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The case of the permutating toilet
(03/13/98)

festival time
in kathmandu

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BY JEFF GREENWALD | Spring has arrived, bright and sudden as a dropped coal. I know it by the dry scorching of my forehead and arms, by the kicked-up dust that blows down the lane and settles on my "Escorts 100" motorcycle seat, by the flowers bursting into bloom like fireworks. All over the Kathmandu Valley, pariah dogs are emerging from their winter stupor and barking their idiot heads off. Spring, and I'm itching to flee into the mountains, where the air is lead-free and endless granite walls ring at you like bells. But the past weeks have been a riot of festivals, and I dared not leave town.

Kathmandu, people are surprised to learn, is on the same latitude as Miami. The fact that it's about 4,000 feet higher accounts for the cooler weather; but spring does arrive early. The first day of the season was formally welcomed a few weeks ago, with a Hindu festival called Basant Panchami. This is also celebrated as the birthday of Saraswati, goddess of learning and the arts. On this day the goddess herself drops into town, visiting her temples and listening to the specific petitions of students, artists, writers and bet-hedging expatriates like myself. Supplication did not come easy; I throttled my rented Escorts up and down Gharidhara at least three times before locating the impossibly funky lane leading to my friendly neighborhood shrine.

It was a riotous scene. There were dozens of families, jockeying for position as they tossed fruit, paise and rice over the gilded image of the goddess. The brick walls of the building were covered with names, scrawled in chalk, of schoolchildren who'd visited through the day. Outside the grounds, vendors sold popcorn and candy and helium balloons. I didn't see any of the more traditional Basant Panchami offerings: severed goats' heads, with candles mounted between their horns.

My mission at the temple was a simple one. I'd brought the galleys of my latest book -- "Future Perfect" -- for a blessing. After making three circuits of the shrine I ducked inside, where the pujari draped my silk cloth offering over the lithe shoulders of the vina-strumming goddess. Then I backed out through the seething crowd, the manuscript smeared with red tika powder.

And yet I was dissatisfied. No epiphany had occurred, no sign that the goddess had bestowed her blessing. I decided to creep in again, this time through the left side door (the temple is only about eight feet on a side). I stealthily mounted the steps, failing to notice the low lintel -- and smacked my head on it. It was a dizzying blow. Stars wheeled before my eyes, and I almost fell onto a cow. Clearly, the goddess had noticed me. I spent the rest of the day trying to decide if the blow was a face slap or a love pat; or the kind of wake-up call that a roshi might give a student of Zen.

The last days of February brought a much larger, and far more outrageous festival. This was Shivaratri: literally, the dark night of Lord Shiva. sadhus and mendicants from all over the subcontinent swarmed into Kathmandu and set up camp on the grassy grounds of Kathmandu's Pashupatinath, a Shiva temple so sacred that (and this is unusual for Nepal) non-Hindus are forbidden entrance. (A few daredevil expats, mostly of the Latin American persuasion, have managed to sneak a look inside.) The dreadlocked, ash-smeared sadhus sat by their bonfires through the wet, moonless night, offering supplications to the potent Creator and Destroyer of Worlds: the very god invoked by J. Robert Oppenheimer when he witnessed the first atomic blast.

The next day the rains ended, and the valley felt warm and fresh. Pashupati was mobbed. Thousands of sightseers thronged through the temple grounds, gawking at any hint of grotesque or unusual sadhu activity. I made a tour of tableaux: I watched the Indian snake charmers, visited the ashen pilgrims singing bhajans (devotional songs) above the holy Bagmati river and gazed down at the mile-long queue leading into the main temple. I dropped by the modest shelter of the Milk Baba, a well-known local sadhu who claims to live exclusively on the lactations of sacred cows. (I happen to know he cheats: One morning I saw him scarfing down a jumbo-sized bar of "Milky" brand chocolate.)

There were loads of sadhus, many looking like they'd arisen out of Asia's ancient and magical past. Some were performing penances, writing the names of the Hindu gods in endless repetition, or standing on one leg, covered head to toe with the gray ash of recent cremation pyres. Try as I might, I couldn't find the most famous one of all: the notorious "Penis sadhu," who draws huge crowds by hefting a huge stack of bricks with that oft celebrated appendage.

N E X T+P A G E+| Two species of thieves