Slowly and solemnly, with a heaviness in our collective hearts, everyone began the procession toward the sati location. The young men carrying the blind ghatusaris on their backs may have led the way, surrounded by small groups of people holding makeshift canopies to protect from the sun, but I was stuck in the back of the crowd so I can’t be sure. Around one hundred people plodded slowly in the hot, hot sun, tired from the late evening the day before, the exhausting sadness of the sati farewells, the nearness of death at the old gurubaa’s home. We walked up the stairs to the main path that wanders through the town, the one that starts in disarray in the dalit part of the village and gets nicer the closer you get to Gurubaa’s shop and the community center where ghatu happens. We passed the junction where you can decide to go up or down, or turn left to go to the home where I stayed. We chose the upper path, the one that leads to a simple, weather-worn gompa (or Buddhist temple).
After everyone had passed a certain point in that road, a few men stayed behind to perform a particular ritual. Though I was ahead with the group and didn’t see this part, what I understand is that they said some mantras and then pulled the head off of a chicken. They then threw the head and the body separately and waited for the body to stop its thrashing movement. Whatever direction it was facing once it became still was important information to pass on to the main Gurubaa; he then worked this information into the song that they sang a bit later. While I do not understand this entirely, it seems that the act of sacrificing and throwing the chicken helps to prevent bad spirits from following the sati procession along that road. The ghatusaris are in a delicate state during this day, so it’s important to keep them safe.
While this chicken sacrifice was taking place, the rest of us processed to the deurali. This word refers to a particular point in the hills or mountains – something like a pass or a ridge. The deurali area in Nalma is quite an open area, which is why they were able to build the gompa there along with a bus stop, a general shop, and a giant unfinished building. This is the area where the jeep loads or releases passengers. From this area, to the left one can see down the hillside to the river below and to the far-away village on the neighboring hill; to the right, one can see down the opposite hillside to another valley, and on clear mornings one can even see the mountains to the north. Here the sun can be intense, but the winds are quick and refreshing.
The sati ghatu segment was going to take place at a small tree, around which they had built a two-tiered circular platform made of mud and bricks and cow dung. This young tree had been planted seven years ago, on the occasion of the youngest ghatusaris’ first year of performing this dance. Someone pointed out to me some other large trees, on the other side of the deurali; one of those had been planted many years ago for some of the older ghatusaris. We arranged ourselves on a brick retaining wall, taking care not to wiggle too much for fear of falling backwards down the hillside. It was stiflingly hot, and I tried to use my shawl as shade from the sun, since I hadn’t though to bring an umbrella (will I never learn?). The gurubaas and some men were setting up a makeshift tent with a few tarps, to protect the gurubaas from the sun. The young men deposited the blind ghatusaris from their backs onto a stiff woven grass mat called a pyaku. The pyaku is considered sacred and pure, so it is an appropriate seat for the ghatusaris. Most of them sat quietly and patiently, reverent almost, their eyes closed and their heads bowed as they waited in the heat.
The youngest ghatusaris, the ones who had performed all the aashish rakhne processes with the mothers of the village, began to remove the strips of fabric from their wrists. The sousares took these bits of fabric and tied them to a long, thin tree branch. Another sousare came around and took something small from every person in the audience. The lady next to me, the one who undertook the responsibility of making sure I was properly dressed in traditional Gurung wear, said that everyone was supposed to offer something to the deurali. I saw that most people had given a red glass bangle – an easy offering, since everyone has a seemingly infinite number of these easily breakable things. I hadn’t planned on offering anything, hadn’t even known I was supposed to, and had nothing to give. Nearly everything I was wearing belonged to someone else and obviously couldn’t be offered. So I pulled the hair tie from my head, loosing the braids I’d worked on so carefully and ensuring my neck would soon be drenched in sweat.
