Commentary on the Living Goddess Kumari of Catmandu
Hush! Gods Cannot Die in Nepal (Satis Shroff)

The Kumari, who is worshipped as the Living Goddess in Katmandu, is a small girl who lives in a beautiful palace with exquisitely carved wooden windows called the Palace of the Kumari, You can recognise her on her scarlet sari with golden edges, her pagoda-formed jet black hair, which are tied neatly on top. And she wears the third eye of wisdom on her forehead.
The beginnings of the Kumari Cult date back to the 13th century. A decisive event of the cult took place in 1323 when a king named Hari Singh Deva, who hailed from North India fled from the Islamic invaders and sought refuge in Nepal with his family. Among others things he'd also brought along his family goddess Taleju Bhavani.Hara Singh soon became the King of Bhaktapur, and as a consequence Taleju Bhavani became the ruling Goddess of the town of Katmandu. Even today, King Gyanendra remains the most important Goddess of the Nepalese King and the protector of Katmandu Valley.
According to a legend delivered 200 years ago, when Nepal comprised many small independent kingdoms, the Goddess used to visit one of these kings once in a while. They used to talk with each other with respect and played Tripasa, an old dice game in those days. One day King Jaya Prakash Malla feel unfortunately in love the Goddess and tried to seduce her., who understandibly felt piqued and insulted and henceforth didn't pay them any more visits. She came once in his dream once though and ordered him to choose a small girl from the Sakya family, the caste of the Newar goldsmiths of Kathmandu Valley. The Goddess proclaimed that she would reside as a reincarnation in the innocent and virgin body of the Sakya girl. The Goddess Taleju told him, 'Pray and worship her as Kumari, the Living Goddess, for when you worship her, you worship me.'
As time went on the other kings carried out the tradition of the Kumari cult, and when you go to Nepal you'll see and experience this ancient cult even today. The Katmandu Kumari is the Royal Kumari, and is worshipped by the King of Nepal, even though the King has been stripped of his judiciary, legislative and executive powers, because according to Hindu tradition the King of Nepal is still regarded as the reincarnation of Vishnu, the second God of the Hindu triad (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva). The worshippers of Vishnu (Bishnu) recognise in him the supreme being from whom all things emanate. In the epics Mahabharata and the Puranas, Vishnu is the creator (Prajapati) and supreme God.
It might be noted that last year King Gyanendra insisted on visiting the Kumari in her palace and worshipped the Living Goddess, despite the fact that he'd become unpopular as a monarch with the people of Kathmandu Valley, and Nepal in general., through his brutal use of force instead of democratic dialogue. While King Birendra, his dead brother, was a popular monarch, Gyanendra's ascension to Nepal's throne was jinxed from the beginning under a bad planetary constellation, as the court astrologer would put it. King Birendra lost his absolute power in 1990 after a bloody people's revolution. Nepal became thereafter a parlamentary monarchy, but the mountainous country became politically unstable. Even though a Nepalese journalist has written a best-seller in the country with the title „Rakta Kunda“ which threw light into the working of the blue-blooded royal denizens of the Narayanhiti Palace, and the palace murders, it is nevertheless not clear who really shot and eliminated the entire Shah clan, with the exception of King Gyanendra and his family.
It was more a symbolical gesture to appease the people of Nepal who were out in the streets along with the armed and militant Maoists that King Gyanendra paid homage to the Living Goddess last year. It seems to have worked wonders. Some important politicians of the Congress Party have now expressed their second thoughts about having the disposed of the King. A pro-monarchy movement seems to have cropped up in the Nepalese capital.
Now back to the Kumari or Indra Jatra. A jatra is a religious procession in Nepal and India. 'Who's Indra?' you might ask. Indra is the God of the firmament, the personified atmosphere. It is during the Indra Jatra's third night of festivities that the Shah King of Nepal visits the the Kumari in her palace, which is located near Basantapur Plaza. This is thought to be not only a gesture of respect but also an evidence that the king holds no power over the manifestation of Taleju Bhavani. The Kumari legitimates through this act of granting the King of Nepal an audience, and appling tika on his forehead, his rule for a period of one year. And thereby hangs a tale.
