PATAN, Nepal – When the 6-year-old goddess cried for four days, it was seen as a terrible omen for Nepal, and her tears seemed to foreshadow a national tragedy.
On the last day of her crying, June 1, 2001, the Crown Prince of Nepal killed nine members of the royal family, including his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwaryabefore shooting himself.
More than twenty years later, in a nondescript office in Patan, an ancient city a few miles from the capital Kathmandu, that girl who had been worshiped as a goddess was now a woman engaged in more earthly affairs: Chanira Bajracharya, a freshly beaten MBA, handled loan applications at the financial services firm where she works.
Her ability to get a business job sets her apart from most other former kumari, women who in their prepubescent youth were worshiped as the living embodiment of a Hindu goddess – but most of whom received no education.
“People used to think because she is a goddess, she knows everything,” said Ms. Bajracharya, 27. “And who dares to teach a goddess?”
She spoke at the family home in Patan, where she had performed her divine duties for ten years.
The walls of one room were covered with pictures of her in full kumari regalia, a little girl with brightly colored lips and eyes full of kohl. In one photo, she looks imperiously down on the last king of Nepal, Gyanendra, the killer’s brother.
Her days were often spent receiving a long line of visitors, who knelt at her tiny feet, who were never allowed to touch the ground outside. The devotees placed offerings of money and fruit in copper bowls, while Chanira wordlessly extended an arm covered with red satin and smeared vermilion paste, a religious marker called tika, on their foreheads as a blessing.
The institution of the kumari, which means ‘virgin’ in Nepali, goes back seven centuries. The tradition revolves around the story of a Hindu goddess, Taleju, who gave advice to a king.
During a meeting, he tried to sexually assault her and she disappeared. He expressed such regret that she told him that although she would never appear in her own body again, he should worship a young girl, through whom the goddess would continue her royal counsel.
Since the 14th century, girls as young as 2 years old have been chosen from Buddhist families from the Newar community living in the Kathmandu Valley.
A dozen children are awarded the title of kumari at any given time, but only three, who represent the three ancient kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley, including Patan, observe the kumari lifestyle full-time. The other goddesses, Mrs. Bajracharya said, are “only part-time.”
The kumari, Ms Bajracharya said, act as a syncretic symbol between Hinduism and Buddhism, the major religions in Nepal, a country of about 30 million people.
“In Buddhist culture, children are protectors,” said Chunda Bajracharya, a retired Newar language professor who is not related to the former kumari. “It’s our culture, tradition and a matter of pride,” she said.
Most of the kumari for Mrs. Bajracharya, including her aunt, Dhana Kumari Bajracharya, received no formal training. Losing their divinity when they first get their period, many enter adulthood as illiterate and struggle to find a life off the throne.
Ms. Bajracharya is working to change that and is urging the current crop of young goddesses to study as she did, which she says will not only help them, but also help protect an institution that critics claim is giving girls their money. childhood and human rights.
“It makes it easier to return to society after retirement,” she said. “It’s very hard to be illiterate in this world.”
Mrs. Bajracharya, who is still a staunch champion of the tradition, had favorable feelings about her unusual childhood.
“Those moments were the best moments of my life,” she said. “Everyone came to me, everyone came to get blessings from me, they brought a lot of gifts and were part of festivals.”
And she rejected any idea that the role had violated her rights.
“People used to think that as goddesses we lead a very secluded life, that we can’t talk to others, that we don’t have time to play, that we can’t smile,” she said. “All those myths that have been so popular, sometimes I get so annoyed.”
Yet no one considers it an easy role.
Kumari are rarely allowed outside. During the twelve and a half times a year they go out for rituals or during the festival season of the Nepalese Hindus, they must be carried either in a palanquin or in one’s arms. They don’t talk to strangers – and when they’re in the throne room, they don’t talk to anyone, not even family.
In return, they receive unparalleled respect. Every year at the Indra Jatra festival, when Kathmandu’s kumari is driven through the city streets in her chariot, she affirms the head of state’s legitimate claim to power with a tika.
