Category: Weird and Whacky

{{This article was originally posted on December 25,2016. Lost and found, here it is reposted.}}

Shala — hall, house, shelter in Sanskirt
Soch — Think in Sanskrit. Is used for thought and idea.

I have had this thought of having some sort of virtual or physical housing for thoughts and ideas to be placed, perspectives looked at and grown.

In the virtual space I tried it around 2001 with a website called “endlessPossibilities”. Hehe… Maybe the name was too long. It really didn’t go anywhere. Sometime later I thought of “naulosansar” — meaning “New World”, but that too I couldn’t take it too far. I realized that I was looking at it from my point of view only. Then I thought maybe I need to start something where people can interact — some sort of social networking around ideas. Currently most social networking is around people interacting with each other. My thought was to have ideas and thoughts at center and people interact on these.

Around 2008 I worked on “GoodNews” — a social collaborative site that people could post news that they feel happy, worthy of salute or inspirational about. People could comment or have upvotes. People could also pass on the news to their families or friends or anyone else they felt this news could be good for. After pushing it for a good while realized that people tend to have more liking for shocking news with high degree of fear factor way more than good news.

I have tried physical spaces too. Sochshala itself being the latest attempt that didn’t really pick off the ground. From making rooms like kindergarten classes for people to come in and play to turning my orange farm into a creative space where people come and live under the orange trees and be creative. That idea is yet to take off ground.

So to bring my own ideas to one point, trying to get this blog going.

Like gaushala — shelther for homeless cows, pathshala — home for education, I thought maybe I need a shelther for my ideas and musing. So Sochshala…

{{This article was originally posted on December 22, 2016. My posts were lost and after being found I am re-posting them.}}

Recently (6th-8th Dec) I visited Lung, Pyuthan, Mid-Western Region of Nepal for the Rijal Dewali. My in-laws are Rijals. They hail from Lung, Pyuthan and still form important figures of the 4 day festival that drew over 200,000 people this year.

Many will say that the puja is 2 days, but I beg to differ based on the oral history that is recited as chants by the Dhamis during the program. They say “Panchami awahan…… Asthami Puja” — that makes it a total of 4 days.

The Dewali is believed to have started by the Rijals of Lung 400 years ago and is a spectacle of events mainly on the 3rd and 4th, starting by the lighting of the traditional lamp at sundown, followed by karnal band, drums and 100s of Dhamis chanting mantras and bells. The Dewali program seems to revolve around bells with all the Dhamis wearing bells on their bodies as well as ringing of the bells continuously throughout the last 2 days.

The 4th day saw the Aalam procession, which for a distance of about 1 kilometers too the best part of 4 hours. Starting off with just a bamboo pole carried by a person, it slowly grew to a volume with all the red and white cloth placed by the devotees. The Aalam procession saw most of the Dhamis singing and dancing and was a spectacle to see.

Once the Aalam arrived at the Gaura, from its starting point of the Kulghar, puja was conducted at the Gaura and then the goat cutting began.

Few points that I noticed:

• There was very less or no use of tika material like Aabir, sindur, etc.
• Bells, bells and more bells everywhere
• Participation of whole communities, gender, caste, etc… It really stood for democracy
• History and the process of the festival was sung as incantations by the Dhamis
• Red and white color occupied all significance

My thinking — this puja seems to be somehow dedicated to wind.

Videos:

https://youtu.be/MUnn5TW167I — Start of the Puja (after Sundown) and early morning procession
https://youtu.be/OowaQclQC1k — Procession continues with trance and dance
https://youtu.be/AU0AhR_pSYs — Special dance. Salute to those who can guess what is the dance called and what the person who is wearing the special dress is called
Last video : https://youtu.be/y0VXckXouPg — son is shocked to realize that most of the Dhamis and Pujaris are his Grand-fathers.