'How can one become a Living Goddess?' you might ask. In order to be a Kumari, the female candidates have to be three or four years old and have to fulfill a row of conditions that have been set down in the scriptures as 'the list of 32 signs':
The virgin has to have well proportioned hands and feet like those of a duck. She must have beautifully formed heels and possess circular lines on the soles of her dainty feet. Her body has to have the form of Saptaccha leaf. Her cheeks and busom must resemble that of a lion. The nape of her neck and throat like a conch from the ocean. She much have forty well-formed, white teeth. The tongue must be small,wet and sensitive. Her voice must resemble that of a sparrow. The eyes and eye-lashed like thows of the holy cow. Her shadow has to be beautiful and golden hued. The hair has to be smooth, black and have to fall to the right side. Her hands, feet and long toes have to be soft and small. She must have round shoulders and long arms. The body of the Kumari has to be flawless, sans pockmarks, and a skim with well-formed pores. She must have a round head with a high forehead. A resistent body, well-formed like the Nyagrodha tree.
The girls who possess the 32 outer perfections are obliged to wait till it becomes dark, so that they can qualify in the feats in scary full darkness, when normal three or four year old kids get the creeps and cry for 'Mom' or 'Dad' in the dark full of fear. But these are ancient Hindu rituals, customs and traditions in a far away land, performed by under the strict supervision of Buddhist and Hindu priests. The real Kumari is expected to show her courage by overcoming these terrible, shocking scenarios that unfurl one after the other throughout the night, and ferocious growls and noises made by the hidden priests, and are show terrible and frightening masks of demons, and the sight of 108 slaughtered buffalo heads dripping with blood. If, and only if, she doesn't cry is this regarded as one of the signs of her godliness. Once she has been chosen, she becomes a Living Goddess, wears the paraphernalia associated with the Goddess Taleju Bhavani, and presides at the many Hindu and Buddhist religious ceremonies as the Living Goddess till she reaches puberty, when her hormones take over her phycical and psychic development into a woman, and she menstruates. A Goddess does not bleed. In case she does, naturally at puberty or earlier through a fall and subsequent injury, she becomes a mortal. A bleeding, crying, but perhaps happy mortal. Gone are the days and nights in the Kumari Palace, where she blessed all the Hindus, Buddhist and grey-eyed and blonde haired curious visitors with their mobilecams and camcorders. A reign without her parents, following strict rules and regulations comes to an end. She can find solace in th arms of her parents and brothers and sisters.
The Kumaris receive a small pension after their 'ruling' periods are over. If a Kumari bleeds when she looses a tooth it means she has to leave her throne. The priest touches six parts of the Kumari's body body with a bunch of grass: the vulva, Labia majoris, the navel, the breast and the throat. This ritual is meant to transform the body of the mortal girl to that of a godly one. In Nepal there are quire a few Kumaris and three of them are worshipped with great ceremonies and fanfare in Katmandu, Bhaktapur (Bhadgaon) and Patan (Lalitpur). But not all Kumaris live such isolated lives like the Royal Kumari of Katmandu, who has to be carried by the priests lest her holy feet be polluted by the filth of the earth trodden by mortals. Normally, a Sakya Newari girl can be a Kumari and is respected and worshipped till seven or eight years. Nevertheless, the Kumari is a feature (Konstrukt) or institute based on fragile premises. If a Kumari dies during her tenure as a Living Goddess, she cannot be reincarnated, because according to Hinduism a Goddess cannot die. But weren't King Birendra and Queen Aiyeshwarya and other members of the divine royal family shot and died like common mortals? Hush! Gods cannot die in Nepal.
When Sajanai Sakya, a Kumari who went to the USA on a 39 day trip to attend the screening of a BBC documentary about her life, some priests headed by Jaiprasad Regmi, demanded that she be declared a mortal and thus no longer a Kumari, because a Goddess is not allowed to go abroad—across the kala pani (black water). A faux pas that the purity-pollution-thinking priests haven't forgiven her. There is obviously a power play between the orthodox priests on the one hand, and the
democratic, neo-ethnic federalists, human rights activists, feminists and maoists on the other hand. Whereas the priests are trying to prevent the undermining of their ancient rights and privileges as mediators between the Gods and humans, there is an increasingcommercialisation of the revered but poor Living Goddess by the western media. Instead of centuries of silence as a Kumari, the Living Goddess of Katmandu might in future give public human-interest interviews and exclusive photo shootings in her new role till the hormones play havoc in her godly body.
Nepal has to go with the times, for the the Hindu and Buddhist worshippers of the Kumari have left the country and the believers have settled down in foreign shores and desire and demand their share of of the Heimat, religion and culture. If the worshippers can't come to the Goddess Kumari, then the Living Goddess has to go on tournee across the Seven Seas, kala pani as we call it, and carry out the panipatya ceremony like generations of Hindu and Buddhist British Gurkhas have done, when they return home. I did it too.

The Charms of Written English (Satis Shroff)
Words and expressions change their meanings when a language leaves its native environment and the meanings change and are lost in translation, creating embarrasing, humorous situations. Speech is a cacophony of noises, rhythms and tunes, whereas the printed page is what it is. English is a global language spoken by almost 2000 million people. Daniel Defoe defined this hybrid language as a mixture of “Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English.”
Spoken English is one thing, but written English can be just as charming and amusing for the world is not full of academicians, and while travelling to other countries you do come across expressions that you might find baffling, amazing, ridiculous, funny, and sometimes they make no sense. They reflect the way other people use English in everyday situations during holidays, and especially in hotels.
When you visit Germany’s Black Forest you might chance to see a sign: “It is strictly forbidden on our Black Forest Camping Site that people of different sex, for instance men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose.”
You are inclined to think: are the Schwarzwälder so prude? Every Baggersee, which is the German term for a lake, has its FKK beach. It’s not the Black Forest I’ve known. One sees naturalists living and sun-bathing comfortably in their natural and simple surroundings, without anyone raising as much as an eye-brow. No one cares if it makes the rest of us ‘unnaturalists.’ Sex is a never-ending topic, which makes sexology for many people the most fascinating of all ‘-ologies.’ We love ice-cream in summer, we fall in love, make love, and the word remains a magical distributing word.
In an article I’d mentioned that my German grandma used to call 007 “Rogger Mooray” because she didn’t speak English. When F. Eugene Barber, CEO Las Vegas, heard that he said, ‘The Italians do that as well. When they come to America, they tend to add a vowel to each major word. I looked in an Italian dictionary many years ago---I now understanda whata they isa talkina abouta.”
He went on the say, ‘Some things come across okay. We say ‘He sleeps like a log’ and a German would say ‘Schlafen wie ein Murmeltier’ and that makes sense. ‘Brand new’ translates the same way and has the same identical meaning---brandneu!’
In a Zürich hotel (Switzerland) was a notice: ‘Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.”
A lovely idea on the many uses of a hotel lobby. They certainly aren’t prude out there in Switzerland, you might think.
If married people had extra-marital sexual relationships, the women invariably had lovers and the men had mistresses. Today both men and women have lovers.
On the menu of a Swiss restaurant you could read: “Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.” Sounds rather depressing, doesn’t it? What the hotel-manager has done here is to put his best foot forward and make a literal translation of “sich nicht zu wünschen übrig lassen.”
A very elaborate way of saying that their wines are great.
In another menu at a Polish hotel in Warsaw you read: “Salad a firm’s own make; limpid red beet soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people’s fashion.”
I’ll take the roasted duck let loose. Isn’t there bird-flu at the moment? But would you earnestly like to have beef rashers really beaten up, like they do it in the countryside? The poor creatures. You might have the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals after you.
Oh, Paris is so lovely in springtime. Outside a Paris dress shop you read: “Dresses for street walking.”
Street walkers are women who belong to the oldest profession in the world. That is really walking on thin ice. Near the Moulin Rouge pavement? Oh, no. I’m sure you don’t want ‘dresses for street walking.’
Apropos dresses, you know the Collosus of Rhodes. At a Rhodes tailor-shop you could read the sign: “Order your summer suits. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.”
How ghastly! I thought Greece was the cradle of democracy, with freedom of movement and speech. Aren’t they in the European Union? Have to ring up Brussels.
Ah yes, Rome: the city of Romulus and Remus and the magnificent pieta and Michaelangelo sculptures of Leonardo da Vinci. In modern Rome, you could read at a laundry: “Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.”
We Germans call it FKK, Free Körper Kulture, that is, nude in the city of Rome with all those Paparazzis and Latin Lovers. To visitors from the USA it’s ‘sex in the city,’ I presume. What a thought under the blazing Italian sun, and what an exquisite translation from Italian into English. It just takes your breath away.
