Surprise! It’s an unexpected update! Although, unless you’re my parents, you probably didn’t realize these things have come in precisely two week increments… until now! I’ve just finished the greatest week of my stay in Nepal and didn’t want to put off an entry another week. Of coure, each week has been better than the last, simply because I get closer to the students and understand more conversational sign language. The path to fluency has paved with tiny victories, and I’ve celebrated every one of them—eavesdropping on a conversation and actually following the discussion, understanding anit or ananada or any of the “speed signers,” translating a portion of the footage on my own… I’ve still got a long way to go before i’ll be fluent by any means, but this is the closest I’ve ever come with a true foreign language. The very things that initially seemed like burdens have turned out to be blessings—being the lone Westerner in my placement, being so far outside of Kathmandu. Had it not been for these, I might not have thrown myself headlong into this community and their language, and I certainly wouldn’t have gotten so close to Sharmila, who has shown me pieces of Nepal I would never have found on my own. Though I certainly hope this total immersion comes through in the footage, it will be enough that it has come through on me. I feel like I’ve learned more this summer than I have in all my classes combined. I’m terrified that I’ll schlep home this Mt. Everest of footage and discover that it’s all just total shit, but shit makes the best manure, and something good will grow out of this experience regardless of the film’s outcome.
But I digress! Yes, this past week was the best yet, and not just because I made overall progress (though there’s that, too). Hindu holiday season is finally in full swing, and it kicked off with two days of celebration this Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll let the pictures say a thousand words (though I lost half a day of photos on Wednesday due to a funky memory card), but I’ll still give you a debrief (or a delong, as the case may be).
Wednesday was Janai Purnima, the day that “high-caste men (Chhetri and Brahmin) must change the janai (sacred thread), which they wear looped around their left shoulder” (thanks, Lonely Planet!). The biggest celebration is in Kathmandu, but hordes of people bussed in from villages miles and miles away to break it down in Banepa. Though I’ve tended to attend such events with Sharmila, one of the students, Saraswoti, invited me to tag along with her and her girl friends. I couldn’t have been more excited to spend the day hanging out with the girls without a camera or responsibilities, nor could I have been more disappointed when we met at Saraswoti’s house that morning only to discover that Saraswoti had to stay home and help with the family’s guests. I offered to return to her house when she finished her chores at noon and pick her up, and Saraswoti gleefully accepted… Then we began the long ascent to the festival—a trip I belatedly discovered was 45 minutes straight uphill. We weren’t even halfway up the hill before I started regretting our agreement! Another blessing in disguise though—it was during our intermission trip that I discovered and fixed my faulty camera, and who should we bump into along the second ascension other than Sharmila! We got caught in a thunderous monsoon storm and ended up soaked to the bone, tumbling over rocks, sloshing through mud, and inching along slippery cliff edges in our bare feet. We were certainly in good company—from 4 AM onwards, droves of people were constantly going to and coming from the festival. It felt like a pilgrammage! When we exhaustedly heaved our weary bodies to the forest festival near the top of the hill, I immediately knew it was worth the trek… In a word, it was awesome! Though only high-caste Hindu males changed the shoulder thread, anybody could get a sacred thread wrapped around his or her wrist. A friend told me that the holiday was for brothers and sisters, and that the thread would protect my siblings from demons, so I stretched the tradition and got two wrist wrappings… one for each sibling! Another feature of the festival was a public bath, with a lingam in the middle. The lingam, as you’ll see in the picture, was an upward-facing statue of Shiva; people surrounded the bath, throwing rice, rupees, and flowers at the lingam, and splashing it with water. There were a couple of young boys in the water who would scour the floor of the pool for offerings (which they would relocate to a bucket on the lingam)—they would pop up when I was least expecting it and scare the heeby jeebies out of me! There were traditional Tamang drummers playing all around the festival, especially by these public baths, and we also made the rounds at a temple on the festival grounds. The sun showed its sunny face and we kept running into students until our group had doubled in number. When we got to eight, we bought a feast of snacks and headed even further up the hill, where supposedly we would find a magnificent tower. Well, we never made it to the tower—as soon as we got to the peak of the hill and took in the view, we didn’t need to go any further. It was incredible! You could see for miles and miles, and if you moved around, you could see all 360 degrees of Banepa and the surrounding Kavre villages. So we had our picnic on top of the world, and played in the grass—cartwheeling, somersaulting, poking fun at each other, taking ridiculous pictures. I felt like I was ten again! We held hands and skipped back down the mountain… the perfect end to the perfect day!
