In fact, many of the oldest temples in the Kathmandu Valley, built centuries ago with magnificent architecture, did not use any iron nails. The prevalent belief was that hammering metal nails was inauspicious for the holy abodes of gods. Instead, the temples, many of which withstood massive earthquakes of the past, were simply held together with wooden wedges or “chuku”s.[break]
Understanding and replicating the traditional wooden lock systems, along with the perfectly proportionate architecture of the temples, however, is not so simple. Many modern architects and engineers probably would not be able to follow through with the intricate designs of these structures. And yet, traditional craftsmen with virtually no formal academic qualifications conceived and built them.
Muni Raj Brahmacharya is one such, and probably the last of such master carvers, who never attended school but designed and built entire wooden structures without using a single nail or adhesive for fastening. He lives in Bungamati, a Newar village and the native home of Lord Rato Machchhendranath, located at the outskirts of Lalitpur.
With narrow brick-paved lanes and aged buildings crooked with time, Bungamati still holds traditional feels to it. Amidst newly-built concrete buildings, you will still see many old Newar houses, people working in their fields or drying rice grains on sukuls or straw mats and ducks dipping in moss-covered millponds.
The place where Muni Raj lives is an old Newar house, divided into three parts among the brothers of the family. His is the middle one with a beautifully carved window on the first floor which looks like it has been recently moved from its original place.
As we climb up the narrow wooden stairs, we find the local legend engrossed in trying to fix an old tape recorder. Several of its tiny parts and pieces are scattered around him, half covering the floor of the narrow corridor made into a seating area with an old couch and a plastic mat.
Hard of hearing, Muni Raj does not at first hear his daughter Manju informing him of his visitors, and remains stooped at the corner trying to figure out the mechanics of the old machine. Only when she taps his back, he turns around, smiles instantly and starts clearing up the space.
At 71, Muni Raj needs people to talk either really loud or repeat things at least twice. His 15-year-old son Nabin or his daughter Manju frequently step in to repeat most of the questions as they try to help their father understand. As soon as Muni Raj gets what is being asked, he nods, smiles and quickly proceeds to answer and narrate.
“Life’s been very tough, naani,” he says as he gets up, still stooping, and slowly settles himself in the couch, “Even a pundit who read my palm predicted it right – I’ve died a total of 15 times till now.”
A few minutes into the conversation, Muni Raj starts pouring his life out: the accidents, injuries, broken back, family deaths, property loss, frauds, and the life of hardships he has had to face. But a devout Buddhist, with framed pictures of the Buddha’s life stages hung all over the walls of the corridor, he believes that life as a human being is very precious. “One has to keep moving on until one’s body gives in to death,” he says.
Challenges followed him since his very childhood, he says. His father died when Muni Raj was in his early teens. And even though his father did woodwork himself, he never got a chance to learn it from him. However, growing up in a village of woodcarvers, Muni Raj soon discovered the skills, as he was always eager to learn. Likewise, though he never went to school, he taught himself how to read, write and even build structures.
Eventually, he had perfected making carved doors, locks, railings, windows, statues and much more. But even during his learning phase, he says he felt dominated. He cites an incident when he had to learn how to make Tikejhyaa or aankhijhyaal (window with eye holes). His senior coworkers did not bother to teach him, and he only had a rough sketch of the design on paper.
“For half the day, I stared at the design and studied it carefully. I couldn’t eat that day as I was obsessed to learn the technique. Finally, within two hours that very day, I completed my first tikejhyaa,” he says, smiling.
But carving was not really his forte. “I mostly did Kora (designs) and repairs,” he says and asks Manju to bring out his blueprints from the adjoining room. As he rolls out the dozens of blueprints with neatly sketched structures, he puts on his glasses, studies them carefully, and begins to explain them.
“This is a design of a temple I built on the terrace of a Sahu’s house in Basundhara. I designed and built the entire structure. But the payment would be only for the physical labor and not for the years I had spent on its detailed design and the running around for every material till the last finishing,” he says. “Considering the amount of work I did, I lost out on millions of Rupees there.”
With his repairing skills, he had also been involved in the renovation of most of the old temples, palaces and buildings in the Valley, including the Durbar Square of Bhaktapur, the Golden Window of Patan, the fences around Pashupatinath, and the temples in the nooks and corners of the Valley.
Till a few years back, people from in and around the Valley would come to him with repairs that no other woodcarvers could fix.
“Some people who pass by my house still ask me if I can work on something for them. But I’ve grown weaker and it’s getting too difficult work under orders,” he says.
Muni Raj posing for the camera with his work in Munich.
Though his wrinkled hands are now shaky with what seems to be Parkinson’s disease, the workmanship of the very hands had also given him a chance to tour abroad.
In 1983, when he was working at the Udhyog Chhetra (Industrial District) of Patan, Muni Raj was chosen to go to Munich, Germany, where they had to build a pagoda-style Shiva temple. After his design and the model were approved, he was chosen as the leader of a team of 13 woodworkers who worked under his supervision for two years.