All this while, the gurubaas had resumed their singing. The youngest ghatusaris were made to stand up and moved into a semi-circle around the tree for the next part of the ritual. The man I like to call Props Guru, the one who managed everything behind the scenes tirelessly, handed the ghatu props to the ghatusaris, one by one: a bow and arrow, a wooden horse on a string, a gilded paddle, a flute. One by one, the four ghatusaris held the props in their hands, and at the appropriate point in the song these props were snapped in half and pushed into the mud platform around the tree. The Props Guru handed the girls a prop sickle and a live chicken; the girls, still unable to see, held the sickle somewhere in the vicinity of the chicken’s neck, to represent it too being offered to the deurali. In one video of ghatu performed in another village, the girls are given baby chicks, whose heads they pull off and throw, just as the men did in the road to protect everyone from bad spirits. This beheading causes their eyes to pop open, ending the trance and the ghatu process. In Nalma, after holding the sickle to the chicken in a ritual, symbolic way, someone else did the beheading, and the ghatusaris’ eyes stayed closed.
When everything from the ghatu process, including the ghatusaris’ crowns, had been offered to the deurali, it was time to do the sati portion. However, the hot sun had quickly turned to threatening clouds, and it had started to rain. The Props Guru continued to dump objects on the deurali, the women and children packed up their shawls and their cardboard seats, and the young men picked up the ghatusaris and carried them toward the giant unfinished abandoned building. I grabbed a few pyaku mats and joined the women and children on their way into the concrete structure.
We processed slowly up the stairs, and I couldn’t help but think about the great dramatic potential of inclement weather and a performance with constant, unexpected location changes. In the upper chamber of this concrete cage, the ghatusaris were arranged on their pyakus, with brass pots of sunpaani in front of them. I joined the women and children in our cramped spot facing the ghatusaris, with a giant hole for a window behind me and another giant hole for a window ahead of me. The gurubaas had not joined us yet, and I assumed they were going to continue singing outside while the ghatusaris sat inside and waited. The rain poured and poured.
The young men who had just carried the youngest ghatusaris upstairs came and took them back downstairs. I kept waiting, wondering if I should stay put or move; soon someone called me to head back through the rain toward the deurali tree. Something was happening there, and I should have been present for it. I puddle-hopped my way back and learned that they had already done the sati portion – there was a small hole in the side of the mud platform, inside of which they had built a tiny ghat or cremation platform. They had placed a few items on the tiny ghat, said some mantras, and set it alight.
I tried to digest and memorize what I was seeing as the rain became more and more torrential. It was too wet to write notes anymore, and I didn’t have my camera or my phone. Instead I focused on holding up the haphazard tarp above our heads, a constant losing battle of dumping the rain and having it pool up again and again. Gurubaa moved through the necessary sung rituals, and the Props Guru helped the young ghatusaris complete their tasks. The details of this part are a bit fuzzy for me, since there were about ten of us in a tiny space, made tinier by the constant dumping waterfalls from above. All I know for sure is that there were two short bamboo sticks, one with milk inside and the other with water. The ghatusaris, though still blind, have to “look” in both of these sticks; my understanding is that they see the predicted weather for the coming planting season. When I asked Gurubaa about this, he downplayed the importance of this moment; however, I have read that this is one of the most crucial parts of the entire ghatu process.
The sati was over. It was time to take the gurubaas and the ghatusaris back to the concrete cage where everyone else was waiting. The rainfall, more violent than ever, and the ghatusaris’ blindness made this quite complicated. Under the flooding, collapsing tarp, one young man picked up a ghatusari and started to run over the mud toward the concrete building, another young man running in the rain beside them and holding an umbrella over their heads. This repeated for the gurubaas and the three blind ghatusaris, and Ramila ran herself to the building. I went last, leaving a few men behind to tend to the collapsing tarp.
Sandy, muddy, and soaking wet, I took my place by the giant window-hole as the gurubaas settled in and prepared to sing. The wind blew cold rain onto the women who surrounded me, so I stood up to hold out my shawl and block them from the rain. All of the ghatusaris were now settled in too, seated on their pyakus facing us, with the pots of sunpaani in front of them. Inside the pots were two marigold branches, known as sayapatri (one hundred leaves) in Nepali. When the gurubaas finally began to sing, the ghatusaris began to move their bodies in a figure-8 motion, picking up the wet sayapatri leaves in either hand and swiping them across their eyes. First left hand and left eye, then right hand and right eye, over and over. This went on for quite some time, and only Binita, the ghatusari who seems most sensitive to the trance, woke up. Everyone continued swaying and passing the leaves across their eyes, deep in their trances, until the water in their pots began to run out. At one point, the Props Guru replaced Omika’s empty pot with a new one full of sunpaani. In the process, he accidentally walked away with one of her sayapatri leaves. Instead of making a face or being confused as young actors often are when a prop mishap occurs, Omika continued her figure-8’s and simply swiped with the one leaf on the one side. When Props Guru realized his mistake, he put the leave back in her pot without saying anything, and she started using it again with ease, though she couldn’t see he had replaced it.
