The genius of the people that created such a fanciful of way of bonding between grief-stricken families is enchanting. Life is suffering, declared Lord Buddha.[break]
The whole world is in torment—Nanak dukhiya sab sansar—sang the Guru in deep anguish. Creators of Kathmandu taught its people to bear it all with a grin in the spirit of humility, fraternity and solemnity.
Ghode Jatra is the victory of speed over sloth. It must have been a rider from the highlands that slew the demon Tundi and sent onlookers around the ground at the edge of the town into raptures. However, the horse was not indigenous to the Kathmandu Valley. The festival remains a spectator’s event to this day where local participation, however, continues to be limited.
The bejeweled sleeveless vest shown every year for almost sixteen centuries during Bhote Jatra is yet to find its rightful claimant, but the idea that deities could be entrusted with safekeeping of contested valuables is alluring. Could the undergarment be a metaphor for public trust? The poetry in the movement of masses that throng to have a glimpse of the heritage piece would indicate so, whether the high and mighty of the land who stand witness to the ritual get the message or not is a different matter altogether.
There are various other Jatras in the Valley. The Bisket Jatra of Bhaktapur is a public display of piety and devotion to the Almighty. The Kumari Jatra is perhaps a procession of repentance to lament the passing of matriarchy that may have existed in hunter and gatherer societies. The personification of Mother Goddess serves as a reminder to the laity that there would be no life without her blessings and beneficence.
Among all legends, however, the tales related to Indra Jatra are the most charming. Since the legend is so beautiful and sacred, it has to be true, whether the account is factual or fictional is immaterial—Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. The story has it that the Lord of Gods and the Deity of Rains descended into Kathmandu Valley one fine morning in the disguise of a farmer. He was looking for the Parijat flower that his mother needed for some ritual in the heavens.
In all probability, the “fallen flower”—so called because it becomes impure upon plucking and must be picked up from the ground where it drops after the morning breeze caresses the branches and leaves of the plant—was needed to worship ancestors. Even the word “Parijat” has a nice ring to it, but the magnificence and lyricism of the Maithili equivalent Singhrar (imagine “the self-assurance of the lion” in the tiny bloom!) is missing from the Nepali term.
Residents of the Valley had keen eyes and sharp ears of the people who live in close communities. They captured the interloper from the high heavens and imprisoned him. The distraught mother then came down to earth and secured the release of her son by promising that she would endow the Valley with enough dew every winter to ensure bumper crop year after year.
On some days during winter, rays of the infant sun kiss the mist in the early morning. The soft glow and light wind make rainbows in the drops of dew on dry twigs dance. The rhythm of tranquility drives sparrows into shivers of ecstasy. Arts, architecture, music and literature blow in every direction in the air of the Kathmandu Valley. It is true that a lot of legends, landmarks and lore remain to be unearthed, re-imagined and recreated to suit the level of understanding that talkative beings possess. In the age of noise, few have the patience to cultivate the understanding of silence.
The calmness required for the appreciation of stillness and silence would get even scarcer as the ability to communicate is further commercialized. What would be the form of festivities when every listener is a narrator, and the audience itself is the producer as well as the participant? The traditional Jatra, of course, but with a slight variation adopted from the eponymous folk-theatre form in Bengal.
Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, incidentally a Bengali, showed that plants and animals were alike in responding to various stimuli. Recent experiments have shown that crop productivity and milk yield can be enhanced with the right kind of music. A cow can cry when separated from her calf. The howl of a goat being sacrificed has the strength to make a stone bleed; only human beings can remain indifferent to the anguish of a fellow animal. The dog barks. The chimpanzee can stomp in delight.
The ability to act with multiplicity of emotions is predominantly a human trait. Erupting in distraught laughter, shedding crocodile tears –if only the amphibian could sue humans for willful distortion of a defensive phenomenon – showing cruel kindness and bestowing affectionate anger are often artificial responses created to meet the need of complex situations. It is a somewhat partisan observation, but the theatre captures the essence of all arts.
The Kathmandu Literary Jatra (KLJ), a three-day theatre of literature scheduled to open today and run until September 18, holds the promise of being a series of lively street plays. Even though the stage is as grand as the Patan Durbar Square, and accomplished national and international artists are expected to perform important roles, the script would have to go through impromptu improvisations.
Will the KLJ “unleash Nepali writers globally and help promote tourism,” as some of its organizers have claimed? Well, miracles do happen. That is the assumption upon which almost all Jatras are based. But the power of arts to produce measurable results has been variously contested.
At best, such events awaken sensibilities that participants never knew they possessed. In Marxist formulation, literature “mystifies the real construction of society, creates pseudo-problems and gives pseudo-solutions; its real social function is to keep us quiet, to create a false consciousness.”
Change—in attitude or circumstances—requires concerted action. Arts transform rage into rhetoric and sublimate the clarity of fury into fuzziness of knowledge. Raghuvir Sahay (1929-1990), the celebrated poet-journalist of India who once edited the Hindi Dinman with distinction, asks in one of his award-winning verses, “Can arts change society?” He then answers his own query, “No, where there will be too much art. / The change will not happen.”
No ambiguity there. Finality of the tone is unmistakable. Art can accommodate anger, but it is too feeble to register outrage. The chieftain of Gorkha principality and his warriors knew that festivities have a calming effect and chose the day of Indra Jatra to seize control over Kathmandu.
Once in office, the ruling clique found it prudent to let revelries continue. The more Jatras we add to the calendar, happier would be the people who control our destinies even as we stand mesmerized. Catharsis is the strongest element of great dramas. A Jatra of literature is an occasion for the literati to tell each other what an important work everyone is doing. All such events are destined to be great successes.
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