentleman

Who knew dung could be so pretty?

Roti, roti, and more roti!

The fourth day of Tihar is dedicated to manure and livestock. In the absence of cows and oxen, my family worshipped the water buffalo. (As an aside, reading descriptions of Dashain and Tihar online was only somewhat helpful. Rituals are highly localized, so what is true for Kathmandu is not representative of how these holidays are celebrated in the rest of the country. Rituals happen on different days, in different sequences, and with different materials. More to the point, "Hindu" is only a somewhat helpful label. But I don't have space for a thesis on religion and colonialism in South Asia, so I'll leave it at that.)

Our buffalo was blessed with water, had white tika powder applied to her body from the rim of a cup, adorned with kush and marigold garlands, and fed sel roti. My young host brother also gathered dung, shaped it into a little hill, and decorated it with flowers. My Dai went around to each door in the house and made three lines on each side (I'm still trying to figure out the meaning of this): one of curd, one of turmeric powder, and one of mustard oil.

The last day of Tihar is the main event: Bhai Tika. Like Dashain, I took a shower in the morning and dressed in a kurta suruwal. This day is dedicated to the bond between brothers and sisters. Brothers receive tika and blessings from their sisters, while sisters receive gifts from their brothers. There was a mad rush in my family to be prepared for the 11:39 a.m. auspicious tika time, determined by astrological calculations (there must have been an auspicious time for Dashain tika too, but I was unaware).

The men all sat in a line, while their sisters and cousins blessed them with oil and water, applied a base of curd to their foreheads and seven dots of colorful tika powder, and adorned them with garlands of marigold and makhamali, each action symbolizing everlasting love, devotion, and protection. Finally, the men were given plates loaded with roasted nuts, roti, and fruit to pick at. I was more than happy to be a bystander during the ceremony, but my host brother was insistent that I participate. So, I shadowed the women and was allowed to give each of my young host brothers one dab of tika powder and to place the marigold garland around their necks.

Bhai Tika

Rayamajhi cousins celebrate Tihar

All day, the outrage was building in me. Men receive food, blessings, and comfort, but what of the women who do all the work in making the celebration happen? But finally, the women were called out a few hours later and given red tika and money by the men in the family (I felt bad accepting 1,500 rupees, but I had no choice but to accept it without coming to physical blows). My rage dissipated. Nepal, you have my permission to keep on celebrating Bhai Tika.

The day ended with a troupe of tween girls, with their toddler siblings in tow, coming to our house to perform bhailo. Dressed in traditional attire, the girls danced to a few songs (as Nepali songs often last 15 minutes, a few songs can quickly turn into an hour) in exchange for money. They need to renegotiate their rates because they only made 100 rupees for a long performance! Later in the night, an adult troupe of dancers, mostly familiar faces from the women's group, came to our house hauling a gigantic speaker. I almost cried during their performance because I was so moved. Although I don't dance and thus deny a part of my humanity, dancing is so uniquely human (I don't want to hear about songbirds and whatever other animals and their mating rituals. That doesn't count as dancing!). My host sister was pulled into the dance, and she's maybe the most talented in our village. She didn't need a countdown or a lead-in; she was dancing with the best of them in no time. The troupe left after being presented with five 100-rupee bills and some roti. (Aside #2: the hanging of lights, gift giving, along with this dance-version of caroling, instantly made me compare Tihar to Christmas!).

So while Bhai Tika was the official end of Tihar, the unofficial "official" end for me came a few days later with a very special ekadashi. After four months of slumber, the god of preservation, Vishnu, awoke, ushering in a new season full of marriages and good times. After attending three funerals in my village, I'm more than happy to attend a wedding ceremony in the future. Of course, I'm in Nepal after all, there was a special puja to celebrate the start of the season: my host sister covered each internode of a young bamboo shoot with mud, hung a marigold garland from it, and propped it up against the house. Then she decorated the home shrine with red and yellow tika polka dots and swastikas, placed a sweet lime on a stake in the middle of the holy basil, and tied the holy basil together with another marigold garland (yeah, I'm pretty lost on what it all means). And with that, the main festival season of Nepal has ended for the year.

Decorated home shrine

I thought this was artsy

Oof, that was a long one. I've fallen so completely behind in blog writing, but I hope this crammed together post makes some sense and gives a little insight into what September and October looked like for me. Dashain and Tihar were so fun, and I'm grateful I got to experience them! Thanks for reading and stay tuned as I have some exciting trips planned for the months ahead.

Before you go, I want to share my list of spooky movies that I watched in October. During the day, I was celebrating the festivals of light, and at night, I was watching scary, violent, and weird movies. This is an annual tradition of mine. This year I gravitated towards flicks from the 70s and 80s. Here's the list for the curious among you: