"My sister was a living goddess"
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| Totem pole raised |
Surmila said to me as we discussed my Saturday at the Indra Jatra festival in Kathmandu. My jaw dropped - the Kumari living goddess is selected as a child and stays in a Kathmandu house on Durbar Square until puberty. "What does she do now?" I asked?
"She is an IT engineer"
Not bad considering she didn't have an education until she was twelve. The raucous crowd in Durbar Square were in the thousands for her annual appearance on the weekend. I didn't catch a glance of her as she was paraded in golden chariot through the streets outside her home; nor did I get close winning the traditional scramble for beer as it spouted from the mask of Bhairava's mouth in another part of the colourful festival. But the gods were thanked for the start of harvest and end of monsoon with me as only a slightly confused spectator.
The Indra Jatra festival started under a cloud the day before my arrival as the traditional raising of the totem collapsed onto the crowd - a bad omen for the coming year as Nepal braced itself for disaster. The next day my flight was delayed as news of 19 dead in the Kathmandu air crash went out across the front pages. Nepal has a appalling safety record and is overdue a huge 9+ earthquake so let's hope the gods have been appeased for the time being.
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