I have been thinking about my childhood in Nepal lately and I wrote about the Temple of Chandeshwari that lay less than five minutes' walk from our house there. The Goddess Chandeshwari is the same Goddess that is named Durga or Kail. She has a voracious appetite for blood and it was she who danced upon the corpse of her Lord, Shiva, and yet she saved both the Gods and humanity from a Demon who had conquered and laid waste to Heaven itself. A terrifying and complex Goddess...
Looking at photographs of the earthquake and the death count as well as the destruction of beautiful temples and buildings that are as famous in Nepal as Big Ben in England or the Statue of Liberty in New York, I was struck by the power of this Goddess, who is of course, an embodiment of Nature in all of her terrible power. We tend to become arrogant quickly in this age of technology, believing that we have harnessed and subjugated all the forces of Nature, only to discover that our edifices and works can be swept away in an instant by an Earthquake or Tsunami or even a Hurricane or Tornado.
Death was so close always in Nepal. Even as a child of 11, I experienced it constantly. The smell of burning bodies from the ghats below the maidan was something that never will be forgotten. The smoke was sweet and thick and ashes would blow upwards into my face and hair.
I translated at the local clinic and one day a Buddhist Monk from Tibet, a refugee, came through. He had leprosy and I told him that we had medication that could halt the progress of a disease that was obsolete in Europe but still very much in evidence in the Himalayas.
Much to my embarrassment, he prostrated himself fully on the ground and declared that I was a Goddess. He offered me a bag that was filled with unset gems. Of course I refused it and told him that he could give a small amount of money for the medication if he wished but no more than that.
He went to stay at the local Buddhist temple on the maidan. Dilmaya, my best friend and I often went there with our lunch, to sit in the small but lovely little garden while we ate chapatis with curry. There was a pool there and we would watch the image of the clouds and shadows of trees rippling across the water.
A few days after the refugee monk went to stay with his 'brother' priest, he died. There were rumours in the village that he had been poisoned by the priest. The bag of gems had vanished.
This is the stuff of novels, but it happened to me as a child and it left a terrible feeling of responsibility and impotence. He told me I was a goddess and yet I could not save him. Knowing damned well that I was nothing of the sort, it still haunted me and haunts me to this day.
I had many extraordinary experiences in Nepal. We had a wooden swing in our garden. It was the sort of swing that could serve almost as a bed, where four children could sit side by side.
One night, I could not sleep and went out of my room to look at the moon. Like something from a dream, I saw a small leopard laying in the swing, perfectly at ease. Its eyes glowed in the dark. So beautiful, so otherworldly, a little frightening. I almost dared not breathe for fear of startling it.
The next day, I heard a loud commotion in the village of Chandeshwari down the hill. Cries of 'Bhag! Bhag!' Many men rushing about, although it was difficult to see details from the top of the maidan.
The villagers had found a leopard prowling near the village and, perceiving a threat to their livestock, they beat it to death with sticks. I watched helplessly from a distance, not even realising completely what had happened until I was told about it later. I was told that there was a bounty that was paid by the government on any leopard skin as well. Yet another incentive to kill the beautiful wild creature.
Obscurely, again I felt responsible and impotent. Why had I been privileged to catch a glimpse of this animal if it was only to be slaughtered the very next day? It was like the darkest of fairytales to me.
From a life in the West where Death was hidden for the most part, experienced behind hospital curtains to a ilfe in a place where animal sacrifices occurred constantly. A rooster head often had place of honour on the puja tal. Whenever there was a festival, at least one sheep was beheaded and often it would run in circles headless, blood gushing from its neck like a fountain of Death.
Squemish to a fault before I went to Nepal, I quickly became hardened to the sight of blood. After all, my Uncle ran a hospital. Bodies were carried out frequently wrapped only in a simple shroud to be taken to the ghats. I watched people die more than once, both fascinated and somewhat appalled, surrounded by the sorrow of the family. There, family members often slept on the floor beside the hospital bed, cooking meals for the patient and tending to him or her as though they were in their own homes. We offered treatment and medication but they were fed and bathed mainly by their own families.
I saw a man who had been mauled by a bear, half his head a bloody mass of gore. Saw many lepers in advanced stages of the disease, nose and fingers eaten away, and many people with goitres and a condition called elephantitis, huge growths on their necks or swollen misshapen legs. Small boys from the village would have nosebleeds caused by the lodging of a leech inside their nostrils. Almost every one had lice in their hair. The women would ist on the maidan grooming one another and their children, cracking the lice between their fingernails.
And yet, for all that, it was a beautiful, beautiful country and the life there was exciting and vivid. I had my heart broken in Nepal and that was why I left, not because of the primitive nature of it, which I rather loved. I embraced that wholeheartedly, feeling that I had stepped back in time perhaps to medieval Europe. No indoor plumbing and many villages even without electricity, footpaths slippery with feces and hookworm prevalent in that. One could not walk barefoot in Nepal, but in the hot season, one did wear sandals and the less glamourous aspects of humanity always were close at hand.