The perfect day… or so I thought! Though I knew it’d take an awful lot to top such a splendid day, the following day was even better. As is always celebrated the day following Janai Purnima, the next day was the Gai Jatra, or “Cow Festival.” According to Lonely Planet, the festival is “dedicated to those who died during the precediing year. Newars believe that, after death, cows will guide them to Yama, the god of the underworld, and finding your way on the important journey will be much easier if by chance you should be holding onto a cow’s tail at the moment of death.” According to my guidebook, “the festival is celebrated with maximum energy on the streets of Bhaktapur,” so off we went to Bhaktapur! Actually, I didn’t bother to read that description until the morning of the festival after plans had long fallen into place. Sharmila’s older brother, Jaya Ram, had invited us to his hometown of Bhaktapur weeks before at the Panauti inauguration. (“That’s a lie! I know you don’t have an older brother!” “Yes, but I made him an older brother.” It sort of reminded me of the middle school LYLAS phenomenon.) Sharmila surprised me that morning with a beautiful kurti—she’s a talented seamstress and offered to sew me a kurti as a going-away gift. I’d bought the fabric a few weeks before, and she’d taken my measurements, but I’d completely forgotten about it until she told me it was ready to go. It was so incredible, I had to wear it immediately… and so I did! You’ll see it in the pictures, but it’s definitely a little more modern, such that I can hang with the youth. 
I think I might even be able to pull it off in America, and the top half would definitely translate nicely with a pair of bright tights. It was so nice to have curves again!
When we finally got to Bhaktapur, I immediately took to our host, Jaya Ram. We were like peas in a pod, just wanting to have fun and explore the city. We were shuffled from house to house of friends of Sharmila and her sister, Bina, and we would hardly even be through the door before Jaya Ram was goading me to sneak out with him so we could get back to the festival. I knew we’d be compadres when we ran across the first parade (the parade is broken up into groups, such that they can pass by every residence of the deceased). In addition to a series of huge poles, one dedicated to the spirit of each recently deceased person in the city, there were also long lines of boys doing a traditional stick dance to the beat of a mini-marching band…. The dance was lively and not very difficult, so Jaya Ram immediately procured us two sticks and we joined in the procession. We must have been quite a sight among all these young boys, and it was an instant case of tourist-becomes-tourist-attraction. I left my camera behind, and soon everybody was taking pictures of us! The same thing happened again later in the day when I clambered onto a statue of a griffin like it was a galloping horse. Onward ho! They all thought I was a huge nut! Bhaktapur is a beautiful old city, in which cars are forbidden (for fear that the old buildings will collapse), so it’s a popular tourist town. It was neat to see this medieval time-warped city from an insider’s perspective… veering off the main road and heading down alleys I would have ignored, eating at the local shops instead of the “touristy joints,” going into homes instead of simply passing by them. Our group grew and waned as the day progressed, constantly picking up, dropping off, and visiting friends and friends of friends, but the core group, our fabulous foursome, stayed strong. We visited so many famous sites that I can hardly remember what was where—of note, we visited the tallest temple in Nepal (Five stories! From which Bhaktapur gets its NSL sign—an open right palm, pinkie side down, onto a left-hand fist), the 500 year old Royal Palace, and the 55 Window Palace. Bhaktapur is also famous for its curd, the city known far and wide as the “king of curds,” and I got to try this infamous curd not once but TWICE! It was so downright delicious, I had to close my eyes and just take it all in. Thinking I was alone, I smiled to myself and just enjoyed my tasty curd. When I opened my eyes, the whole group was staring at me, giggling! Thanks to the generosity of our many hosts, the cheapness of Nepal, and the fact that clever, clever Jaya Rum snuck me into town through backroads so that I wouldn’t have to pay the hefty 750 Rs ($10) tourist tax, I managed to spend less than a dollar over the course of both days. Unbelievable!
Could it really be possible that I have just four days left in Banepa? It seems like I was only just counting down the months, and then the weeks… It seems crazy that I could already be counting in days. Filmically, I’m ready to leave. I’m nearly out of mini-DV tapes, and though I still have a few shots left to get, they shouldn’t be too hard to get over the coming days with a bit of luck. Emotionally, though, I’m not ready to go. I’ve become super-attached to this community, especially to Sharmila and my main subjects, and it’s going to be tough to say goodbye. I have half a mind to hunker down and just stay here, but as hard as it will be to leave, I know there are still exciting things in store! The next installation will come from somewhere along the road between Kathmandu, Bandipur, Gorkha, and Pokhara! And after that, home again, home again, jiggity jig!