At a Czech tourist agency you could read: “Take one of our horse-driven city tours – we guarantee no miscarriages.”
You associate the word ‘miscarriage’ with bringing forth babies prematurely before they had a chance to even breathe. The guarantee was plainly for mishap that might occur along Prague’s Charles Bridge. What a healthy ride for grown ups. I’ll have to tell that to my friend Bruno Käshammer, who’s a gynacologist.
In a Swiss mountain inn one was confronted with: “Special day – no ice cream.” I can very well imagine it, with snow and icy peaks, snow-bound valleys and spurs in the Swiss countryside and apre-ski.
At a Copenhagen airline ticket office you were confronted with this message: “We take your bags and send them in all directions.”
Oh-my-God! How do I get my bags back? This happens all the while, but to admit it officially in Denmark, that’s really honest. At least they don’t say whether the machine or the personnel were responsible for the mistake.
On the door of a Moscow hotel room was a message: “”If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it.
Otherwise, nyet? You are reminded of Ian Fleming’s protagonist: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Thrice is enemy action. Russia doesn’t like tourists who come again and again like rubber balls and argue with: “Because it’s there. It’s so cheap when you have dollars to throw around. I love the KGB and Siberia’s Gulag.”
At a cocktail lounge in neighbouring Norway you can read: “Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.”
Do children like cocktails? Some pregnant ladies must have taken one for the road and had to deliver in the bar. You can imagine what jolly names the babies must have had: Tequilla Nabokov, Vodka Vasilsky, Scotch McGregor.
In a Paris hotel elevator you could read: “Please leave your values at the front desk.” Can you leave your worth, principles and standards in the front desk of a hotel in Paris, the City of Love? Your ‘valuables’ was what the hotel management wanted to convey to its guests.
And in a hotel in Athens: “Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 am daily.”
Which leaves you wondering: what if one doesn’t?
Found in a Serbian hotel: “The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.” By Jove! What a job. A wonderful translation from the serbo-croatian language, which obviously might create consternation, panic or shock waves among the young chamber-maids in Belgrade.
In the lobby of a Moscow hotel, on the other side of a Russian Orthodox monastery, you could read: “You are welcome to visit the cemetery where the famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursday.”
I see. Is that why there are hardly any intellectuals left?
Winter has been banished in the Alpine countries after the Fasnet carnival celebrations and in an Austrian hotel which catered to skiers was a note: “Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.”
Boots of ascension? Oh, you mean climbing boots? What a charming way to describe a pair of Bergstiefeln, Wanderschuhe or trekking shoes.
In a Belgrade hotel elevator hung a piece of paper neatly typed with the message: “To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.”
Americans first, please.
For the West, the Hungarians are East Bloc, for the East Bloc Hungry is more or less western. To the Hungarians they are a little bit of both. In a Budapest zoo there was a sign: “Please go not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.”
Hope he enjoys it, you might add. He must be on the Atkins-diet a long time.
In the office of a Roman doctor who had a medical degree from Perugia you could read: “Specialist in women and other diseases.”
‘Since when are women diseases?’ you might wonder. This physician must be a macho and chauvanist. Despite equal-pay legislation, women still earn less than men and are underrepresented in the professions and are engaged in office and welfare work. Germany is going with the times, and it is regarded as belittling a female when she’s described as a ‘Fräulein.’ The Fräuleinwunder is out. Every girl over eighteen is to be addressed as a ‘Frau’ in Germany. So don’t you ‘Fräulein’ the lady at the restaurant or at the October beer festival, if you want to pay the bill on your next visit to Germany. She’s a young lady, junge Dame, if you’re talking about her in the third person singular. The word ‘ladies’ is regarded by some as snobbish and genteel.
In Germany teenagers use the word ‘cool’ often. If it’s something they don’t like, they come up with: ‘Oh, how uncool!’
However, ‘cool’ in American jazz music means: retrained, relaxed or unemotional. If you are up-to-date, you’re cool and it has the same meaning as ‘laid-back.’
‘Dictionaries are among the noblest ventures of man the ordering animal, the only signposts we have in the great forest of words which we wander all our lives,’ said Gerald Long, BBC. If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. Like Shakespeare said: There’s much virtue in ‘if’.
If you said so, then I said so. If you didn’t, neither did I.