The practice of ghatu is not precisely the same everywhere, though it is still identifiable as the same dance. What I am about to explain is specific to Nalma and simply an explanation of what I witnessed. I have not included any names or videos out of respect for the ghatusaris.
On the fourth day of Nalma’s ghatu festival, many more people travel in from other villages. They know this is the most exciting and special day, and they make a point to attend and celebrate late into the night. Like every other day of ghatu, this one began with the regular trade-off between dancing and going into a light trance, where the ghatusaris’ eyes close and then are re-opened by snorting sunpaani. By mid-afternoon, the singers had reached a point in the song text where the feature events would happen. The crowds buzzed with excitement, and someone handed me a few raw grains of rice sprinkled with turmeric. I was to eat one and keep the rest in my pocket, for my safety.
All of the ghatusari who experience trance, from the youngest to the oldest, sat on the dancing mat facing the singers. This was how they arranged themselves every time the trance music began, so they could be safely seated when their eyes would be closed by the music. This time, however, none of them covered their heads with their shawls, as they normally did. They had all unbraided their hair too. Gurubaa, the lead singer, sprinkled them with sunpaani – for their safety.
Then the singing began. It was nothing like the standard trance music, which is slow and meandering, hypnotic even. This new song, the kusunda music, was faster, upbeat and lively, almost joyous. Instead of playing the madal drum as they do for the dance music, the singers were all clapping; many extra men had joined for this particular song too. It is cyclical, repetitive, and lyrically simpler than the rest of the ghatu music, making it more accessible for men who don’t otherwise participate in the singing.
Within moments after the singing started, the younger ghatusari began to sway their upper bodies in a circular motion, slowly and smoothly. Their eyes were already closed; it was as if they had already departed for wherever they go when they are entranced. It took a bit more time for some of the older ghatusari to respond to the music, but eventually their eyes closed too and their upper bodies began to rotate. One of the older ones made a strange face when her eyes closed, as if she was trying not to cry; that moment passed, and she began to rotate too.
This rotating started rather gently, and for some of the ghatusari it remained a gentle motion, slow and consistent, for the entire time. For others, however, the circling became bigger and faster as time went on and as the trance deepened. The younger ghatusari were still wearing their crowns made of flowers and popped rice, but those began to fall apart from the constant movement. The sousares seated behind them removed the crowns with difficulty; imagine reaching for the head of a constantly moving person who is completely ignoring and unaware of you, and then pulling off a crown that has become entangled with their long hair.
The sousares had a very challenging job for the extent of this kusunda portion. Aside from removing the crowns, they had to protect the ghatusaris’ heads from colliding with one another. The ghatusaris were seated in tight quarters and rotating at their own paces, so they were constantly passing in and out of each other’s bubbles. Of course they were completely unaware of each other or even of their own movements, so they were unable to watch out for their safety. The sousares constantly reached their hands forward to guide the ghatusaris’ ever-moving heads. At several points, the sousares missed or weren’t fast enough, and two (or even three) ghatusaris clocked heads. When I asked the next day if they had headaches, they all said no, they didn’t feel anything.
This went on for quite a while, a vision of constant motion and long black hair wheeling and tumbling everywhere. Then, suddenly, one of the young ghatusari, the first one to close her eyes and start rotating, fainted. Her sousare caught her in her lap and quickly covered her in a blanket. For warmth? For protection or privacy? I’m not sure. One by one each of the ghatusari fainted, sometimes two at exactly the same time or in quick succession. After an hour of this same song and same spinning motion, there were just two left: one with her slow, constant movement, and the other spinning fast and wide. The sousares had their work cut out protecting these two remaining ghatusari, since they were seated right next to each other.
The older one fainted. The younger one spun with ever-increasing ferocity, her hair whipping around and her face completely obscured. The men crowded in closer, leaning forward and singing and clapping with as much energy as they could muster after an entire hour of this song. The one remaining ghatusari spun, impossibly, even faster. When she leaned forward, her forehead nearly touched the ground in front of her. When she leaned backward, her legs lifted partially off the ground. She rotated so widely and so rapidly that she began to travel on the mat, though she was still sitting in a cross-legged position. I have never seen anything like this.
