The black sooty fumes of a thousand torches raced to meet the already blackened air above a downtown Kathmandu street. Thick wooden sticks, the carriers of kerosene soaked cotton, hosted raging flames to burn hundreds of incandescent cries into the back of my photographic mind. An unforgetable image, to see the shadows of a thousand marching torch bearers taking their city by critical mass.
That day I had gone to a swimming pool with a group of Nepali friends. We enjoyed ourselves whether or not we could all swim, and after a cup of overly sweetened milk tea we parted ways. I stayed with my two Tamang bhais (little brothers/friends- see previous blogs for acquaintance stories), Suraj and Kusal, 14 and 9 year old kids I greatly adore. Walking along the road just next to the “Police Health Club”, where we had been learning to swim, my chlorine-singed eyes read a sign: “International Indigenous Film Festival”. Today was the last day of the festival and the last film of the day was scheduled to play at the current time–5pm. “Has the film already started?” I asked someone at the information desk. “No it will be a bit late- wait half an hour please” came the response.
Back outside I scrupulously searched for the best place for us to eat. The tents at the festival where serving typical Nepali snack foods from different ethnic groups–thukpa
(white flour) noodles, seasoned meat, potatoes, sweetly spiced rice flour donuts. The two boys and I found a nice mat woven from corn husks under a shady tent to sit on; our hosts were a group Newari woman dressed in remarkable black and red dress (these are the traditional dress of the Jyapuni, i.e. the female members of the Maharjan, the Newari farming caste).
The Newari people are indigenous to the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal’s capital and home to the biggest and most artisanal urban areas in Nepal. We ate typical Newari snack food: crunchy flattened rice called chiura; succulent buffalo meat barbequed over dried rice stalks and rubbed with toasted mustard seed oil, ginger, garlic and plenty of chili; black eyed peas; sautéed greens; chickpeas; chili potatoes; a condiment of peas, carrots, daikon radish and green hot peppers smothered with lime juice and toasted sesame seed paste; a thick, crunchy-on-the-outside soft-on-the-inside black lentil pancake with an egg cracked on top. What I love about Newari food is the healthy variety of tasty items given in smaller quantities to fill the plate opposed to the usual Nepali habit of filling the whole plate with white rice or noodles- leaving very little room for vegetables and legumes
The movie, ‘The Long Journey,’ started an hour later than scheduled, Nepali time for sure. It was about the situation of indigenous people in Nepal and their long struggle to proclaim and realize their social, environmental and political rights. A very long story short: Prithvi Narayan Shah was a Hindu King in the 18th century who shed much blood conquering the Kathmandu Valley and ‘unified’ what became the Nepali Kingdom. What ensued was the creation of an autocratic monarchical system which privileged high caste Hindus (Aryan in ethnic origin) while oppressing and exploiting lower caste Hindus, women, and especially the dozens of indigenous tribal groups of Nepal, most whom have Tibeto-Mongol ethnic origins and are Buddhist and animists, not Hindus. Indigenous communities were infiltrated, their community-based self governing structures uprooted and their natural and human resources exploited without any sign of profit or benefit to local peoples. Today, 250 years later, Nepal is attempting to instate democracy (starting in the 1950’s) and the right of tribal groups are finally being recognized (on paper) by a mostly dysfunctional Nepali government. The film documents one human rights success in Nepal, which actually did succeed in becoming the second country in South Asia to ratify the United Nations treaty on the rights of indigenous peoples. And yet this is only the beginning to a long process of bringing justice and equality to the ethnic groups that have been largely ignored by the high-caste Hindu-dominated government for the past few centuries here in Nepal.
After the movie I walked along one of the central streets of Kathmandu with the Tamang kids who had learned about some of these issues in school but still couldn’t quite wrap their heads around these big ideas. They are Buddhist Tamangs, a diverse ethnic group, some of whom once served as slaves to the king. Both of these boys’ fathers are abroad in the Gulf now, working low-pay jobs in order to make ends meet. In their village the educational opportunities are lacking and hence they live here in the city, where the streets are overflowing with trash and drinking water is a rare commodity.
The sidewalk is filled with people selling t-shirts, mangoes and bananas, nail clippers, Ayurvedic herbs and umbrellas. Pedestrians walk through a maze of themselves and street vendors, overflowing into streets raging with the horns of a half dozen different kinds of motor vehicles.
As we climb the stairs of a pedestrian bridge I see a voracious mass of torch-bearers simultaneously sworming and marching toward a small cluster of policemen who seem absolutely terrified by the group that they were both fleeing from and trying to control. The three of us reached the top of the pedestrian bridge to meet a crowd of people staring and whipping out their cell phones to take photos. I asked a someone what was going on, “It’s the Maoists” one man said, “No, it’s the Newars, they are protesting for the creation of a state which recognizes them as the original people of Kathmandu and thus gives them their proper rights as indigenous people. Tomorrow the city will be closed in a strike.”
Behind us the sky was glowing deep neon pink hues, the sun already set behind our capital city, this concentrated carnal congestion of concrete. I put Kusal on my shoulders so he could see the scene below. Before us a sea of torch carriers bellowed their cries of anger and dissatisfaction with their smoky voices. The narrow street soon became as filled as it could be by the procession of flames, burning their message into the air and into peoples’ minds anywhere they went. We must be seen.
Indeed today the entire city is shut down in strike. Every shop is closed, not a single bus is running, not even motorcycles dare to take the streets, and youth yell at the few cyclists who pass by telling them to dismount. Torches have been replaced by burning tires throughout the city, burning even blacker messages into the masses. Such protests are not uncommon in Nepal and have detrimental consequences for average people who somehow pay for more expensive vegetables and cooking gas, closed roads jacking up prices; or they simply eat their rice without lentils or vegetables. For me it’s quite pleasant: I walk down the street without honking horns and black exhaust fumes in my face kicking a ball with kids in the open streets, pay a few extra cents for my vegetables and indulge the privilege of my white skin and green dollar.
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