Memoirs of a Dashain

Dashain is a 15-day national festival celebrated by Nepalese all over the world. From late September to early October, this biggest festival of the year is marked by worshiping Goddess Durga with puja (worship), offerings and thousands of animal sacrifices in temples around Nepal. According to legend, Goddess Durga slayed the demon Mahisasur, who terrorized the earth by disgusing himself a killer water buffalo. The first nine days of Dashain signify the fierce nine-day battle between Durga and Mahisasur. On the 10th day, Mahisasur was slain. The last five days is a celebration of the victory. On Dashain families come together, receive blessings from elders, and have a grand feast. This Dashain Special brings you memoirs of a Dashain as experienced by the V.E.N.T! team.

Of Belonging by Pranaya SJB Rana, Editor

When the day is done, I sit and count my money. There are cracked bills and dirty coins, pulled eagerly from plain white envelopes, marked with red fingerprints.

I pull off my dhaka topi (Nepali cap) and loosen the strings on my suruwal (pants). My coat, I take off, the daura (shirt) underneath creased and crumpled.

We have goat curry for dinner, seasoned and fragrant, topped with coriander. There is rice and potatoes and dal and whiskey for my grandfather. Throughout the day, there has been a lot of beaten rice and meat, soft drinks on the side, mainly Fanta. I abstain.

My mother wears a sari, a muted yellow chiffon piece that loses color around the bright red silk pieces that everyone else is wearing. Whenever she bows her head for tika (blessings), they raise fingerfulls of red and each time, she gently dissuades them, pointing to the yellow. And some chuckle, embarrassed, while others cluck sympathetically, remembering.

My grandmother is sprightly and small. She doesn’t weigh more than 35 kilos but she’s strong. She rarely gets sick and is always walking. She bows her head to very few these days, as others get older, so does she.

My brother is the teenager, a rebel in the same way I once was. He refuses the daura-suruwal and always folds his dhaka topi into his coat pocket. All his envelope money, he keeps in the other coat pocket.

We travel in packs, dressed in finery. The streets are empty, populated only by taxis who can’t afford to miss a day of work and revelers speeding to and fro in their own vehicles. A bike will pass by, balancing a child on the tank, the husband driving, the wife off to one side at the back and another child in between. Or a bus will pass, filled with boys, jamara (grass taken as a token from Durga) behind their ears and their foreheads smeared with tika. The women are the same. They sing songs out of bus windows, calling on this dead city to celebrate with him, to shake off his gloom and join the festival. After all, it only comes once a year.

I follow my mother from house to house, trailing her like the children we are. We visit many houses, not bothering to knock or ring bells. We walk in, for on Dashain, we're all invited, everywhere. We saunter in, exclaim over each other and eat the food that is presented to us. 

How tall he's become!
He's too skinny!
Dasain seems to arrive too fast these days!
You look lovely!

But You are fat. You are hateful. You only pretend to like me. You don't care. 

Lately, I forget when Dashain is. Without a bhitte patro (Nepali wall calendar) to tell me of the holidays, I fall into some limbo where I don't care for Christmas or Thanksgiving and I don't know of Dashain or Tihar.

I wake up, go to class, go to work.

My parents, my brother, my grandparents, all get dressed early, showering first. Grandmother fixes a silver star to her sari, grandfather puts on a new topi (cap) he wants to show off, mother has a new hairdo and brother fixes a gold khukuri (Nepalese dagger) to his lapel. 

And then they stand in line, head bowed, eyes downward, forehead clean, empty. The first splotch of tika is a mark of belonging, of kinship, of tradition, of culture and of love.

Photography by Yuko Maskay.

Like Mother, Like Daughter by Yuko Maskay, Managing Editor

I had set the alarm at 7am, but had turned it off. I wonder what time it is; I should be helping my mom with puja. I remember. She had bought two roosters last night, and today they were going to be sacrificed to our cars so we get blessings from goddess Durga for protection against accidents during the year. She had done all the preparations herself. I managed to get up around 9am, wash my face, quickly put on my clothes and go downstairs to the kitchen.