Finally, she fainted too. The music stopped, the men adjusted their seating a bit, and they began a new song. This was the typical trance song, the one we had heard many times over the past few days. Usually it just causes the ghatusaris’ eyes to close, but this time their eyes were already closed and a deeper trance had already begun, so this rendition of the song was sure to have a different impact. All of the ghatusari were somewhere deep in the trance, lying with their heads in the laps of their sousares, covered in blankets. After five minutes or so, the young ghatusari who had fainted first burst out of her slumber. She sat up quickly, threw off the blanket, and began to scratch her head vigorously. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t seeing what we were seeing. She looked right at me and then through me, to some other world. She started to cry and continued to scratch, pulling at her clothes and fighting with the sousare who tried to protect her modesty.
Slowly, one by one, the other ghatusaris awoke in a similar manner: explosive, with weeping and scratching. When about half had woken up but some persisted in their deep trance slumbers, one of the awakened ghatusari became angry. She stared daggers at the men who were singing through their hoarse voices, because they weren’t singing loudly enough to wake up the other women. She stared daggers at the spaces between the men too, as if there were ghosts of singers past who weren’t singing with enough effort. Normally this woman is incredibly mild-mannered and shy, but she slapped several of the men and jerked them closer to the sleeping ghatusari. I am told that the deep slumber trance is a difficult and dangerous place to be, where the ghatusari see the dead ancestors of the village, and there is a real risk of being lost in that trance space and not returning. Everyone knows the old story of the ghatusari from another village who died during this kusunda portion.
One of the young ghatusari woke up, begin to spin, and then fainted again. Another woke up partially but struggled to sit up all the way, as if something was pulling her back toward the earth. The singers and the sousares around her had to push her upright and massage her hands. Two of the older ghatusaris, who were chosen together as children and have been dancing together for at least thirty years, burst awake at exactly the same time.
Just one woman was left – the older sister of all the ghatusari, the oldest one from Nalma who experiences the trance. All the men crowded around her and sang with whatever they had left. They received encouragement from the awakened ghatusaris in the form of slapping and pushing. There is talk in Nalma about this particular ghatusari and the things she sees when she is in this state; they say she talks quite openly about what she has seen, though the ghatusaris are given strict instructions not to share their visions. I felt sincere concern that she might not wake up, but then finally she burst through, scratching and weeping like the other women.
The music stopped. The women sat facing Gurubaa, weeping and disheveled. He went to each of them individually and asked who they were, where they were from, and what they were doing. They each replied that they were the Raja (King) or Rani (Queen) of Palpa (a region in Nepal) and they had come to beg for money. This matches the story of the ghatu lyrics, about Pashramu Raja and Yambawati Rani who leave the palace to become beggar-saints. The ghatusaris continued to weep as they stood up and took oil in their hands, moving down the line to bless the singers’ heads (albeit roughly) with oil. Though I was sitting right in line with the singers, none of the ghatusari touched or even looked at me. However, there are two ghatusari, one young and one very old, who don’t experience the trance and were sitting quietly to the side, watching the events unfold. At several points, some of the entranced ghatusari grabbed them and pulled them aggressively into the mix, with the obvious message that everyone should participate in blessing the singers, trance or no trance.
Then the three-foot-tall hookah came out, with the loose hot coals burning in the side attachment. Ten entranced and weeping women with oil all over their hands took hold of it, wrestling to take control so they could each take a pull. This has a religious significance, though I am not quite clear what it is. The small mob moved toward the two main singers, Gurubaa and Raju Dai, to offer them a pull as well. This became increasingly rowdy and the men had to jump out of the way to avoid the possibility of falling hot coals. The ghatusaris pushed and pulled more and more, and with their slick oiled hands the hookah and the hot coals went flying toward the audience. (I don’t believe anyone was hurt, luckily.)