{{This article was originally posted on February 1, 2017. My posts were lost and after being found I am re-posting them.}}

When I was in school, we had an interesting person as the night watchman at the Infirmary. His name was Dominique. Once, in class 8, I felt sick and stayed in the infirmary. At night Dominique and I used to talk. Just before leaving he would say “Good garauna” and we would shake hands. I didn’t think about it much then.

When in class 10, I got sick again and the nightly chats with Dominique started. Again he would say “Good garauna” and we would shake hands. From then on those words stuck in my head, but I really didn’t understand what he was saying.

By the time I was in college I had forgotten about Dominique and his Good garauna. I visited Pokhara once and was talking to an ex-British Gurkha army man. When parting he said “Good garauna”. That suddenly brought back Dominique. This time I asked him why he said that. He said it was practise among most ex-British Gurkha army men to say that before shaking hands. Dominique had also served in the British army. So I began to see connections.

Few years later, out of college, and visiting Pokhara again, I met an ex-British Gurkha army man. While in conversation I mentioned to him that most ex-British army men tended to say Good garne and he said that was standard practice and that it had become common in most rural parts of Nepal to say that. He explained to me that the term came from the British saying “Good Morning” or “Good Afternoon”, while shaking hands. Nepali army men didn’t understand the other terms, but heard “Good” everytime and then took it that the process of shaking hands was called “Doing Good” — “Good garne” in Nepali.

That was that!!!… Understand, suddenly aaha moments, all smiles, but rapidly forgotten. Fars forward 17 years to last year when Shailendra (one of my students, currently studying in China) came back from his home in Ramechhap. We got to talking about farming and food stuff and milk. So I asked him the price of milk and he said “NRs. 40 for one Horlicks”. I was taken aback. I had heard and used metric system heavily, heard of emperical system, written software for conversion of various Nepali measurement units. And here was an unit that I could have never ever imagined. It turned out that the milk was measured using Horlicks bottles and its size was half a liter. So instead of saying half a liter, people just called it 1 Horlicks.

Since then I have been meaning to write an article on the Nepalish language and this it is.

Nepalish has a rich vocabulary, a non-exhaustive list of words is given at the end of this article. Before the list though there is three other words that I was to specifically talk about, first of which is courtesy Dominique (remember the Good garne guy!). We used to have movie nights every Friday. A Friday fell on one of the days when I had fallen ill and retired to the infirmary. Dominque came in and said “you missed the 22 scope today right”. Puzzled I asked him what “22 scope” was. He, in his own strange way, rounded his fingers and looked through indicating, and making me realize, about the movie. Again, puzzled as ever, I put to brain the word 22 scope, which supposedly stood for movies. Recently I remembered the word and looked put to find that it meant Cinemascope film shot with 22mm focal length cameras. It seems in some old movies the word “22 SCOPE” would be written in bold and, during their British army days, people seem to have picked up the words to mean cinema.

The second word is “bushat”. Bushat is shortened Nepalized word for Shirts with Buttons. I just like the sound fo that word. Hehe… What can I say!!!…

And the third is “matshaab”, shortened Nepalized word for Master Shaab, commonly term for teachers. This word is dear to me as my father has been a teacher for over 50 years now and as long as I can remember people have called him  “matshaab”.

A non-exhaustive list of words in Nepalish:
genoon – genuine
goltin – tin with golden coloring originally. Now all tin cans.
tikas –  ticket
misscall hanne – call from phone, but hangup just before receiving on the other side
tausi – taxi
tyam – time
tem – time
phoon – phone
byar – beer
bayler – broiler chicken
paiit – pant
point – pant
pilate – plate
gilas – glass
cilas – class
fuscilas – first class
pias – plyers
wrenchu – wrench
bingness – business
almunim – aluminium
meassage – message
bodi – body
bicut – boycott
heroni – heroine
millen – million
billen – billion
lop parne – have an affair
commnista – communist
easta coat – waist coat
patty – party
patty – political party

Biskoot — Biscuit
Saraf — Detergent (derived from an Indian brand of detergent called Surf)
Cocola — Coca Cola
Bottal – Bottle
Baiscope — Cinema (Comes from 22 scope, a film format used in really olden days

Filim — Film

Tinisin — Tension

Gilas — glass
Cinima — Cinema

Vote of Thanks – to Santosh, Prajwal, Aakarshan and Barsha for bringing into attention so many of the words in this list.

