The fifth day of ghatu was the hardest, the most beautiful, the most complicated. It began much like the other days, with the ghatusaris and gurubaas already in the space, and the rest of the community slowly trickling in as the morning progresses. This time, however, the ghatusaris’ eyes were already closed – they had been since midnight of the fourth day. After the wildness of the kusunda segment and the nettle-clowns, the crowd sang and danced for hours until they left to sleep or to party elsewhere. Once the ghatusaris had a chance to eat and enjoy themselves a bit following the intense day, they all piled together on mats and under blankets, a giant continuous blob of quietly snoring cotton. The gurubaas, voices still hoarse from bringing the ghatusaris in and out of their extended trance, settled in for a few more hours of singing. There were important segments of the text to complete before the events of the fifth day. These pages of the text are the beginning of the sati ghatu portion, which is arguably the most significant for the ritual. They are sung with the melody of the standard trance song, causing the ghatusaris’ eyes to close as usual – but this time they cannot be opened by snorting sunpaani.
As the men sang and I became more sleepy, I stopped taking notes. I thought about how difficult it would be to listen to this hypnotic, lulling music until 3am and still wake up by 8am to start the final day. For a moment, an idea crept in – the ghatusaris have it easy this time. They just get to sleep through their trance, but I have to stay up and pay attention. A terrible thought indeed, and one I was trying to erase when I noticed a stirring. One of the ghatusaris had woken up and was being led to the toilet, with her eyes stuck shut of course. When she and her sousare returned, she tried to sleep for a bit, but soon sat up with a look of distress all over her face. Her sousare fanned her and massaged her hands; still she sweated and moaned and breathed heavily. The gurubaas continued to sing, casting glances toward the women but sticking to their task.
One by one, the other sousares were called awake to come help, each one massaging the distressed ghatusari and trying to calm her down. They lit incense to purify the space and provide a calming scent. Even her ghatusari sister, the one she’d been dancing with since childhood, woke up and helped to massage her – both with their eyes stuck shut, both at the beginning of a long journey in this trance. Nothing seemed to help the poor woman, despite the efforts of the small crowd forming around her. The singing stopped, and someone sent for a shaman. The woman’s husband, one of the singers for the evening, came and sat with her with deep concern on his face. My research assistant and I tried to be as quiet and in-the-shadows as possible.
When the shaman, or jhakri, arrived, the massaging continued and the singing resumed. He took some time to diagnose the woman and ultimately deciphered that a spirit was disturbing her. He lit more incense and said some mantras that he blew toward her. Perhaps these sacred words made all the difference, or maybe the moment just passed, but slowly you could see her turning a corner. Her breathing evened out, the flush in her face faded away, and she became her stoic self again. One by one, the exhausted sousares went back to their snoring piles of cotton. The men finished up their singing, and everyone went to sleep.
The next morning when we returned, everyone seemed to be in good spirits, if a little sleepy and still with their eyes closed. Cups of sweet milky tea and plates of fried flatbread went around to the ghatusaris, who made great efforts to feed themselves without spilling what they could not see. Many of the mothers of the village had gathered and were milling about the space, holding plates of uncooked rice, flowers, and money. For the last two days I had seen these plates in the hands of other guests and knew that the money would be offered to the Nalma community via the ghatu festival. I knew that the ghatusaris would then perform a simple dance as a blessing and a thank-you for those who had contributed money, in a process called aashish rakhne. I myself had given some money and received a blessing, so I figured I knew what was going to happen. I thought nothing of this all, except to note that it seemed to be all the mothers of the village waiting around to give and receive.