Ram, our helper, is cleaning the remains of the headless rooster, carving its feather so it would be edible for lunch. My mom greets me, “My hands are stained in blood,” she says, as she rushes to the sink to wash her hands. Having grown up abroad and being a vegetarian, I was not used to this tradition. My cries for using something else instead of an animal were dismissed time and time again. My mom was aware that I didn’t approve of it but, like me, she was firm in her beliefs, truly believing that if she failed to sacrifice an animal on this day, Gods would not be pleased.

I didn’t push this time. Two Dashains ago, I had a big accident on a bike, leaving me bed-ridden for nearly six months. I've asked mom why Durga didn’t protect me then, and she says that perhaps the bike I was riding was never worshipped. I didn’t know what to make of it. But, she was right. It was not my bike and my friend had just bought it. This very fact stopped me from trying to convince her. “We’re using a hen, not a goat like most families do,” she would insist.

When the ritual is over, mom summons dad and I to receive the tika, the symbol of blessing from God. I try hard to be “okay” about receiving it through animal sacrifice. But, as she reaches out to place the tika on my forhead, the red dye (used for tika) reminds me of blood and I push her hand away. “I refuse to get blessings today,” I blurt out. My mom gives me a disapproving look as she says, “Fine, do as you please.”

An hour later, my mom is sitting on the couch singing along to the bhajan (songs meant for the Gods) on the radio. I cautiously creep towards her, wondering if she is still upset, and put my head on her lap. She looks at me, stops singing, leans towards my forehead and gives it a kiss. I'm just like her. I pinch her cheeks playfully. She continues to sing, her voice soothing me as I drift off to sleep. 

Photography by Yuko Maskay.

Chicken or the Egg by Sanjana Shrestha, Reviews Editor

The elders in my family sit down for a meeting every year before Dashain to decide on how to celebrate Dashain this year, which is exactly like last year. Buy 10 live chickens and two quacking ducks!

The team of 12 birds would be ceremoniously offered as sacrifice to six gods to the left of our house and six to the right. This was set in stone. We did not mess with this order at all costs; even when members of our family were not in talking terms, we made sure that we had 12 bird heads roasted to perfection. This was our contribution to the Nawami (the ninth day of Dashain) head collection to be offered to over 40 male members of our family!

During one such meeting on how to maintain status quo during Dashain, Sanjeet, my brother, and I decided to invade the sacred confluence of the family elders. We were going to suggest new terms of ritual. We had worked out the details, we had practiced our speech, the retort and we were not going to take no for an answer.

A year before that Dashain, my mom had fainted after working all day on an empty stomach on Nawami, cleaning the dead birds and cooking them. She being the youngest daughter-in-law of the family got most of the dirty job or more or less all jobs around the festivities that entailed a lot of cleaning and cooking. Until that day we had never realized how taxing the festivities were for mom.  So,  when Dashain came around again, we announced at the family meeting that we were done with animal sacrifice and it was non-negotiable.  They asked us, “Why?” We said, “Because of Mom.” We didn’t have an iota of activism in us and we were not fighting for animal rights, we were just worried about our mom.

There were some heated words exchanged, some red faces, some curses pronounced. We were told we were going to have to answer to the gods if we tried to stop this age old ritual.  We were clear on what we wanted; if the rest of the family wanted to come celebrate Dashain in the old house, somethings were going to change and if the gods wanted answers, we had them.  We were scared and nervous while confronted with barrage of family members but we were prepared for this.

That year, in Nawami, mom got up at three in the morning, and so did we. All of us prepared for the puja together and Sanjeet and I set out on our once a year pilgrimage to the gods. We replaced the birds with eggs and continued visiting six gods on the right and six gods on the left.  For over a decade, mom, Sanjeet and I would have some of our most interesting conversations during that day and the shared experience of creating a ritual every year together made Dashain special. 