Note : This is a work in progress. If anyone has any words please feel free to send them. I will add with proper credits.

It happened about two years ago. One of my friend’s brother went missing or rather he went out of the house and did not return.

Friend’s brother was around 50 years old then. He was diagnosed with mental illness earlier on in life and lived mostly at home roaming around the neighborhood.

One day he did not return and the search for him started. People went all around Kathmandu, all old age homes, all hospitals, all shelters, the brother’s usual hangout locations. Nowhere was he to be found. Police were informed.

3 days later people found him body in the morgue at a hospital. The family went to check and confirmed it was him. Family performed his last rights at the Aryaghat below the Pashupatinath temple on the banks of the river Bagmati.

As per Hindu customs they performed staunch mourning for 5 days. Since he was unmarried and did not have any kids the rights needed to be performed were taken care for by his brothers, including my friend.

On the fifth day they finished the mourning ritual with a puja and all changed the dresses and were getting ready to have proper meal after the five days.

Suddenly my friend got a call from one of his friends who had gone out to an lost person shelter in Patan. He asked if the rites had been completed. Then he said he found the lost brother. To confirm he sent a photo through Whatsapp, which everybody looked at. To the surprise of all it was the lost brother!

This brings up a few questions to anybody’s mind — who did they find before? Whose body was cremated? What basically happened?

The questions remained unanswered till today. The lost brother is fit and fine and still hangs around the neighborhood.

Kashi Di was a very fine lady, nice person to talk to. I would send hours talking to her though we had a good age difference of about 45 years.

My first memory of her was seeing Kashi Di wash her face after her meal during the Dashain festival. We were three little kids, just finished a great meal of mutton soup and rice and washing up, when Kashi di came started washing up. In that process she removed her complete set of teeth. We stood in horror. Our faces became white while she proceeded to clean her teeth with a toothbrush. We had never seen false teeth before. Gathering our senses we ran from there.

We went to a corner, gossiped a little about how she could be a ghost or a part of something evil. Then on I kept away from her, until I was about 25. Then I developed special fondness for her. Not that we met often, but when we did we talked a lot. I would try and find time to meet her whenever I could. During Dashain Tika she would wait to put tika on me.

One Dashain she did not come to where we would put Tika. People said she was very ill. I went out of town and then really forgot about it.

The following Dashain she was there. So we got to talking and remembering her absence the last year I asked her what happened. She told me that one day, just before Dashain, her breathing stopped completely. Assuming that she had passed away, people awaited the Hindu practice of waiting for 4-5 hours, even then she didn’t breathe. So they put her on bamboo poles and carried her to the Aryaghat, near the Pashupati Temple on banks of the Bagmati River to be cremated.

On the banks they waited a while for the cremation as there was a little heavy traffic as well as the ghat rites of her had to be completed. So while doing the ghat rites, one practise is to put the dead body on the Brahmanaal (Brahma’s channel). Brahma’s channel has outlet of water coming directly from the water that is poured on the Shiva Linga inside the Pashupati Temple. Lord Shiva is taker of life, while Brahma is giver of life. So this ritual symbolizes the passes of the soul from the destroyer to the giver as Hindus believe in rebirth and the eternal cycle of life.

When Kashi Di was put on the Brahmanaal, she came back to life. She first started slowly breathing and then she got up. People brought her back home.

And that was the reason why she missed a Dashain tika.

Though its been years since Kashi Di actually passed away, I still remember her. Her coming back from the dead is what surprised me most though.