Dashain!

I don't know how I missed it, or rather the first day of it. I had it in my diary as starting this Thursday, and didn't think to question it. Not even when the BBC was reporting the start of Dashain as they covered the fact that Nepal still has no government. Or when S. said she didn't have school because of Dashain. Or when my Nepali teacher had to cut our class on Thursday short to rush off to the tax office to get her taxes done before the government offices closed for the holiday.

I just thought it was all part of the lead-up to the actual holiday. D'oh!

So Dashain (as usual, 'sh' is more often pronounced like 's') started on Friday (8 October) this year. It's a 15 day Hindu festival that celebrates Durga's defeat of the asura / demon Mahishasur who had made a deal with Brahma that no man or (male) god could defeat him. The battle raged for 10 days, during which Durga and the Mahishasur transformed themselves into various forms to defeat the other. Finally, on the last day, Durga lopped the head of Mahishasur who had transformed himself into a demon buffalo.


Me and Aung Si at the statue of Mahishasura at Chamundi Hill, Mysore (Jan 2009)


Statue of Mahishasura as the demon buffalo at Chamundi Hill, Mysore (Jan 2009)

The 10th day of Dashain is the considered the 'big day', where families gather together and elders give tika (coloured powder placed on one's forehead) to their juniors. Married women also go back to their home villages to take tika from their parents.

The days leading up to the 10th day are filled with animal (particularly goat, but also water buffalo) sacrifice. I'm watching a news report on TV right now with footage of a man leading a herd of goats, presumably towards Kathmandu for the big slaughter. Lauren and I might do what she and Sara did last year and just sacrifice a watermelon.

Since I had the dates wrong, I was under the assumption that I would be away during the big sacrifice / massacre. As it turns out, the sacrifices will be held mostly this Friday and Saturday, while I only fly off to Lukla on my way to visit Sara in the Everest region on Sunday morning.

One of the perks of Dashain (unless you count widespread bloodshed a perk) is that Kathmandu slowly empties itself as people go back to their home villages, especially for the 10th day. So as the week draws on, I'm expecting to see less traffic on the road and fewer people on the streets.

Nepali film देश (Desh)

Adding to my list of cultural activities here was a trip to the local cinema to watch a Nepali film. Of course, being in Kathmandu, 8am on a Saturday morning is a perfectly reasonable time to go to the cinema.

The film was called देश (desh) pronounced 'des' here and meaning 'country' - think of Bangladesh as being the 'land of the Banglas'. As expected, it was quite nationalistic in orientation. Lauren gives a much more detailed review of the film, although neither of us really managed to follow the film completely owing to our less than native Nepali language skills.





The film stars Rajesh Hamal, who I gather is to Nepali cinema what Shah Rukh Khan is to Bollywood (especially with regards to playing characters half their real ages). He plays a journalism student at a local university who ends up forming a political party and eventually dies (because of his beliefs?). Well I must admit I understood a tiny fraction of the dialogue, though the on-screen action made the plot somewhat easy to follow.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the cultural experience of being able to cheer with the audience when the hero does something great or jeer when the bad guy does something heinous. (Note: the bad guy in the film actually throws a grenade at a defenceless woman and her daughter while her brother (the protagonist) and son are walking off.) My mum talks about a time in Singapore when such banter / making comments during movies was the norm in cinemas - something she still continues to do even today, and one of the main reasons I don't watch movies with her.

The film ended on a rather sad note, with the protagonist getting shot, while the political party he's formed keeps moving on (literally, the procession keeps going while he lags behind and collapses). Still, at least his little nephew seems to take over the mantle by accepting the highly symbolic pen that was given to the protagonist when he was a boy. (Note: this same boy is earlier shown setting fire to and killing the man who had thrown the grenade at his mother and sister, with no apparent repercussions.)

It was also interesting to see the flow of people in and out of the cinema. People were arriving as later as an hour into the film, and whenever the cinema doors opened in the middle of the film, a flood of people would take the opportunity to walk out. I suppose it wasn't the plot that most people were interested in, but like myself, just the experience of being at the cinema.


Cinema goers spilling onto the street after the film

Language Development Centre

A few days ago I arranged to meet Reg Naylor, a British expatriate who's been doing development work in Nepal for years (courtesy of a contact of my friend Sara's). I caught a taxi out to the Summit Hotel in Patan where Reg kindly picked me up in a blue jeep and drove us to the Language Development Centre office, also in Patan.



As some of you may know, I'm looking at potential topics for a PhD in Linguistics. One of the main reasons I'm in Nepal is to look at ways of combining my linguistic training with development work. Of course, the aims of the two don't always overlap. Having finished the MA, I felt quite disillusioned that the work I had produced didn't seem to serve any other purpose apart from adding to a growing body of knowledge accessible only by a group of specialists. I don't think see anything wrong with people who aspire to do this sort of research, but I personally need to see my research produce something a little more concrete, and if I were to dive straight into a PhD in Linguistics, I think I would come out feeling the same lack of fulfillment as when I completed the Masters.

So I went to the LDC in the hopes of finding out more about the kind of projects they're involved in / have been involved in here in Nepal. It's been two days and I'm still processing some of what I've learnt. Reg had so many stories from projects he's been involved with, including dealing with the army, befriending Maoists, and most importantly empowering communities (and especially women) through mother tongue literacy programmes. He himself is not a linguist, and much of the work he's done does not necessarily require one to be a specialist. He is not sentimental about language death, believing that if speakers shift to another language they are generally able to create a new identity in that language. What he's interested in is development and improving lives. If developing a minority language helps in that process (and in most cases it does), then that's the strategy he'll take.


Reg, looking a little like Ian McKellan in this photo.

Over the next few days I'll try and post some of the stories he shared with me about how developing minority language literacy has improved the living standards of the communities the organisation has worked with.

Kathmandu on a motorbike (I)

A week ago I got my first taste of being on a motorbike in Kathmandu. No helmet, no protective gear. Just blind faith in P. my driver, who thankfully never went above 40 km/h, and in the other road users (particularly big truck drivers) who could slam into us from behind any time. Since I'm helping  P. with a dictionary project, I suppose it was in his best interests to keep me alive too...





It was pretty fun, if a little harrowing at the start. But it was a great relief to get out of the noise and dust of the city centre.



P. took me to a place out of town he liked. It's still a district of Kathmandu, but it felt a world away.





You might think me mad for sticking out my arm to take a video during the ride, but it had to be done.




On our way back I asked P. how many lessons he'd taken before getting his licence. (I also asked if many people just paid for their licences here.)

ZOMG, it's a new language!

In the past few days, articles have surfaced on news sites like CNN and Reuters regarding the discovery of a new language in NE India - specifically in Arunachal Pradesh, a region which China claims as part of its territory too.

The form of the articles seemed to follow the familiar structure used when talking about the discovery of a new species of animal (incidentally, close to 150 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong area).

Already knowing about the amount of diversity found among the world's languages and their plight, I couldn't help but find even the title a little sensationalist. Yeah sure, there's a new language, so what? Oh, it's on its way out? Again, what's new about that? It also didn't help that according to one language blog I follow:

The announcement this week of findings regarding a previously unknown language has shaken up the field of linguistics.

Seriously? I'm pretty sure the field of linguistics is already badly shaken by the current rate of language death on the planet. But this article appears to be from a non-journalist, simply commenting on the news reports.

Looking at the major articles again today, and couldn't really find the sensationalist element explicit in the writing. Beyond the title - the major role of which is to attract readership - the articles themselves present facts about the speakers, their living environment, the classification of the language in a non-gushing manner. The CNN article is also quick to point out that: "Like most languages, Koro is unwritten and transmitted orally" to readers who may not be aware that there are far more languages without a written tradition.

In contrast, the sensationalist elements in the articles, seem to come from the quotes from the linguists themselves. David Harrison says, "We didn't have to get far on our word list to realize it was extremely different in every possible way." He also writes that, "Koro could hardly sound more different from Aka." Finally, we have the statement: "Koro brings an entirely different perspective, history, mythology, technology and grammar to what was known before."

'Extremely different in every possible way'? 'Hardly sound more different'? 'Entirely different perspective'? What is this? If Koro was a language isolate spoken by a community completely isolated in a valley that had somehow been blocked off from the rest of civilisation thousands of years ago, then maybe. Heck, if it was an alien language from a different language I would embrace such hyperbole. But if it's one of the many Tibeto-Burman languages in the region facing extinction, then how could it be that different?

I could speculate on the reasons the team would say things like these - excitement at the serendipitous discovery of the language, garnering public support and maybe even funding? Maybe the whole 'novelty' of the language is how they're marketing the project, in addition to the sentimentality often associated with language documentation projects. I don't blame organisations like Enduring Voices for doing that - surely, funding is a main problem in this sort of work and part of a successful project is its ability to engage the (global) public and to spur its imagination.

Nepali government (Food sayings part 2)

So for the 10th time since June this year, Nepal still hasn't formed a government.

It reminded me of what L. said the other night:

दाल भात तरकारी जिउ मेरो सरकारी 

daal bhaat tarkaari, jio mero sarkaari

('lentil curry, rice and vegetables, my body my government')

At least you can always count on your daal bhaat to feed you.
(And for most people here, it's daal bhaat 2-3 times a day, everyday.)

And we were complaining about the lack of government in Australia for 2 weeks.

Out of Time

Nepal has to got to be in the weirdest time zone I know. Even weirder than Adelaide.

More importantly, I find it rather annoying that when setting one's time zone in online profiles (Blogger) included, Nepal's time zone isn't included. How often do you see (UTC+05:45) in a drop down menu anyway? So even though all my posts here are time-stamped according to standard India time, the time stamp is always 15 minutes late.

If only things in the subcontinent were that reliably behind schedule!

(But at least the time here makes sense when you consider when the sun rises and when it sets. When I was living in Xinjiang, most people observed Beijing time, but there was a local 'Xinjiang time' that was 2 hours behind. When I was in NE India, Delhi time was followed, even though the NE states are further east than Bangladesh, which is already half an hour ahead of Delhi.)