By this point, the ghatusaris had stopped weeping and seemed to be just angry. They each took hold of a wooden stick and pulled up a part of their outfits to use as a collection basket. Guided by their sousares, they moved around the space to every single audience member to beg for money. Anyone who didn’t give money or wasn’t quick enough to get that money out of a purse got struck with the stick. At one point I gave a 10-rupee bill while a young ghatusari was looking in another direction, so when she came to me and I didn’t give a second time, she gave me a nice tap with her stick. I had to give again, at the risk of running out of bills to give to the other ghatusaris! This young girl actually came back a third time after she had made the rounds through the whole space, not realizing she had already received money from my corner of the room. I gave again to avoid her wrath, but the man next to me refused and got a nice little beating.
I should say that this entire begging and beating sequence was truly a highlight of the day. The audience was roaring with laughter and enjoyment, in spite of the slight risks. People who hadn’t adequately prepared by bringing lots of small bills had to run up to a sousare covertly, give a large bill, and get a collection of small bills taken from the ghatusari’s pot in return.
When money had been collected from every person in the room, the ghatusaris returned to Gurubaa, dumping the bills unceremoniously at his feet. Raju Dai began to collect and count the change as the ghatusaris sat back down on the mat. The singers, hoarse as they were, started to sing the typical trance song again, and one by one the ghatusaris’ eyes closed. This seemed to bring them out of the world of kusunda, where they had lived for the past few hours. When that song finished, the sousares came around, offering a snort of sunpaani to each of the ghatusari and bringing them back, fully, into this world.
At this point, I was emotionally spent. The past few hours had been unlike anything I have ever witnessed in my life, and a month later I am still trying to process what I saw. Then, as if that afternoon was not enough of an event, a ruckus began to occur at the entrance by the back of the audience. Several of the ghatusaris’ eyes were still closed as they waited for the sousares with the sunpaani – but no matter, because the clowns had arrived! A few young men covered in grease, wearing ragged dirty clothes and eyepatches and grotesque rubber genitalia and one rain boot each, came bursting into the room. They wore giant witches’ hats covered in stinging nettle and pounced at the crowd, playing pranks and trying to rub the nettle on whoever didn’t get out of their way. Again the crowd roared and shrieked with laughter and fear. People tried to protect me from the nettle or hid behind me to protect themselves; I mostly stayed in my corner, trying to watch the ghatusaris as they came out of their deep trance and arrived in this world of raucous pranking and grotesque humor. Apparently these nettle-clowns are meant to be, well, clowns of course, but also grotesque versions of Pashramu Raja and Yambawati Rani. I am told that in the past they even knew the story and acted out bits of it in their own mocking way, but these days they’re just random young men from neighboring villages who are happy to dress up, get drunk, and thrash about in the crowd.
While they continued their mockery, the ghatusaris and the singers had to get on with the story. The singing and dancing began again, almost as if the kusunda portion had never happened. The ghatusaris tried to focus on dancing, but of course they wanted to watch the fun that was happening in the crowd. One of the nettle-clowns felt extra bold and came storming through the dancing mat – a huge faux pas, as only the ghatusari are allowed to step on that mat – and subsequently knocked over two dancers. The girls seemed to think it was funny, but Gurubaa became quite angry and stormed over to the young man, telling him to get out. He stayed, of course, but in a more subdued manner and never disrupting the dancing mat. The time came in the story for the Raja and Rani to have a gambling match with hunters they meet in the forest, and the nettle-clowns came forward to stand in for the hunters. As is stated in the story, and as always happens, the clowns lost and had to give to the Raja and Rani their jewelry (made of seeds), their rubber genitalia, and the deer they had hunted. Then as punishment (and comedy), they had to dance a terrible rendition of ghatu, much to the delight and disgust of the real ghatusaris.
From a theatrical perspective, what struck me about this entire day, from kusunda to nettle-clowns, was the pure catharsis of the experience. We learn from Aristotle’s Poetics that catharsis, or total emotional release, is the point and benefit of watching theatre. This day was, truly, a total emotional release for everyone involved – from the ghatusaris’ obvious grief to the fear of watching them disappear into trance to the absolute shock and joy of the nettle-clown farce.
Tune in next week to read about the final day of ghatu…