Lalitpur Festival Of 2013

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Lalitpur Festival of 2013 has started off on March 28, 2013 and ended on April 3, 2013. Lalitpur has been famous for its arts and crafts. The main objective of this festival is to impress the world with its religion, culture, crafts, and business. The festival has shown that each neighborhood has its own crafts such as metal-craft, stone-craft, woodcraft, and the farmer community that has distinct culture representing the Nevah community. Each neighborhood has the typical Nevah food show and sale for taste. The business community has held a large sale-cum-exhibition at the Bhandarkhal in the ancient palace. The religious show was at the perpetual fire called Agnimath.

The stated objective of the festival in a brochure is “Lalitpur Festival 2013 is an effort towards (on) transforming city into one of the most vibrant city (cities) (in the world) for its rich culture and heritage, social lifestyle, its traditional handicrafts and its industries borne upon its tradition; attracting thousands of visitors from all over the world annually to experience Lalitpur.”

The main organizers are Lalitpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Lalitpur Sub-metropolitan City, and Jyapu Samaj Yala. Jyapu means farmer in the Nevah language. The supporting agencies are religious, cultural, business and district administration. People at seventy-seven localities have set up different shows.

Lalitpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry has the business exhibition at the Bhandarkhal. Money plays a main role in the business community. You need to pay Rs 20 to enter the mall like exhibition area. It has nothing but the different sorts of stalls set up to sell goods. You can buy different clothing, shoes, electronic goods, and many more things that are not related to the arts and crafts of Lalitpur, certainly not the glory of Lalitpur, as almost all goods are imported, and even the idea of such show was imported.

Lalitpur Sub-metropolitan City took the responsibility for managing the festival. It has set up parking lots, bus stops, exhibition stalls, and even toilets but not many. The Sub-metropolitan City would have done better job if it had publicized the information required by the visitors on where to start and end. Most of the visitors reached the ancient palace area and ended up seeing the Bhandarkhal exhibition. It gave the impression of the Lailtpur Festival was in fact the Bhandarkhal exhibition.

The Jyapu community and the craftsmen community did excellent jobs showing their arts and crafts to the world. The Jyapu community did ever things possible to display the Nevah culture that has been fast disappearing. Craftsmen communities such as coppersmiths, stone carvers and woodcarvers displayed their extraordinary skills in molding idols, making pots, and pans, carving deities in stones, and in wood.

Women made a great contribution to the festival cooking different Nevah dishes for the visitors. You can enjoy fresh ‘yeomari’: dumplings in different sizes with sweets in them. You can enjoy ‘samaya-baji’: a unique dish that goes with the freshly distilled spirit. You can watch how the Jyapu women distilled spirit. You can even test the warm spirit.

A group of Jyapu women proudly displayed the preservation of greens and chilies. Another group displayed the traditional method of spinning of cotton, preparing yarns for weaving cloth. The scene of women wearing traditional outfits and working in the traditional style is the most attractive one. We might be able see such outfits in the theaters only in the immediate future.

We started off at the show of a dumpy of an old man standing on several piled-up dummy logs talking to the dummies of scholars and common folks assembled at the public place in the ancient time. The old man was the final decision-maker on where the rain god brought from Kamarupa was to reside. The deity has several names such as Karunamaya, Matsyandranath, and Avloketsvor.

The man was 120 years old. Everybody thought that he would be an impartial arbitrator. He became bit bias toward Lalitpur, and said that the deity was to stay on in Lalitpur. All the seven logs piled up sunk into the earth and the old man fell down.

A drought had continued for 12 years. No sign of breaking it. The king of Bhaktapur consulted with the astrologers. Only on arrival of the deity would break the 12-year long drought in Nepal, a group of astrologers found out. The deity was in Kamarupa. He was born as a son of the demon king and the queen of Kamarupa.

The king of Bhaktapur, the priest of Kathmandu, and the porter of Lalitpur went to Kamarupa to bring the deity. The king of Bhaktapur was the powerful one, the priest of Kathmandu was the ablest Tantrik, and the porter of Lalitpur was the strongest man. The trio of king, priest and porter successfully brought the deity from Kamarupa to Nepal. Immediate rains broke the 12-year drought.

A placement dispute arose in the group. Where the deity was to stay. Each of the trio argued that he had contributed so much to bring the deity. Each of them wanted to have the deity in his area. Ultimately, they agreed to approach the oldest man in Nepal to resolve the dispute. Incidentally, the old man was in Lalitpur. He decided in favor of Lalitpur but he lost his integrity, and fell down from the platform.

