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| Golden Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Nepal |
Nestling in the
Kathmandu valley, the city of Kathmandu, named after the Kasthamandapa edifice
in the Durbar Square of Kathmandu, was our first destination at the exordia of
our four days and three nights trip to Nepal. Having disembarked at the
Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on a cloud-veiled morning, we
found ourselves warmly greeted by the brass-golden statuette of the mythical
humanoid bird Garuda. Apterous though I am, I couldn’t but appreciate the
magnificent charm of the gleaming wings of the mythical bird statue. He stood
next to the main entrance of the arrival-terminal with his hands folded, his
right knee touching the ground, his eyes closed in reverence, and an expression
of utter peace on his face. Behind him the word welcome was written in
different languages and together offered a great photogenic point for the
visitors.
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| Welcome to Nepal |
The airport is a brick
building of mediocre dimensions and struck me at first as a bus terminus rather
than an international airport. The
inaugural procedure of checking visitors’ documents before they are admitted to
the city outside and the collecting of luggage nevertheless was quick. Indians
do not need a visa when travelling to Nepal, and thus we were spared the
rigmarole of having to apply for the same before our visit. A farcical final
luggage screening later, we walked out of the airport to face a city that
appeared to me very much like the one yo
vivo en. It too, like Delhi, was home to a series of entrepreneurs, city
guides and know-alls bubbling with secret information about their country. They
materialize at airports and tourist hubs with halos of cognizance around them
like knight errands ready to rescue nescient travelers from all kinds of
touristy trouble provided you employ their services. Having travelled
extensively in all these years, I had ample opportunity to study these rampant
entrepreneurs, tourist guides and hotel-employed lobbyist (speaking on a
miniature scale, of course), and have found them as an eclectic bunch belonging
to two broad general groups. Members of one group will push their cause till
death and influence every decision you take as a tourist, like where you should
stay, what you shall see in the new country, and so on; and then there are the
affiliates of the latter bunch who, when they receive a cold shoulder and an
ear unheeding to their sanctimonious advice on how to survive in their city,
give up your cause for good and engage their attention on catching some other
fly that might prove better and nobler than you. Fortunately, the general
laid-back lifestyle of Nepal has rendered its men as members of the latter group;
therefore, you need not worry about being incessantly abluted by the advice and
suggestions of tourist guides.
From the airport, we
took a pre-paid taxi to the hotel De L’ Annapurna at the Durbar Marg where we
had our bookings. The initial trip through the city introduced us to its
garbage littered roads, its laid-back newspaper reading people, its shops and
its terrible traffic managed by traffic policemen in blue uniform, surgical
facemasks and pointed hats. You will find these traffic policemen performing
their ritual calisthenics with little success on small patches of roads next to
traffic intersections. The traffic movement in Kathmandu is laboriously slow as
its drivers, each evidently following self-penned rules of driving, come from
all sides and make the job of the traffic police extremely difficult. But we,
citizens of India, being well versed with dingy road conditions, slow traffic
and quisquilie were pleasantly amused to see that Nepal was a virtual replica
of the nation we live in, and that thought made us feel more at home there.
Located close to the
popular Thamel shopping area in Kathmandu, the hotel De l’ Annapurna was a
delightful place to stay. Bountifully equipped with all modern amenities, this
hotel also asperses its guests with a dosage of heritage. A giant thangka gracing a sidewall of the hotel lobby
was the first thing that caught my eye. The painting of the blue god Mahakala
Bhairav, his eyes delivering commination, a halo of fire surrounding him as he
performed his wrathful dance was breathtaking. The hotel was luxury itself with
gracious, ready-to-help staff and beautiful wood paneled rooms. It turned out
to be one of the best places I stayed in my life.