After quite some time, the gurubaas stopped singing. Something was wrong. The ghatusaris should have woken up by now, or at least some of them should have. Gurubaa asked two of the older women, privately, what was wrong. Whether from within a deep trance state or not, I’m not sure, but they answered to him that it didn’t matter how long the men sang – as long as the ghatusaris were not right in front of the deurali tree, they were not going to wake up. A terrifying thought, given that they had been in some state of a trance for about sixteen hours at this point.
And so, the drama continued. It was still raining a bit and the ground was totally flooded and muddy – where could the gurubaas and the ghatusaris go? The women needed at least a bit of space for their figure-8’s. The young men again packed up the ghatusaris, carrying them back down the stairs, over the puddles, and to the open-air (but roofed) bus stop structure right next to the deurali tree. The space was quite tight, so the ghatusaris were arranged carefully on the ground, not too close to the concrete seating that went all the way around the rectangular structure; concrete can have hard edges, and with the top of the long bench being close to head-height, it could be a risky situation. The gurubaas crouched along the long bench, madals in laps and voices warmed but a little raspy. The rest of us audience folk climbed onto the outside of the bus stop, arms woven through the iron bars and toes holding the edges of the concrete structure.
The singing began again, and immediately the ghatusaris fell back into their rhythmic, circular movement. It rained lightly outside the bus stop, and we held umbrella handles in the crooks of our necks so we could keep our hands on the bars of the structure. The singing grew in intensity, but still the ghatusaris swayed and swiped, their eyes closed and their spirits in a faraway place. At a certain point in each repetition of this particular song, the men clap one large, loud, harsh clap and shout HA! With the song going on and on and no one waking up from their trances, the men leaned in further and shouted louder and clapped harder – the idea is that the ghatusaris can only come out of this trance when they hear the music very clearly. What with their minds and spirits being so far away, so deep in this trance, the men had to put in huge energy to be heard clearly enough to bring the ghatusaris back to this world.
Then, suddenly, Omika returned. She had been moving in figure-8’s smoothly and steadily, swiping the wet sayapatri leaves across her neutral face and seeing things we will never learn about. The jolt of coming back to this world pushed her torso backwards – her arms and legs went flying, and her face had a look of deep shock. It’s like that feeling of falling in a dream and jolting awake, but instead of being in her mind it was fully embodied in her actions. One by one, the other ghatusaris came back in the same way. Amrita hit her head on the concrete bench behind her. Sujata began to cry when she came back. Birkashi Didi took a very long time to return, and it seemed with every shouted HA! that she was about to wake up: in response to the shocking sound, her eyebrows would raise and her eyelids would stretch, as if her body and mind were in disagreement about which world she should be in.
After a half hour in this bus stop, there was just one ghatusari left to return. It was the same woman who had difficulty with bad spirits the night before; I had the impression that she had some unfinished business elsewhere. I worried, again, that she might not wake up. When she finally did, several people moved forward to massage her hands and wipe her tears and help her regain herself in this world.
And just like that, the five days of ghatu was over. Now it was time to sing and dance and celebrate with the guests who were still around. The ghatusaris, the gurubaas, and us folks in the audience made a simple dance procession around the deurali tree, stepping over puddles and touching the tree for blessings. Even though the ghatusaris could see now, the young men again picked them up and started walking them back to the community center. They also carried the main Gurubaa, and along the way there was playful roughhousing and chicken-fighting between the ghatusaris and Gurubaa, of course spurred on by the young men. When they reached the community, they dumped the dancers and Gurubaa unceremoniously in a pile on the dancing mat, with lots of laughter and shrieking. The funereal mourning had ended – now it was just time to party.
How everyone had energy to party after such a day, I still don’t quite know. But we managed to sing and dance late into the evening, with endless cups of tea and a local rice liquor called pa. One highlight was when the ghatusaris would pull folks from the audience – including yours truly – to try out a bit of ghatu dancing. You’ll see in the video below how that turned out for me.
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