My Krishna Festival adventure

Krishna Puja inside temple

What a great day! Perhaps my best of the whole trip! Unmatchable. I went with Bikas on the bus as far as Bagaar and then he showed me where to walk as he took the next bus to Mahendrapool (the bridge downtown). I walked for 45 minutes or so in the rain with a big umbrella. This was to be my big adventure. I’d been to the city and now I was walking into the hills. But my host, Phal, was not so comfortable with my plan and a neighbor made a shocked expression when she heard I would be walking alone. Are they being overprotective? I walked and walked, and came to the Tibetan Sanctuary. I was granted permission by the guard to go inside the grounds and then exit. I walked around the buildings and didn’t take photos but tried to be respectful. When I left, I turned uphill onto a gravel road rather than the main paved road. I was a little hesitant, but I saw children walking and thought how remote can it be? I walked and walked through a one street village which was nearly empty. I came to a Peeple tree and some kids came up and asked me my name and invited me to a Puja. I walked over to the temple where the ceremony was happening, but stayed outside, a little hesitant to intrude, but various adults insisted, so I went in, removed my shoes, and was seated in the middle of large carpeted area with perhaps 100 or so people, mostly women, seated on the ground. A woman on a small stage with a microphone was talking and singing and in front of the stage were about a dozen male musicians playing small hand bells, a double sided drum (maadel), and an irish hand drum, with a second microphone for a male singer.

The whole village crammed into the temple

Many children came to sit next to me and shake my hand or just stare at me in wonder with eyes and mouth wide open. The singer was very skillful and her voice intonations were beautiful and moving. She led many short speeches, apparently religious in praise of Krishna, the blue god, who’s festival it was. She led many songs as well, and I joined in with the clap[ing and when I could the singing, though it was hard for me to catch the words. One by one different women would stand up and dance, spinning in circles with quick steps of the feet and swinging their arms gracefully with the wrists moving in small circles. This is a dance I had done in the village decades earlier at all night weddings, but this time I refused to dance, even when urged, partly because I saw no men dancing and partly because I didn’t want to offend at a religious festival. Okay, I was also feeling a little shy, as well.

Ecstatic Worship in the temple

The dancing clearing was right next to me, and I kept trying to scoot further out of the circle to allow dancers more room, but the space was packed wall to wall with bodies, so there was nowhere to scoot to. Also, I had children leaning on me, almost worshiping me, and that took up quite a bit of space. Many in the room were smiling at me to watch my reaction to all the dancing so close to me. I smiled back and clapped my hands to the music to show in that exaggerated way that I was enjoying everything. They seemed to  appreciate my pantomime of appreciation, and I felt like a bit of the center of attention, while hoping not upstage their ceremony. Eventually, a woman who was whirling and whirling, like a whirling dervish, went into a trance and fell. Four women surrounded her joining their arms to make a sort of barrier for her, as she continued to dance for another half hour, with her eyes closed and in a kind of ecstatic trance. Often the women had to gently push her back into the center. I was afraid she might fall on top of me, as I was quite close, and that it would cause a scene, but I had nowhere to move to. Eventually, the woman came out of her trance and the human shield of women sat down, apparently confident as she kept dancing alone. For another woman who was also in a trance, they tried holding incense under her nose and later splashed what I took to be blessed water on her. But she stayed in her trance. Eventually, the dancing and singing was ending, but they brought out the food they’d been making. I was treated to two roti breads and a big serving of potatoes and lentils with spicy masala. They offered me tea from a tin cup, and it tasted great. My only worry was that the umbrella, so essential to my climbing to this village, was missing. Soon an elderly gentleman who had been on a mission out in the rain came in and handed me my umbrella. My shoes were a different story, covered in rain and essential for my descent. But in the end, I took my leave of the festival and began my walk home.

But then bishnu, who had clearly been part of the organization of the whole community, had me walk with her to her tea shop in the bazaar. She asked if I wanted to sit, and my rule when I’m not feeling too shy or even when I am is to never say no because of fear. So I said yes, and she unlocked her tea shop and gave me a seat and opened a bottle of straight sugar Coca Cola for me. She spoke enough English and I a little bit of Nepali, so we could talk for half an hour. She told me of how when her daughter had been married, she had to entertain 500 people and feed them all at great expense, but her other children are sons, so she has married off her daughter who has given her a grandchild as well, which she showed me a picture of. She seemed very nice and friendly and invited me to come back to visit. I asked if I should pay for the coke, and she said it was up to me, which, as a businessperson, seemed very generous. I paid her thirty rupees, about thirty cents, and walked down from the hills feeling very satisfied with my great adventure. In the end my host family seemed happy for me, a little relieved, and helped me clean my shoes, which were soaked. Now the plan is to stay here rather than moving to a hotel in the tourist area, but to go out walking and seeking adventures every day. Unlikely that I’ll top that one.

(Next morning)

But that the electricity was out all evening, I would have posted to my blog. At dawn, the internet was working because the electicity was on, but when I went to post, dark again. So for now I will content myself with describing my experience from yesterday in MS Word and later tranfering it to my blog. Also, I’ve discovered a laborious way to make a copy of each photo and then compress it from 6 MB to 6 KB for easier uploading on a slow internet connection. Finally, I must do laundry today!

Trekking up to the village temple along the river valley

Yesterday’s random trek to the puja for Krishna felt like serendipity, tomfoolery, trusting my instincts, a little risky, having to overcome my natural shyness, all of the above. Plus it was raining like a monsoon, which recommended strongly against going, but I did anyway. And I had no destination, just my wandering instincts and a little fear about so many strangers and my very poor Nepalese. But once I start walking, it’s hard to stop. Must have walked a couple of hours uphill and off the beaten track when I stumbled into a village celebrating Krishna.  Then too I might have walked right past out of respect for their religion and from shyness except that several earnest kids and a few adults urged me to go inside. Once inside, all the magic happened, the trance like singing, being moved by the singer’s voice, the rapidly accelerating pace of the music, the whirling dervish type dancing, the trance like state, forming a protective barrier for the dancer, and the ensuing ecstatic experience. Then too afterwards a village videographer took shots of me with the little children clinging to me. And finally my saying yes to Bishnu to sit down with a refreshment in her tea shop and get to know each other. All in all, this was a transformative experience, not unlike my peak experiences in the peace Corps, which would include reaching Jomson, but under arrest, several all night weddings in which I danced and sang, a Himalyan funeral with a Tibetan lama reading from ancient tablets in indecipherable scripts, and many, many late nights around Pokhara but especially in remote mountain villages where men and women sang almost all the night in moving and sonorous voices, back and forth, with me alternately writing everything down or just being moved to tears by the beauty.

Big topography in the foothills of the Himalayas

By the way, these folksongs and these hill tribe languages are predicted to disappear within a generation. Few young people speak Gurung, and they don’t care for the music, but instead Shakira and Green Day, which they carry on their Samsung Galaxy cell phones and play for you. The UN estimates that another language is lost around the world periodically never to be spoken again. So these current experiences are also precious in that I am a witness to the past, to a fading culture, to a time when recorded music couldn’t compete, where people shared music in communities and it gave their lives meaning. I don’t see how we are EVER going back.