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| The Boudanath Stupa |
Our official tour of
the Kathmandu valley began with our visit to the Boudanath, the biggest stupa in Nepal, situated 5 km east of
Kathmandu. The stupa is surrounded
with prayer wheels embossed with the famous sacred chant Om Mani Padme Hum. As the pilgrims circumambulate the shrine they
set the prayer wheels in motion. The stupa,
looking like a mandala from above, is a token of striking Tibetan
architecture consisting of three large platforms on which rests the central
hemispherical structure topped with a square aureate-painted tower bearing on
its four sides the ubiquitous blue eyes of Lord Buddha. This tower is crowned
by another triangular pyramid like structure with thirteen steps, and above it,
is a gilded circular awning that is further topped by a golden spire. Colorful
rectangular prayer flags tied to the stupa
set aflutter by the wind communicate the holy prayers to the deities abaft. As
I stood under the piecing all-pervading gaze of the azure-eyed god, a sense of
peace moistened the abditories of my heart. Om
Mani Padme Hum, I heard the meta-voice inside the head chant.
The area surrounding
the Boudanath is flanked with shops selling souvenirs and Buddhist religious
artifacts, and tchotchkes. My first buy from one of the shops was a beautiful
handheld prayer wheel and a set of prayer flags. Most shops in that location
ask exorbitant price for souvenir items, so discretion is advised when buying
from them. A Thanka was a third item
I wished to buy from Nepal, and after scouring the shops in the neighborhood of
Boudanath, I discovered the one I really wanted to have. My thanka, depicturing the Manjusri Bodhisattva, the wielder of
wisdom, armed with a flaming sword that he uses to execute ignorance and
duality, now illuminates a corner of my home in Delhi. It is a constant
reminder of my beautiful trip to Nepal.
Our next destination
was the famous Patan Durbar Square. Durbar squares are actually plazas adjacent
to the ancient royal palaces of Nepal. They house temples, open courts,
fountains, statues of animals and so on. There are three Durbar squares in the
Kathmandu valley— Kathmandu Durbar Square, Patan Durbar Square, and Bhaktapur
Durbar Square— and all of them are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Located across the
river Bagmati, the city of Patan, founded by the King Veera Dev in 3rd
century A.D. is also known as Lalitpur. It is Nepal’s city of arts and is
considered the oldest of the three cities in the Kathmandu valley.
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| A Temple at the Patan Durbar Square |
I think I shall always remember the moment
I first saw the Patan Durbar Square. It was the first of the three Durbar
Squares we visited and the memory is embossed in my mind like the sacred chant
of Om Mani Padme Hum on spinning
prayer-wheels outside the Buddhist temples. The buildings in the Durbar Square
struck me as a series of recherché monuments build by the dab hands of some
supramundane agency. Each unique edifice stood erected on its own spot, each a
delicate work of art, a poetic vision in reality as true as the melodious notes
of the nightingale that made Keats
dedicate his ode to the bird.
The moment I stepped into
the Durbar Square I felt abluted of the past; it seemed all my former
indiscretions, moments of sadness and pain, all of my life’s struggles
momentarily eradicated before the stern majesty of those buildings. So
beautiful were they, mostly pagoda style structures with brass spires poking
the sky— that I wondered like Keats if what I beheld was a vision or a waking
dream.
The Durbar square is a
marvel of Newa architecture indigenous to Nepal. There are various breathtaking
temples and structures in an around the Durbar Square area. Statues of Garuda,
the humanoid bird revered in Buddhist and Hindu mythology, a leitmotif of all
Durbar Squares in Nepal, appears at various points in the Patan Durbar Square.
You will encounter one of them just as you enter the Patan plaza. He will be
seen poised atop a tower, his face facing the old palace.
The important temples
in the area are the octagonal Chyasing Deval, a temple of unique architecture
dedicated to lord Krishna, the Bhimsen Temple, Viswanath Temple, the
three-storied Golden Temple, etc. My personal favorite is the Golden Temple. It
is a three-storied golden pagoda styled temple located a little way off the
main square. The temple, with its exquisitely carved reliefs of gods and
goddesses, its brass-golden elephants with figures of kneeling men with folded
hands, and other figures of unknown demigods also done in brass, and especially
its torans, exquisitely carved
crowning structures mainly featuring deities that are found atop doors, are
coruscating jewels of Newa architecture. Like most Buddhist temples, the Golden
Temple in Lalitpur also has stationary praying wheels around the temple that
you can spin as you circumambulate the temple.
