Festivals and Essays. Intro:

Hello. The main part of this blog below about the festival was written during last week, as was the previous one. Not posted until now due to the usual leccy difficulties and also a rather urgent deadline for my history paper. The system at our Uni is based on the American one, where paper means essay. But I prefer essay meself and flew the flag for dear ole Blighty by calling it so in the essay itself. I’ll let you know if I fail! Anyways by staying up all night on the red-eye I got the thing in. I have another one due in about 3 weeks for the Philosophy class and this time I will take better account of the electricity outage schedule! Lesson learned. Again.

In addition to ordering an extra 5 hour battery for my computer from the UK, I am also trying to weigh up the relative merits of getting a UPS, an Uninterrupted Power Supply, which is really basically a car battery you plug into the mains. This would mean I could run my computer and maybe also a fridge, maye. So in the interests of research I am planning to go to a few places like shops which have these and find out how much they cost. Expect a post soon, with pictures. Oooooh!

Anyways, here’s the post from last week, on a rather more pleasant festival here in Nepal which is called Tihar. Fireworks, firecrackers, Nepali Ska-punk and Hindi raves…. oh yes!

Festivals and Essays. Part Two.

As I type this I am sitting in a rather nice Italianate cafe called “Flavor’s” which is around Boudhanath stupa.  Don’t ask me exactly where, as since the path around the Stupa is round, I always lose my way finding particular places and have been known to go around several times looking for a certain shop or cafe (and to think my Buddhist friends thought I was being very devout and doing lots of ‘Khora’, Buddhist practice walks, around the Stupa ).

Anyways, outside the cafe right now is the sound of firecrackers and fireworks, no doubt attended by the uplifted faces of little kiddies who look all angelic and in awe with their faces lit by the firework’s glow until it finishes (awwwww), whereupon the fastest little angel always rushes to kick the remains, laughing maniacally as she / he does so. This is a good way to get some fun out of the last embers of the firework, but woe betide anyone nearby wearing turn-ups (not that I do, y’understand! LOL )

And another word to the wise, bring earplugs with you if you go out during Tihar, as the same little darlings and their teenage counterparts love to set off MASSIVELY loud strings of firecrackers right next to poor unsuspecting Yingies (tourists) at every opportunity. Scallies….

There’s yet another festival sometime early next year where people throw bags of red and yellow-coloured powder at each other and yes, the Yingies get targeted quite a bit then as well, but all in a good-natured way I am told.  I’ll let you know when the time comes…

Still, like kiddies everywhere, I love the sparkle and flashing lights of the fireworks at least and I did live to tell the tale, albeit with a certain ringing in my ears for a while afterwards… 

Today is the 3^rd day of the festival and is called Tika. This is the day when brothers and sisters exchange a Tika on each other’s forehead. This is in the form of a small spot of usually red-coloured paste, or a small jewel just above the eyebrow line, on what I think you might call the third eye. They also give each other gifts and sweets.  Actually, specifically, the girls are there to honour the boys, which is something my feminist self could get huffy about, if I let it.  Here in Nepal someone was telling me, it seems that families are happy when a girl is the first born because then her brothers, whom the family hope will follow, will have someone to bless them at Tika.  Hmmmmm! (Grumble grumble mutter mutter

Another day as part of the 5 day festival was Tihar itself. Tihar is the Nepali Diwali.  Lots of pretty fairy lights, candles, fireworks and the aforementioned firecrackers (Grrrrr. ) everywhere.

See pictures for some sights around the Stupa, although I seem to have missed the best of it by thinking it was at 7-8 when it was earlier. Bovver. Still, one advantage of staying somewhere for a while is there’s always next year.

I did also get to see a local band in action on the back of a pickup truck around the Stupa. For some reason (possibly the length of their electricity cable I conjectured), these guys were very close to one of the shops, so it was difficult to film them and their pogo-ing drunk-uncle audience, but still I had a go. It was all very Camden; the singer with his immaculately tousled hair, a bit longer than everyone else’s, the guitarist and bassist trying not to knock each other off-stage (well, truck) with their guitars and the drummer, who wasn’t half bad actually, having a good old tap. Some of it was pretty inventive, some of it was Ska-punk (not a bad thing in itself you understand, just nothing new… ) Although the lead singer did blot his copy-book by doing that classic lead-singer thing of getting them to play a new song before it was ready, so that number was a bit shambolic. (If I had a quid for every time that’s happened to me…) Anyways, see him, lyric sheet in hand, on PhotoBucket hopefully….

http://s529.photobucket.com/albums/dd331/isojonesnepal/?action=view&current=SANY0046-1.flv

I have also been experiencing the delights of a full-on Hindi rave going on right next to where I am staying every night for the last four nights.

No problem the first night, there was some good music and I even danced around a bit on the porch to some pretty decent Hindi / Nepali Hip-Hop. And, not tooooo bad the second night, but last night it was VASTLY loud. And by this I mean it was even louder than the lads near where I used to live in North London with their car sound-systems fully cranked up at three in the morning.

Louder and almost fully distorted.

Tonight we have had some particularly over-amplified choons, and a DJ with a short attention-span which doesn’t help me love it.  Oh well.  Still, there’s always a decent cafe like this one to come to up until about 9pm., which brings me back to where I started.

All part of life’s very rich pattern here.

BTW – regarding the Hindi rave, I never thought I’d be actually wishing for a power-cut, especially with an essay to finish, but there you go!

As folks say around here, ‘What to do?’

Namaste .