Dashimi

October 10, 2011

Tomorrow is the last day of the biggest Hindu festival in Nepal, Dasain. It’s a 15-day festival celebrating the victory of the goodess Durga over evil demons. In addition to some key activities on specific days, the Dasain period is when everyone goes home to their families and nothing in Kathmandu functions. It is this holiday that gave me the week off for my Chitwan/Lumbini/Bardia adventure and I knew one of the days I would be in Bardia (October 6) I would be stuck at the hotel with the other guests because the 10^th day is the main day when really nothing functions. A part of me still thought I’d be able to at least get food at the hotel, I mean come on, ski instructors work Christmas right? Aren’t there some nice Buddhists that could come feed me? But nope, everything was shut down. Luckily, my jungle safari guide from the previous day, Bardeep, took a liking to me and invited me to come home with him for the day’s festivities.

First, bit about the family: Bardeep’s mother lives about 16 km from Bardia in a traditional Tharu village made up of rice paddies and mud huts. When I first read about the mud huts in my Lonely Planet, I pictured the huts you see in photos of Africa, like maybe a one room small building with a grass roof. But in reality, saying that something is a mud hut is akin to saying the neighborhood has a lot of brick houses. Really all you know is the building material, but the actual structure can vary a lot. There were a lot of one-room tiny mud huts with straw roofs, but there were also some gigantic and really sophisticated multilevel structures. In some places I though the houses looked nicer than some Denver neighborhoods. Bardeep's family has a two-story mud hut housing 7 people (the mother, her older son, his wife, their 2-year old, plus Bardeep's sister and her 5 year-old son (her husband is working in India) and the family’s father (though I did not meet him because he was out in the paddies all day)). Bardeep left home at age 7 to start working at the resorts and he’s lived in resorts since then. He feels very lucky because when he was 17, he was able to learn how to be a guide and has been doing that for the last six years while also trying to finish school. Bardeep tried to explain to me that his mother’s house was not so nice, that it was very old (his father built it a long time ago, apparently) and he wanted to earn enough money and build her a new one before he got married. Bardeep’s older brother does not work at all; he was a professional futbol player until last year when he broke his leg. So the only income coming into the whole nine person family is Bardeep’s income, the sister’s husband’s remittances from India and a very small profit margin from the rice paddys, though they mostly just feed the family.

Celebration basics: The 10^th day of Dasain is Dashimi, a day when the elders bestow blessings on the younger members of the family for the year. Each family in Nepal sacrifices a goat a couple days earlier. Then, each older person blesses the younger people with three things: a tika, jamara (yellow grass), and a small amount of money. The tika is a mixture of rice, yogurt and red coloring supposed to represent the blood of the family as well as the sacrificed goat and it gets put on your forehead. The jamara is a symbol of the godessess’ conquest and is put behind your ear (or in a girl’s pony tail). I have no idea what the money is for. I kept trying to ask Bardeep about the significance of things happening that day, but he just kept telling me that Dasain was the time of the year when Nepalis waste all their money cooking extravagant meals. He also said that because so many people do not work here, they need festivals to keep themselves busy. In addition, younger members of the family receive a new set of clothes on Dashimi. For some poor families, this is the only time of year they receive new clothes. For richer families (like my host family in Kathmandu), Dasain is the time to buy all new things for the year. This year, Bardeep’s mom gave him his wedding suit as his clothing, though he has no immediate plans to get married. Ha, talk about a not at all subtle hint! After we had all received our tikas, we ate a big lunch then headed off to “relatives house.”

Tika from Bardeep's Mom

The Celebration Continues: When Bardeep said we were walking 30 minutes to his relatives house, I thought he meant like one relative. Instead, we spend the entire rest of the day going to every single one of his relatives’ houses. The younger members of the family have to receive blessings from every elder. Luckily, Bardeep’s family has a monopoly on a particular corner of the village. So we would walk though some paddies, then boom we’d be at another family member’s house. I have absolutely no idea how everyone was related but there was a lot of tika and a lot of food. By the end of the day I had red rice falling into my eyes and could not eat another bite. I think I had seven lunches. English was less common in the village than Kathmandu (understandably) so most of the day I had no idea what was going on, but it was a really cool experience. Everyone was so welcoming and did not seem at all surprised by the presence of this random American girl. Lots of people wanted to take a picture with me (one woman joked that it would be a “black and white picture”). His little cousins also gained a special place in my heart, because instead of the usual chorus of “Hello, how are you?” or “Hello, what is you name?” I hear yelled over and over again at me throughout most of Nepal, his cousins picked “You are very beautiful.” Luckily, I know how to say “And you also” in Nepali. J

Tika from an uncle

And Continues: Since families are now more dispersed across Nepal, it has evolved that you get the last five days of Dasain to receive a tika from every elder in your family instead of having to make it everywhere on Dashimi. A smart move I think, because families here are gigantic. When I returned back to Kathmandu on the 8^th, it was time for tikas from my host family, and every night since then extended family members have been here for dinner and tikas. Radhakrisna said that there are more than 100 members in his family. Geez. Dasain is almost now over now, tomorrow’s big highlight is that kids gamble with the money they got on Dashimi, but have no fear, the next festival (Diwali, but it’s called Tihar here) is just 15 days away…