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| The Golden Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Nepal |
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| Inside the Golden Temple, Patan Durbar Square, Nepal |
After visiting the
Patan Durbar Square, we headed in the direction of the capital city of
Kathmandu to see the Kathmandu Durbar Square. But before we started our next
trip, we slowed down for some Nepalese fast food. Momos, or dumplings that are steamed
or fried, are a delicacy in Nepal, and a dish of the same was as saporous to me
as the superb monuments and buildings in Nepal. I had several dishes of momos
in Nepal, and the best of them was at the Tea House Inn in Nagarkot, but more
about my momo-fied experience later.
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| Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal |
The Kathmandu Durbar
Square area, also known as the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square, boasts of dozens of
temples. Among them, the most important sites include the Mahendreswar Temple,
the Taleju Temple, Chyasin Dega, Kal Bhairav, Kumari-ghar, Kasthamandap,
Hanuman statue and the nine-storied palace.
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| Kathmandu Durbar Square |
As we sauntered down
the main road fringed on both sides with souvenir shops and gazed at the other
camera-holding tourists staring with awed us as us at the beautiful specimens
of Nepali architecture, I thought about the power of art. Dequincy’s literature
of power came to mind; probably, these monuments that move humanity and stir
them to their depths by their sheer majestic appeal are in reality literatures
in masonry crafted by authors whose names are conspicuous by their absence in
the history of the world. I tried to imagine, making my way through a
sunlight-washed strip of land of the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square, the faces of
the wan-looking, over-tired tanlings in grimy clothes and with dry lined hands
who actually built the great pieces of architecture that surrounded me. Except,
what I saw, was not a series of faces, but one giant face that comprised, like
the tessellated pieces of a puzzle, a thousand faces with indistinguishable
ambiguous features that belonged to the workers who built the edifices in the
arena.
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| Kumari-ghar, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal |
Our first halt at the
Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square was the Kumari-ghar, a holy home that houses
Nepal’s living goddess, a mortal manifestation of the demon-slaying Hindu goddess
Durga. The practice of worshipping the Kumari is an ancient Hindu practice. In
India, too, the Kumari is worshipped during Durga Puja. The Kumari worship
performed on the eighth day of the Durga puja by the Ramkrishna Mission, Belur
Math, West Bengal, is especially famous. However, unlike the one-day ceremony
of Kumari worshipping in India, the cult of venerating the Kumari is much more
profound in Nepal.
After an elaborate
process of selection, which includes perlustration of horoscopes of various
young girls, checking their features for thirty-two particular signs of
divinity, the ancients of the Nepali community choose a small group of young
girls. These contenders to the holiest of holy post of the Kumari are further
subjected to the test of sitting inside a darkened room in company with freshly
severed buffalo heads and demon-mask wearing dancing men. The atmosphere, as we
can guess, should scare an ordinary five-year old girl, but the would-be Kumari
wouldn’t display any sign of fear. Therefore, the girl who doesn’t display any
hint of fear would eventually be the Kumari.
Once selected, the
Kumari moves in the Kumari-ghar where she remains until she reaches puberty.
During her reign, a Kumari never leaves her dwelling, except on days of special
festivity. The divine inhabitant, however, occasionally comes to one of her
windows in the evening to wave at the visitors who gather at her courtyard.
When we reached the
Kumari-temple, the place was already crowded with people waiting eagerly for a
glance at the living goddess. The reliefs on the pillars and windows of the
Kumari-ghar are fascinating and are a treat for a eyes. After a perusal of the
architecture of the Kumari house, we gathered that the Kumari wouldn’t arrive
until an hour later, and so, we decided to visit the other edifices around the
area before we came back to the Kumari-ghar a little later. Nevertheless, when
we came back from our trip after an hour we found that the Kumari had come and
gone, and we never got to see the living goddess of Nepal.
Our second stop at the
Kathmandu Durbar Square was the Hanuman Dhoka palace next to the famous
vermillion-smeared statue of the monkey god poised on a stoned pedestal. The
entrance of the palace, which houses a museum, now closed, is interesting. Two
giant beautifully painted stone lions stand on either side of the main gate. As
you step inside, you will find yourself in an extensive courtyard flanked on
both sides by buildings belonging to the old royal family. The wood-carved
relief works in the windows and the pillars of the royal buildings are
spectacularly done.
