"Holi" experiences
At the end of March, I had my first “Holi” experience. Holi is the Nepali version of the rights of spring. There are two legends about the origins of Holi. One has the moral of a good god triumphing over an evil assassination attempt. The other involves an amorous God playing a prank on women who were bathing in the river. The festival dates change each year, but this year Holi just happened to land on Good Friday, March 25. Per the Nepali Times newspaper “Holi has been traditionally the only times girls and boys were allowed to flirt blatantly, douse each other in water and colors, symbolizing passion.” The celebration involves prayer powder, aka “puja” powder and comes in red, yellow, blue, green, purple, etc, being slathered on the faces and clothes of friends and strangers as you meet them on the street. Generally you walk up to someone, slather powder on them and say “Happy Holi”, or at least that is what we did. I will admit that some “Holi worshipers” got a bit more touchy than they needed to be. The other aspect is the water. People fill water balloons, buckets and water guns and then stand on the roofs and terraces and “terrorize” unsuspecting passersby. Of course, everyone knows it is Holi, so no one is actually unsuspecting. If you don’t want to play Holi, you are supposed to stay home. (See photos at
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=16nw59zt.bna84tel&x=0&y=cayi11).
Household staff management
A “not so positive” experience was firing my housekeeper. She and I had a difference of opinion on priorities. I should have fired her sooner, but kept trying to make it work out. (It sounds like many relationships I have had too, I guess there is a pattern :) I was able to find a replacement for her within a week, and the new housekeeper is working out well. One odd thing about Foreign Service life so far is managing household staff. In the US I took care of myself with little difficulty. Somehow here in Nepal I keep a full-time gardener/day guard, full-time housekeeper, part-time personal assistant and soon a full-time driver (when I get my car in mid-June) busy taking care of me. I am my own work provision program. I like not having to do many of the day-to-day tasks around the house, but I dislike constantly having someone around at home. Over time, I am adjusting to both.
Stranded in the "ugliest place on earth"
In March I had an opportunity to act as a control office for the Ambassador’s trip to Pokhara, a city about 150 km northwest of Kathmandu. The trip was interesting, with many chances to chat with various business and government leaders and learn quite a bit about US policy in Nepal (which I do not interact with on a day-to-day basis in my job). After two solid days of meetings and events, I actually got the Ambassador to the airport a bit early, so he and his bodyguard took an earlier flight back to Kathmandu. There were only two seats available, so I stayed with my colleague Jamie to catch our original flight back. The time for our flight came and went. Nothing happened. We found that due to bad storms the flight had been cancelled. We got rebooked on the flight next day and thought “how lucky the Ambassador was to leave when he did.” Only later did we find that his flight, because of the storms, had been rerouted to a place that the Lonely Planet describes as “Perhaps the ugliest place on the planet”. Poor man.
Women, pot and Shiva's ding dong
Today is a big Nepali festival day and I was easily convinced to bag off work and head to the Hindu temple to celebrate with the other 400,000-500,000 people that would be there. As my friend described it "Maha Shivaratri is considered especially auspicious for women. Married women pray for the well-being of their husbands and sons. Unmarried women pray for the appearance of their ideal husband. I pray for anyone in trousers that is over 5 ft tall. It is also the only day when you can smoke pot openly and that the Sadhus (people who renounce all things) all get naked. Not my ideal husband."
It was all that and a hike up and down several mountains to find an OK vantage point from which to observe the comings and goings of Pashupati. Women waited in LONG, LONG lines for their one chance per year to observe and worship Shiva's phallus. The story goes something like Shiva and another god were told they could not have intimate relations one day, but were unable to hold out. The god who gave them this rule caught them "in the act" and sentenced them to only having one day each year when their "bits and parts" could be worshiped. Thus began Maha Shivaratri (or so I understand). As a non-Hindu, I will never be allowed to enter the temple, but a friend K has been and described the beauty and reverence of the place.
This year's added twist was the heightened security situation. We were constantly being stopped by the military and armed police from going in one direction or the other because "The King is here." Eventually we sweet talked an armed policeman into letting us sit on a ledge, and slowly he allowed us to move closer and closer to the action. We were able to observe the women who enacted a play of some sort (no one could explain exactly what the significance was), the women who were responsible for keeping the butter candles burning and the hordes of people who jostled for a spot at the river's edge.
As the darkness started to descend and the crowd thickened, the Nepali men seemed to find great delight in leering and groping. I had to defend various bits and parts of my anatomy with brutish precision. Several men had their hands removed from me with fingernail marks to show for their efforts. It was about this time that we decided to escape back to a safer area of Kathmandu. We are told that the party will go on all night and many people will enjoy the "legal use of pot" on this one day of the year when it is legalized for this religious celebration.
Clever billboards
In the daily walk to work, I am often struck by the wonders of the Kathmandu street life. One of the first things I noticed was a small little billboard, posted just on the curve of Lazimpat by the Japanese Embassy.
The clever tagline "100% pure vodka. Purer than most of your thoughts."
Every day I meant to take my camera and capture it, but forgot to do so until after someone had already taken a marker to this lovely woman's tooth, thus making the tagline even more ironic.
Check it out in my ofoto album:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=16nw59zt.6oqxihmt&x=0&y=syvai3It is gone now, torn down to make way for the next clever advert, but it will always live in my head as I walk by that corner on my way to work.