Photography by Sanjana Shrestha (1st pic) and Jeena Gurung (2nd pic).

Merry Lasun Aduwa by Elipha Pradhananga, Reporter

Dashain is about family get- togethers, the feasts and the celebrations. All of this requires hard work. It takes a lot of effort to cook, cleanup, arrange and execute this grand festival of Dashain. In every household there is this division of labor of sorts. One is responsible for cooking and the other for cleaning. If someone takes care of the festivities then there are others responsible for merry making. In my house, however, it is usually my mother who is responsible for cooking; dad is responsible for all the shopping from groceries to the puja requirements; my granny is responsible for arranging the pujas; and  I usually am made to do anything that is at hand, nothing big or important. Bring this from upstairs, fetch that, clean this, watch this. That much is all that I have to do. But one thing remains for sure in all of the Dashains that I have celebrated—I am solely in charge of  peeling lasun aduwa (garlic and ginger). Lots of meat is prepared and all that meat would definitely not taste the same without lasun aduwa. So, before all the celebrations and festivities start, my mom gives me a huge pile of lasun and aduwa and I sit and peel it, my hands sticky and burning by the time I'm done with it. To some it may seem like a useless task, but I happen to think it is very important. Think about it—without lasun aduwa the meat wouldn't taste good and what is Dashain without the meat? This, I would say is my contribution to a Merry Dashain. 

Photography by Sanjana Shrestha.

No Homework Please, I'd Rather Watch TV!  by Rishi Amatya, Photostory Editor

Tension runs high in class 4, section B. Some of the students are chewing their nails, others looking around, as fidgety as all 4th graders come vacation time. It's minutes before the school breaks off for a month long vacation and no teacher has handed us our annual Dashain homework yet. “Yay!” I shout out silently with inner glee. “Not yet, not yet!”  

Moments before the bell barks freedom, our class teacher distributes a piece of paper. It is a greeting card he says and asks us to open it simultaneously. We follow suit. It's a greeting card, for sure! In the roughly photocopied script, written in stone, is something that spells our doom: homework and some more. And, oh, yes, as if it was added as an afterthought, in the hand that makes even the footnote look glorious, a greeting: Happy Dashain!                

Heart breaking isn't it? Tons of homework disguised as a greeting card! But then again, it was how things worked back then. On top of the most boring classes ever, the teachers insisted on us taking the work to home. Come every Dashain, they would hand out a comprehensive list of stuffs for us to do. The worst thing was never the homework; I didn't bear any grudges towards them for doing so. The only thing I resented was that they were hell bent on checking whether we had done it or not.     

I never quite understood the reasons behind it, nor the regular homework nor the Dashain ones. So, I never did any, especially the Dashain ones. Mostly because, I used to forgot all about it until it was too late. And also because I never let the nasty stench afoul my festive mood. For the entire length of the holidays, I'd frolic around, flying kites, whiling away the hours. All this while the assignments lay conveniently forgotten, tucked in and zipped up in my school bag.

Come the ill-fated day that signaled the end of the wonder-month, I'd be nearly sick and utterly exhausted trying to pull off a miracle. But, pulled it off I did, even though something like this always happened on the first day at school: 

“So, if you really did your homework in the first week of the holidays,” began my class teacher, “why this bit here still dripping glue?”  

And, I'd silently mutter: “Well, I have just pulled stayed up entire night to full that. If you check the rest of my 'entries' it'd say the same thing. In Nepali, last few pages are missing and if you read it carefully, I've carefully skipped entire chapters. Much is same in mathematics too. You surely won't find any solved problems relating to fractions. I'm submitting last year's entry in English. I'm rather proud of that one!”

Photography by Shreyans Tamang.