On a sidewall of the
building immediately left to the entrance, a series of pictures of the
former kings of Nepal is displayed. If you care to know the royal history of
Nepal, you may stop and study the pictures of Nepal’s royal sires. In the
pictures many of the kings are depicted as standing in Napoleonic stances, wearing
plumed headgears, with one elevated arm and an upraised index finger. The
stairs at the back of this building will take you to the upper stories of the
structure. This building, just like the nine-storied palace, has upper-stories
completely vacant of furniture. Occasionally, as in the nine-storied palace,
you may find a picture or two of the former kings’ in one of the walls, but
other than that these buildings are completely vacant. Despite that we climbed
the steep steps of the nine-storied palace and discovered the rubble-remains of
the museum in one of the floors in the process. A painting of an arrow on the
wall of one of the upper-stories of the palace pointing leftward accompanied by
the words “museum this way” directed our attention to a room with closed iron
shutters. Through the shutters, we saw the dusty remains of a vacated room with
bare walls and rubble on ground. The museum was evidently closed for good.
After we exited the
palace, we went to visit the famous Kal Bharav statue in the Durbar Square.
This statue, depicting the destructive manifestation of lord Shiva, is undated,
but said to have been installed at its present location by King Pratap Malla. The
statue would awe you with its majestic proportions. Aspersed liberally with
vermillion powder, the six-armed god with a golden crown is a unique structure
in the Hanuman-dhoka Durbar Square. Incidentally, this statue had been a great
aid for the government of Nepal who used it as a place for people to swear the
truth, for it is believed that those who speak a lie in front of the Kal
Bhairav would inevitably face death.
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| Kal Bhairav, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal |
My reason for being excited
about seeing the Kal Bhairav was, however, entirely unrelated to the statue’s
religious significance. The place did have religious appeal for me, but for an
entirely different reason: my favorite fictive hero, detective Prodosh Mitra,
alias Feluda, created by Satyajit Ray, during his adventures in Kathmandu in
the novella Jato Kando Kanthmandu (Criminals
of Kathmandu), had actually been to that place. A sketch in the book showed
Feluda’s cousin and assistant, Topshe, and his friend, mystery-thriller writer
Jatayu, alias Lal Mohan Ganguly, standing before the stone statue of the Kal
Bhairav. It was a pilgrimage for me, visiting the same spot where Feluda had
been several years before. The statue looked exactly how it had been portrayed
in the book, and I was thrilled to be in its vicinity. For a moment, I felt I too
was part of Feluda’s adventures in Kathmandu, and was busily engaged with the
trio—Feluda, Topshe, and Jatayu— as they hunt down the criminals in Kathmandu.
My husband, who is well aware of my eccentricities, took a photograph of me
standing in the exact spot where Jatayu and Topshe stood in the picture. It was
the most memorable picture of my Nepal trip.
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| The Sketch by Satyajit Ray Showing Jatayu and Topse Standing in front of the Kal Bhairav Statue in Kathmandu |
Tago Ga`n, or the Big Bell,
was our next stop. It is a bell supported by a couple of sturdy-looking stone
pillars and a tiled roof. It is only when the deity Degitaleju is being worship
that the bell is ever rung. It is just another religious accessory that looked
very dapper in the area.
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| The Big Bell at the Kathmandu Durbar Square, Nepal |
Gaddhi Baithak, a white
building, was our last stop before we finished our day tour. Built in 1908, this
building, which was an extension of the old palace, was homage to the classical
European style of architecture, and looked terribly out of place in company
with the pagoda-style buildings that surrounded it. Albeit an anachronism, the neoclassical
building was beautiful in every respect, like all the other structures in
Kathmandu’s Durbar Square.
Having finished viewing
and photographing the major edifices in and around the Durbar Square, my
husband and I went to a coffee shop in the neighborhood to savor the taste of
Made-in-Nepal coffee. The Nepalese did themselves well when it came to coffee making.
We sat at a window seats at the coffee shop sipping our cappuccino and watching
the crowd gathering around the Durbar Square with a feeling of satisfaction
that comes when a day is very well spent.
