Features
Sanjob Karki ’20: Dashain Celebration
By Sanjob Karki ’20
October 20, 2016
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The heavy scent of spices and heartwarming aroma of goat curry wafted out from the kitchen. The chilly mid-October breeze blew in from the window and brushed my face as I was readying myself for the day. It was only 7 a.m., but the house was already alive with the jolly faces of my family members decorating the house in preparation for the biggest day of the festival celebrated by Nepalis, Dashain.
Dashain is celebrated for 15 days, commemorating the victory of Goddess Durga over Mahisasur—a fiend in the form of a buffalo who terrorized the Earth—and recognizing the triumph of good over evil.
It was the 10th and the most auspicious day of Dashain, and the streets were hustling and bustling with families: women draped in red saris hunched against their husbands on motorbikes, rushing to their relatives’ homes; kids playing on the streets, yelling in happiness and people carrying plates of food to exchange with their neighbors. It was a day to unite with close and distant loved ones in every household, reconcile broken relationships and receive blessings from elders in the form of tika—raw and wet white rice mixed with bright-red dye put on your forehead.
Kites soared in the skies as neighbors competed fiercely with one another, the numbers of kites slowly dwindling. The feast and the rituals continued for another five days as the lovely utter chaos gradually came to a halt on the 15th day, marking the beginning of the preparations for our second biggest festival Tihar (globally called Diwali) next month.
That is the starkest memory I have of last year’s Dashain. On Monday evening, Oct. 10, while I was in the midst of strenuously completing my assignments to meet the next day’s deadline, my phone rang. It was my mother calling all the way from the opposite side of the world. Wondering why she would call at six in the morning (10-hour time difference), I frantically picked up the phone. I couldn’t understand her words from the background chatter that was going on, so she went to a quieter spot and sent her blessings for my well-being over the call.
As I bade her my regards and hung up, I was dumbstruck. The festival that I always used to await months before its arrival had failed to come to my attention until my mother reminded me on the main day. My senses of my surroundings, my presence in a different place, different country, thousands of miles away from home, peaked. I couldn’t make sense of the emotions that were swelling up inside me, or rather, I felt devoid of any emotions. I felt like my old self was lost amidst the new surroundings and culture that I am adapting to.
I feel like the surrounding I’m in is forging a new identity for me without my control. I’m lost in the constant battle to defend my cultural identity from being obliterated. Even though I find some time during the week to go to the quiet room in the chapel to pray, I still feel spiritually disconnected. There are very few people here with whom I can culturally connect and identify.
Amidst all the chaos and time conflict, the members of the small Nepali community that we have at Hamilton were able to find a common time to have dinner together. A Nepali staff has also invited us for a Friday dinner to celebrate the last day of Dashain.
Goddess Durga symbolizes strength. As Dashain ends, we are invigorated with a renewed energy and zeal to move forward. And with the invigorated strength, I strive to get past this phase and adapt to the new setting, new people, and new values, while still retaining my cultural identity.