Da Ugly Devil's Heaven

Along the New Year comes this festival that occurs in Thimi, Madhyapur, Bhaktapur called Bisket Jatra. It has been celebrated since the time of Lichhavi dynasty king, Shivadev. On the first day special worships are offered to the goddesses Nilbarahi and Kumari. On the last day of our Nepali year, Chaitra, a ritualistic pole symbolizing the Bisket Jatra is installed in the evening after the idol of the Nilbarahi deity is adorned with the brass-made ornaments. The same day chariot of Kumari is pulled and taken up to Lachhitol where there is a person who will be piercing his tongue as a part of the festival rituals. The firewood collected from the forest is burnt during the campfire held in front of that person. The person volunteering to have his tongue pierced observes a fasting after that. On the New Year’s day, the chariot of Mahalaxmi and Bhairab deities are brought to the Mahalaxmistan. Here too special worships are offered to the chariots at Bode, Thimi, and Nagadesh. Various Newari instruments are being played during these festivals. The festival runs throughout out the night with the torch held by the local people over there. All of the local take part in pulling the chariot of Kumari that night. The sound of Dhimya Baja just keeps the people wake up and the excitement is just awesome. They celebrate it whole day and night and start the New Year with full of joy, excitement, faith in god, and peace in their mind.

TC stands for Tri-Chandra College. TC is one of the oldest college of Kathmandu or Nepal as a whole. In the heart of TC, there is the monument, “Ghanta Ghar,” Roman-styled clock which gives NST (Nepali Standard Time). And the opposite of that monument there is another monument called “Rani Pokhari.” Besides the “Rani Pokhari” is the central office and building of TC, and at the corner we have our own basketball court, which has been our home court since 9-10 years back. Since college, we started playing there. Though we are not the actual student of TC, we have been involved in several games from TC. People there have respect on us and they know us as TC Basketball players. Most of them even don’t know that we haven’t ever studied there but as we always hang around there and play basketball not only for fun but even participated in several tournaments from TC team. At those times, we used to play daily throughout the day. Sometimes, I don’t even have my food and I will be playing all day long in those sunny days, as the result of which we get skin burn. But who cares? As long as we have basketball to play. We just love the game and more often love to play and have fun with it. I don’t know the exact measurement of the court but it seems pretty big than the usual ones. I believe it must be of NBA professional court. It is the biggest courtyard I have know that ever exists in Nepal. One in Tribhuwan University is a big court as well but I think TC’s court is even bigger than that one as the 3-point range is pretty far as compared to Tribhuwan University’s court. As time went by, lots of our friends went abroad and we have less friends who are regular players there now. So from daily, it has become once a week on Saturdays that we play in our home court. I hope in future, we still will have the same number of friends remaining and I am afraid it wouldn’t be once a year play or so. For now I am enjoying once a week game on Saturdays. Lets play some hoop guys! In our own home court! TC Court!!!

From where I know and read in childhood in school may be, Late King Prithivi Narayan Shah Dev made all the small “rajyas” united into a single country and named it Nepal. “Rajyas” – I think there were like 22 and 24 rajyas something like that as far as I remember. Baisya (22 in Nepali) rajya and chaubisya (24 in Nepali) rajya. Actually different groups of people had different circles and they had their own small kingdom at that time. And I think the word Nepal came from the Newars so called Nepa in Newari language. Well actually Newari language is called as Nepa Bhasha in our Newari. And in fact, the capital Kathmandu was ruled by Mallas while Prithivi Narayan Shah Dev captured it. But in remote past, I think according to the history, Yalambar was the first king of Nepal, well I should say Kathmandu. Yalambar was a king of Kirantes. So after Prithivi Narayan Shah Dev united it as Nepal, he chose Kathmandu, also called Kantipur, as the capital even though he was originally the king of Gorkha. And after he united it as one, he said, “Nepal char (4) jaat chattis (36) barna ko fulbari ho.” (Nepal is a garden of 4 Jaat and 36 barna.) So from that quotation, there should be 4 main castes here in Nepal. I think they are Bahun, Chettri, Sudhra, and other Baisya, something like that. Though I am not sure about it. I hardly remember it. I am sure about Bahun and Chettri though. Other two are little bit confused ones and about 36 barna too. So we have lots of multicultural people living here in Nepal.

What I hate the most is the discrimination in the people that we make especially in Newars. Mostly the older generations are still pretty conservative and they are like pulling owns leg rather than supporting each other. I know being a Newar I should be proud, somewhat I am, but yet lots of things are there that makes me wonder when it comes to conservativeness and lots of rituals we still are in, like Guthis as such. Guthi are like group within Newars. Guthis are groups of different people of same caste within Newars. It is forbidden to marry another boy/girl of different Guthi. If you do so, you will be out of your Guthi and considered as you have no caste or relation with any of them whatsoever. We have like lower caste and upper caste. Lower castes people cannot go to the kitchen or touch anything that belongs to upper caste people. Upper caste people wont even drink the water touched by the lower caste people. Lots of discrimination still exists in our society about this caste issue. I just wonder when this discrimination will end and people will understand there is only one caste, Human; only one dharma or religion, Humanity.

Though I haven’t listened too much of Nepali songs that passionately, I am trying write some of the things I know about “The Shadows” our own Nepali Rock Band, being them my girlfriend’s favorite band. My friend Bhupesh has been a friend of this band from what I know, but I have never listened to them back then. It’s only when one day my gf told me that I should at least listen to what she likes that I tuned in to their song, and I didn’t find it too bad. They were kinda good. In person as well I have met some of the band members in one of my friends party but haven’t spoken to them quite closely, but they behave like gentlemen and were friendly in behavior too. So now that I have listened to them and met some of them as well, I can tell they are one awesome rock band and cool people to meet.