Since their emotions are seen as a reflection of the well-being of the nation, like Ms. Bajracharya’s outburst before the royal massacre, they should strive to remain passive during rituals.
Ms. Bajracharya’s reign as the living goddess of Patan from 2001 to 2010, fueled some of the greatest political changes in Nepal, from the palace assassinations that her tears would have predicted, to the Maoist insurgency that intensified thereafter. In 2008, Nepal abolished its 240-year-old monarchy and became a democratic republic.
That same year, the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled that the kumari tradition should be preserved, but changed. It ordered the government to give Kumari an education allowance, in addition to the stipend and old-age pension they had already received.
“Once upon a time girls didn’t study. Now all the children are studying. So that freedom must be there for kumari,” said Udhav Man Karmacharya, the chief priest of the Taleju Temple in Kathmandu.
And that teaching did not interfere with Chanira’s divine duties, he noted.
“She was very natural as a goddess,” he said.
Before Chanira was born, her mother, Champa Bajracharya, received a sacred sign in a dream – a lotus flower that fell from heaven into her womb. She went to a Buddhist priest, who interpreted the dream so that her child would be a pure soul who would “revolt from the world,” she said.
When it came time to deify a new young girl in Patan, all 150 families in the Ratnakar Mahavihar Hakhabahal community there, part of the Newar clan, were invited to take their female children to an extensive selection trial. The chief priest performed tantric rituals and asked Taleju to live in one of the children. An astrologer studied their charts.
‘The one chosen by the goddess, she starts showing signs, she becomes more polite, her face looks red. Those physical changes, they happen. Anyone who is there can see that she is possessed by the goddess,’ said Mrs. Bajracharya of what she remembers of the day she was selected.
“Those not chosen by the goddess cry, walk away or run away, or exhibit other unacceptable behavior that disqualifies them,” she added.
The finalists are examined by the priest’s wife for scars, moles, and other perceived defects. The girl with the highest number of 32 prescribed qualities – including eyes like a deer and a heart like a lion – becomes the next kumari, clothed with the power of the goddess.
Kumari usually live secluded from their parents, raised by official guardians. But Mrs. Bajracharya stayed at home, as there was no dedicated kumari house for her during her reign.
After completing the divine duties of a typical day, she would study, play with her cousins, and watch movies on a computer. But not a rough life – a scrape from her childhood could have cost her her divinity.
Her mother arranged for her to be tutored by a teacher from a nearby school.
Ms Bajracharya, who stepped down at the age of 15, still commands respect in the Newar community of Patan. And she mentors young goddesses, such as her successor, 9-year-old Nihira Bajracharya, who is not a relative, who is tutored.
“We really need education to survive,” she told Nihira’s parents when the girl took the throne at the age of five. lives after her divine duties, and she needs all the skills necessary to survive.”
Life after retirement is notoriously difficult for many kumari. They may have trouble walking properly or speaking in a whisper after doing so little of either. A popular myth says that every man who marries a kumari dies within a year, although many former kumari do marry.
Ms. Bajracharya’s own dating prospects have been influenced by the myth, she said, because she had received fewer marriage proposals than her peers.
But she has landed a coveted job with a foreign company, a subsidiary of Home Loan Experts, a mortgage brokerage based in Australia. Ms. Bajracharya believes that it was her family’s modern adaptation to the traditional kumari lifestyle that enabled her to perform so well by studying business administration at the prestigious Kathmandu University.
Few people in the office know that the new credit analyst spent her childhood worshiping royalty and Nepal’s first president. On a recent Monday, she was just one of dozens of workers, mostly young women just out of business school, eyes fixated on desktop computers, assessing Australian home loan applications 6,000 miles away.
“As a kumari, I wasn’t allowed to talk to many outsiders,” she reflected. From that time “until now being in a position where I have to constantly interact with foreign clients, it’s been a journey,” she added. “And I really feel like I still have so much to learn.”
Bhadra Sharma contributed reporting.