The singing and the dancing began again, without a bang or any great ceremony, without anyone really noticing it was starting. I was distracted, as I’d been pulled away to be dressed in a traditional Gurung outfit again and it seemed like it might fall down. When I finally looked – really looked – at the ongoing aashish rakhne process, I realized that what was happening today was not like the blessings I’d seen on the previous days. With the earlier guests, the ghatusaris performed a simple dance that involved slight turning and lightly tapping the guests’ heads, who were seated on the ground in front of them. It was beautiful to watch, but it felt like a standard blessing and nothing more. This time, the mothers were seated in front of the ghatusaris, looking up at them and holding their hands. The gurubaas continued their mournful tune, the ghatusaris swayed gently and clasped their matriarchs’ hands, and everyone wept silent tears.
At this point in the story of the ghatu text, Pashramu Raja, the king, has died in battle. The news of his death comes back to the palace via a message from a bird and through a bloody artifact. Yambawati Rani, the queen, decides to join her king in death by undergoing the practice of sati or suttee. This antiquated and now-illegal practice has a long, painful history in Nepal, India, and some other countries. The practice is such that, if a woman’s husband were to die and leave her a widow, she would choose or be expected to join him on the cremation pyre. It was not common to the point that every widow committed sati, but there are records at least as far back as 320 CE and occurrences at least as recent as 1987. In mainstream discussion, sati is seen as backwards, abhorrent, and misogynistic, though in some areas and communities it is still revered as the act of a “purest” form of woman.
And so, as the ghatusaris hold their matriarchs’ hands and bless them for the donation they’ve given, they are also embodying Yambawati Rani sharing her decision to go to sati. After days of watching these girls and women dance tirelessly in the spirit of Yambawati Rani, one cannot help but grieve in watching them enact her saying goodbye to her loved ones. I felt, too, that there was some reality to the fiction before us: these ghatusaris, the young women of the village, will eventually go away too and have to say a fairly permanent goodbye to their families, who will stay behind and miss them. In most cultures of Nepal, when a woman gets married, she goes away to the home of her new husband, however far that might be. She is now a member of his family, not her own, and will infrequently, rarely, or never return to see her parents or her home. This practice is less strict in more urban or “modern” families, but in villages like Nalma it’s not realistic for the women to return frequently or pop in for lunch on the weekends. Money can be scarce, the journey is challenging, and the duties of a new daughter-in-law are vast and highly pressured. In this way, the mothers of the village and the gurubaas who weep at the fictional Yambawati Rani going away to her fictional sati are also just mothers and fathers weeping at the knowledge that their girls will soon leave.
This process went on for hours. It is a long, slow song to sing, and there were many mothers to bless. In between each round, the next group of mothers would tie bits of fabric around the ghatusaris’ wrists and add flowers to their crowns – the fabric as a blessing, and the flowers as called for in the song. When all the mothers had been blessed and given their blessings, it was time to give a formal farewell to the head Gurubaa and to the ghatusaris’ parents. Traditionally this requires making a procession to each of their parents’ homes and to the Gurubaa’s home, but they decided to approach this farewell differently this year. There was a very old and sick man, a former gurubaa of Nalma, who had decided to end his dialysis in Kathmandu and return to Nalma for his final days. He was too weak and ill to come to the performance space, but he listened to the music from a distance and over the phone. This gave him peace.
The ghatusaris, with their eyes closed and their crowns full of flowers and their wrists full of fabrics, were carried to this old gurubaa’s home to ask his blessing in their journey toward sati. Young men of the village stepped forward to carry the ghatusaris to the nearby house, and several people carried canopies to protect the girls from the sun and the rain. This is also how new brides are carried, and a lively band accompanied the journey, emphasizing this feeling of a wedding procession.
At the old gurubaa’s home, two of the four young ghatusaris were brought forward. Through a process with sunpaani and cow dung, a process I could not really see because of the tight quarters, the ghatusaris received his blessing to go to their symbolic sati. This may have also felt like a real farewell, as the man was quite near the end of his life. The funeral/wedding procession then continued to our main Gurubaa’s home, where the same blessing and farewell took place. With his blessing, all the goodbyes had been made, all the blessings had been given, and it was time to depart for the sati location.
Tune in next week to read about the sati process…