The deity resides in Lalitpur and Bungamati for six months in turn. The deity spends six months in Lalitpur when the sun moves up to the north, and then another six months in Bungamati when the sun moves down to the south. In both the places, the deity has a magnificent temple to reside.

The deity used to travel on an about 50-feet-high spire-like temple on four wheels back and forth between Lalitpur and Bungamati. Later on, the deity traveled on such a wheeled temple once every 12 years. The rest of the years, several volunteers carried the deity on a portable shrine on the shoulder poles.

Then, we went to see the arch made of cooper pots, pans and idols. It was in the neighborhood of the ‘tamrakar’ means coppersmith.  Traditionally, ‘tamrakars’ had made cooper pots, pans and saucepans for household purposes. Even now, they make such items but they also make bronze items such as idols of various deities, and candle sticks.

Traditionally, the crafts of the making bronze idols of deities were of Vajracharya and Shakys. Then, ‘tamrakars’ also came to the scene. Now, even some members of the Jyapu community compete with the traditional craftsmen in making bronze deities. Some members of the Jyapu community worked as helpers to the traditional craftsmen. They learned the crafts while working as helpers. Later on, they set up their own workshops to mold deities. I saw number of about five-feet-long bronze deities kept on display at the Jyapu neighborhood.

Stone craft is the special skill of one of the Nevah communities at the neighborhood of stone crafts. I noticed a young man meticulously carving a sophisticated idol of a deity at the neighborhood of the stone carvers. The craftsman has a bunch of different-sized chisels. Traditionally, they carved every idol or image manually. Now, they use some modern tools, too.

Woodcarving is another crafts; one of the communities of the Nevah perfected the woodcarving. They live in one neighborhood. They carve figures of animals, birds and deities out of wood. They also use several-sized chisels and modern tools to carve those figures. They make doors, and photo frames with carved deities and other auspicious figures. They carve the famous peacock windows. Currently, they started off carving in bamboos, too.

Prices of various idols and items vary from one material to another. The highest prices are of the idols made out of bamboos, wood and stone, and then only of bronze and copper. A single bamboo image of a monkey of one and a half feet is priced at US$ 200, a single peacock window of 2’x3’ sells at US$600, a stone idol of 2’x3’ costs thousands of dollars whereas a pair of bronze lions of 1.5’x2’ costs only US$400.

At the Jyapu neighborhood, we saw some women showing how they roped the greens together, and other women roped red chilies. Some other women demonstrated the spinning of cotton, and then preparing the yarns for weaving cloth. Such things are going to disappear soon.

We found women making traditional foods such as ‘yeomari’: a kind of dumpling of different figures with sweets in them, and a traditional dish called ‘samaya-baji’: flattened rice with roasted buff meat, boiled beans, and a pancake of lentils. At other places, women also cooked modern dish called ‘mo-mo’: dumplings. They must be making a lot of money selling these dishes.

At one neighborhood, a traditional distillation system of spirit was on display. A copper pot was on fire made of wood. It was boiling the fermented millet. On top of it sat a terracotta vessel holding a cooper pot with water in it to cool the vapors of spirit coming out of the copper pot, and to transform the vapors into liquid. Another small clay pot called ‘gulu’ placed inside the terracotta pot collected the liquefied spirit. Making such spirit is against the law but it is the tradition, the law could hardly stop.

We could not reach all the neighborhoods. We had already walked for about three hours but there were still many neighborhoods to visit, yet. We were tired and our desire for seeing the rest of the show had been fading away fast.

Somebody told us we should not miss the show at the Bhandarkhal. We bought tickets each costing Rs 20 for each of us. Seeing at the enthusiasm of the people going in to the Bhandarkhal, I guessed that ticket counters must collect thousand of rupees a day.

Unlike at each neighborhood, we did not see arts and crafts at the Bhandarkhal until we reached the end of the complex. Almost all of the stalls were full of different consumer goods. It looked like a mall. New products were demonstrated and sold. Even the Bible messages in the Nepalese language were distributed. Not having any show of crafts disappointed me but soon I saw a handicraft stall. The stall had bamboo crafts, woodcrafts, and stone crafts. Prices of the crafts went through the roof.

Finally, we visited the perpetual fire called ‘agnimath’. It was a religious show to attract the people to our religion, according to the attendant at the ‘agnimath’. Four Rajoupadhayas means royal priests read out four Vedas in Sanskrit. I did not know much about the ‘agnimath’. The attendants said that almost all research articles on the ‘agnimath’ were posted on its facebook.com/agnishala. The brochure prepared by the Society of Rajoupadhayas translates ‘agnimath’ as ‘The Temple Of Sacred Fire’. It also makes money selling the items of offerings to the fire god.

April 3, 2013