Here is what I know about the band members:

Nowadays many band members are coming with new energy and excitements from different parts of the country. The Shadows is also the one who came out from Narayangadh, Chitwan, Nepal in the year 1996. It has been nearly 11 years that they have established their band. This unique band has altogether five band members and one band manager.

The Shadows are:
Swapnil Sharma: The main vocalist.
Amit Pradhan: Bass guitar.
Prakash Rasailey: Lead guitar.
Prashant VK: Rhythm guitar.
Bikash Manandhar: Drums.

Rupesh Sen: The band manager.

The album that I have listened of them is Hidne Manchhe Ladchha. Her favorite song is “Prakriti” from the same album. So far I find all of the songs in this album equally cool, heavy metal type songs. Well I hope they will try and keep it on and win people’s heart in years to come.

Nepal also holds the title of the second highest hydro-resource country. Nepal is considered as Himalayan country as there are lots of Himalayan ranges and mountains such as Mount Everest, Dhaulagiri, Lamtang, Machhepuchre, and lots more. It also has hilly region and terai region as well.

So with all these resource it has lots of hydropower. Well I don’t know whether to say if we got it or not, as we have load-shedding going on throughout the year. We do have lots of resources but the government is so poor that it has not find the way to install enough hydroelectricity power plants. It is such a shameful and surprising thing that we don’t even have enough of electricity being the second country for the water resources. The winter goes like a disastrous time. Cold and freezing mornings and chilly evening are just the feelings we have even staying inside our houses, as we don’t have heat and power due to lack of electricity. Few months back, they had load-shedding of nearly 6 hours a day. Me, even being a young man of my age, find the weather to be intolerably cold and chilly. I just cannot imagine and wonder how the old people were able to survive the cold and chilly nights. I also wonder what would have happened to the children who are forced to read in dim emergency lights. What kind of effect would they have to their eyes and their health due to this scarcity of electricity? What would the people do who cannot afford electricity backup but have to work during those hours? Our government still has published news stating the load-shedding will still be in act in years to come.

Not only the electricity problem, we do have drinking water problems as well. We have to wake up at 1-2 o’clock at night in order to fill up our tanks with drinking water. Well that too if you have water coming out of your tap, because most of the people do have the tap but the water never comes out of it, only air does. It sounds funny but that is the truth. There are some areas where the water never reaches. Government have made some effort in providing water to those areas by sending mobile water tanks and providing drinking water or you may say undrinkable water, as the water contains so much of foreign bodies that you don’t even find it good enough to wash your face.

Just wondering and thinking of these problems, I just wonder if we really are the world’s second highest hydro-resource country. I feel like if even we hold that title, they should reconsider and take back the title of being the second highest hydro-resource country.

Like everyone, I too love the place that I was born. It was a small town called Hetauda here in Nepal. There was a place called Sano Pokhara where I was born. It is not a big city though but it got some beautiful natural sceneries; beautiful green hills surrounding the city and as always beautiful river, Rapti River. The border of our neighbor country is not so far from Hetauda. It’s near Birgunj (Nepali side) and Rakshaul (Indian side); that’s the border.

Hetauda was so much well know for its humidity. The temperature is too high up there. It is believed that in the long past, people from the prison were who had been prosecuted to be killed are left there and soon after some days they die from the flu because of the high temperature and malaria. Well that’s that I heard from my grandfather and some elder person. No written proof of it is found though. Well it is still warm up there but there is no flu there, malaria has been eradicated from there as well. The population there has now been increasing year by year. And now, since the maoist problem has resolved, lots of people are returning there.

Though I have no memory of that place while I was born there, but whenever I go visit that place, I find so much peace deep within. After all, it’s my birthplace.

Though I am not that religious but I do respect all Gods of Hinduism. As I live in Nepal, I was brought up in Hinduism environment and told about lots of Gods and Hinduism. They believe that there are “Tettis Koti Devata” that means “330,000,000 Gods.” Quite a lot of Gods, isn’t it? Yeah. Hard to believe but that is what written in big old books of Hindu Gods. Amongst all of them the first one comes Ganesh. Well there is a story that the God of the God, Mahadev, had two sons, and he made this contest of roaming around the universe and whoever comes first shall get the title of being worshipped as first God whenever people have some puja (worshiping). His two sons were first Kumar, who is young and skinny type and his ride was Mayur (peacock) and Ganesh is fat and has a big belly and his ride was Muso (Mouse). So it was quite certain that Kumar is the winner. So as soon as the contest is setup Kumar goes on flying in his peacock, Ganesh just stood up in front of his father, Mahadev, and mother, Parvati. Then what he did was just traveled around his mother and father. Then, Mahadev became proud of his son Ganesh’s wisdom, because Ganesh knows that for a child his mother and father means the universe and he just roamed around them. Clever huh? So from that day whenever we have any rituals the first God we worship and do puja is of Ganesh.

Well there are lots of statues of Lord Ganesh in our country. May be 1000s of them, but since we are mostly around Basantapur, our hangout place, I mainly worship Maru Ganesh of the place called Maru. Maru means “lack of something” in Newari language, and here in Maru Ganesh’s temple the word maru represents the lack of “gajur” (the pointed pinnacle at the top of the temple). I don’t know the exact date but somehow some of my friends and I began to call him, Ganesh Dai. Dai means big brother in Nepali language. And mostly when I got to pray for something I pray to him. Well actually these days I don’t pray for myself, but I pray for my family, my loved ones, and my friends who are in need of his blessings. I am not an atheist but I am not really that much into Gods. I know there must be some presence or something like that I just believe in myself rather than anyone or anything for that matter, but yet as they say you remember God when you are in trouble or in need, and whenever I do, I remember my own big brother, my own Ganesh Dai.