The Old and the New by Shreyans Tamang, Photo/Film Editor

The morning broke with an air of awe. Finally, the day has arrived. Mixed feelings of hope and nostalgia. Hope—of all the younglings combined—for the mysterious amount hidden inside the white envelopes. Nostalgia—of the old ones—who  tries hard to remember, for they need to entertain the whole family with stories of the past. Faint monotonous splish splash resonate from beyond the bathroom door as the one who is inside is already contemplating about the perfume that she is going to wear, and the other, still half asleep inside the bedroom, carefully takes out his new Swiss watch, and grins, thinking how envious everyone would be.  

Phone call early in the morning. It's my grandma, the proud and the official advisor-enforcer of all the rituals in the family, informs us the tithi or the time frame on when the rituals are to be performed. She speaks in haste, for she still needs to call the others and inform them about this time frame. Since it's Dashain, all my relatives will be punctual.

I arrive at the venue a lot earlier to help my grandpa. He unlocks his liquor cabinet, layers of liquor lay there, organized by low grade to high grade. I can already tell the kinds of guests we were to expect, as he takes out local spirits from the front row. He then counts the number of white envelopes with names written on them, arranges them according to the family hierarchy, from top to bottom, for he has to apply tika in the same order, and husbands always go first.

"There's no curd in the house!" Grandma yells from the top of her lungs. Panic! Only minutes left to the ultimate time frame, my brother starts the car engine and off he goes for a drive for the last minute curd-hunt.

The city is dead on this day, while the houses have never been so alive. People arrive with tray-full of foods and drinks. Bright vibrant clothes fill the room with color. Laughters burst among uncles and aunts with a wave of pitch. Satirical comments are at its utmost.

Tika is received with a thousand blessings. Cameras and mobile phones are aimed for the perfect picture. I eagerly wait for my turn, for the main significance of this day for many younglings and I is the money inside the white envelopes.   

We exchange 'monopoly rupees' as  the elders exchange bank notes. Cards are shuffled and reshuffled, for gambling is as important as the festival itself. Liquors flow like river and the foods are made to fit for the king. I roll the dice and look at everyone, noticing how year after year, the the young ones size up and the old ones wrinkle down. 

The sun slowly retires while people are still as lively as ever. They gamble with such excitement. The old ones turn into kids behind the cards while we, younglings, sit and watch TV like grandparents. My uncle, half drunk, is heading to the balcony for a smoke. A whiff of alcohol-breath mixed with the  aroma of mutton (goat) curry dance inside my nose. Past moments are remembered and shared as the new moments are created. I lay on the couch, flipping through channels, wondering how my next Dashain is going to be like.

Photography by Shreyans Tamang.

Chance Upon the Moon by Ayushma Regmi, Poems Editor

Dashain time is family time, an extended family time, and time for relatives you’ll meet once a year. And time to smile and be polite and be good in front of people who will never fully appreciate the value of your expressions or your manners. Time to be the trophy your parents can show off to people who show off their children as trophies too. Time to be sick to the stomach with food being stuffed down your throat, your nose, your ears, your eyes. Time to unbutton the top button on your jeans to create space for an uncomfortable belly. Time to widen your forehead as it is never enough for all the tika that needs to be put on. Time to get a little queasy and short of breath because there are too many people squeezed into a living room inequipped to handle so many people. Time to get red stains all over your brand new expensive clothes. Time for grumpy mothers to overdo their time in the kitchen, and for fathers to bend their backs over card games they are destined to lose. Time to live out chaos, not the end of the world kind, but the kind that ultimately gets you nowhere.

Dashain time is not my favorite time of year. But maybe this year is the time to make it different. Time to chance upon the moon and get lost in its sliverish essence. Time to share evenings with close ones, making family out of friends, making fire in the palm of your hands, making new meaning out of this same old life. Time to help mother out in the kitchen, and learn to master ordinary (so what if mundane) habits that keep us going. Time to visit temples where animal sacrifices don’t take place. Time to sit back at the aryaghat (place where cremations are carried) and watch fumes dance out of a funeral pyre. Time to inhale the smoke of death. Time to reflect on how while I try so hard every year to avoid Dashain and its obligations, there will always be families who will not get to celebrate it.

Photography by Yuko Maskay.