“I was regarded as an engineer back then,” he says. “Finally, when the time came to leave, I, along with one of the team members, traveled to Germany where we completed the temple within one year.”
The ritualistic initiation of the temple in Munich, Germany through Mahadeva Thaapan.
At one point, he shares, their contractor had appointed some German woodworkers to secure the Tundals (or the supporting beams) of the temple. But they were not of the right length and forcefully positioned them the wrong way.
“I had to bring them down, making sure that the roof wouldn’t fall over – a very tricky job – then rework and set them up all over again.”
Impressed, his contractor named him “Timbaa (timber) Doctor,” he says and laughs aloud.
Besides that, from traveling in an airplane for the first time, to getting lost in translations, sightseeing, getting to see a completely different culture to making new friends and many acquaintances, he has plenty of other stories to tell about that one year he spent in Germany and some classic Polaroid pictures to show.
“We had two days off in a week that we’d mostly spend sightseeing and taking pictures from the camera that our employer would lend us. I had tons of such photographs. But I gave some away to people; people took many and never returned them. I never asked and couldn’t keep track of who took what,” he says, shaking his hands.
Probably it was due to this very nature of giving away and trusting people easily that he was cheated of his life’s earning time and again. And now, when his contemporaries have become well-off with their children attending good schools or having started their own business, his family depends on the sole earning of his eldest married daughter’s income.
“Sangeeta, our eldest sister, has a small khaja ghar (eatery) nearby. My other two sisters have recently started working, too. Sabina now makes candles and Sanju is taking sewing classes,” Manju later tells us.
Though Manju and Nabin continued their studies, Muni Raj’s first three daughters had to drop out of school as Muni Raj could no longer support their education. After a bus accident, he stopped going to the Udhyog Chhetra as his body was too weak.
However, he tried to work at home. “I remember all of us five kids and mother helping him carry and sand wood all day for some of the works he undertook,” shares Manju.
“Yes, that was for the house in Basundhara,” Muni Raj adds. “As I got weaker, there was less work. Now I can barely even work on paper but then again I never really got paid for any paperwork.”
Though he has worked a lot, he says the pay was never justifiable. Even for the projects like in Germany, they took care of his food and basic costs but he had to work on very minimal wages. He was often cheated of huge sums by the contractors. But he kept quiet as he had no proof of his hard work and believed that “Instead of fighting for something like money and property, you’d rather give it up and make peace.”
Masin Brahmacharya, Muni Raj’s wife who had returned from the fields, joins in the conversation. “He’s very hardworking but also very naïve, you see,” she says.
Fifteen years younger than her husband, and even with missing teeth, Masin has a pleasant smile. Standing at the end of the staircase, she looks at her husband and says, “He was alone for years and without support or guidance from any of his family members. He’d lost his first wife and his mother the same year and wasn’t in good terms with his brothers. And what can a person do alone?” she wonders as she turns her gaze away.
Having worked under others for years, she says Muni Raj did not even own a proper set of tools to venture out alone. By the time he had a new family to support, his body had started failing him.
“He’s taught his skills to many people who have now become sahus themselves. But our son is still young to carry on with this craft and he’s too busy with his school,” she adds.
Nabin says shyly, “I’ve seen father working and I think I can do the designs. I’m very interested in arts as well.” When asked if Muni Raj would want his son to continue with woodwork, he says, pouting a little, “I want him to study first. But if he wants to, he can.”
As he continues to show his collections of old blueprints, photographs, woodworks and his coin collection, he has a story to tell behind them all. Nabin hurriedly mentions a Newari manuscript that Muni Raj was making a copy of, and adds with amusement, “He can write the manuscript despite his trembling hands.”
As Nabin hands him the unfinished manuscript with the ancient scripture written in golden color, he says very few people can read the script. “It’s a sermon to keep devilish forces away. The copy I had was accidentally burnt. So I decided to make a new one,” he says, handling the manuscript with such care and focus that his hands are controlled and steady.
As he collects his blueprints and photographs, his only evidence of the immense work he has done, Muni Raj mumbles slowly, “I’ve worked hard and I’ve been fair. Though I haven’t earned much, I’ve lived a fair life with no regrets.”
Though Muni Raj lives under one hundred Rupees a day, he says he is content with what he has or does not have. And though he can go on with his stories of misfortunes, or show you the wooden frame he made for his coin collection and tell you that he has not completed it because he does not have the money to buy the glass for it, or mumble on for having to live on his daughter’s earnings, he smiles and tells you that he has no complaints.
Despite being uneducated, with his willpower, Muni Raj gathered the precious knowledge of inimitable Nepali architecture. With his creative talent and hard work, he benefited many people; but unfortunately, he could not do so for himself.
Discouraged and with a failing body, the genius woodcarver who was once incredibly eager to learn every technique there was in woodwork says he has given up on his woodwork. Under exploitation, if people like Muni Raj are driven to give in, we do not just lose out on the immense knowledge they hold but also on our unmatched heritages along with them.
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