A Hundred Thousand Splendid Suns

Sunday, February 9 was a momentous occasion for my family. We held a lakh batti (lak means a hundred thousand, and batti means light). As I understand it, lakh batti is an offering to the Hindu gods to ask for prosperity through the year. For my family, it was an expensive, meaningful family affair. For me, it was mostly wearing, confusing, and at times overwhelming, with a few highlights sprinkled in.

Nepalis often don't smile in photos, but I can assure you they're excited for the day!

Preparations began about a week before the event, with large groups of women coming to the house to make hundreds of thapadis, bowls fashioned out of leaves used for doing puja (an act of worship) and eating prasad (food served at the end of a puja. One of the older women taught me how to make them by stitching slivers of wood through a pair of leaves. My first two attempts were laughable, but my third one was good enough that my host mother put it in the stack with the all the others.



When the ambulance driver arrived late one night with several sacks of sugar, salt, and rice, I new it was going to be big. A few days later, I came home from work to find a large mud shrine erected in our courtyard.

Family members began arriving the day before the puja. I was busy much of the day, but in the evening chipped in by making maalas (garlands) with the women, threading white string through the stems of marigolds. I met three more of my sisters, their families, and a number of more distant relatives.

On the day of the ceremony, I awoke at 4:45AM to the sounds of my family. I fell back to sleep and arose at 6:30. “Why did you sleep in so late?” asked my bauju (brother’s wife) when I emerged from my room. I set to helping out with the preparations, helping clear some land for the cook fires. Soon we got a few fires going, over which we placed enormous pots to cook potatoes, kir (rice pudding with coconut), and aluwai (a sweet cornmeal and sugar mixture, kind of like bread pudding). Meanwhile, women bent over rolling pins and woks, rolling out dough for puri (slightly puffed, deep-fried flatbread) and squeezing out rings of sel roti (an oily, sweet donut). Along with much of my host family, I decided to fast for the morning, being told that we would eat around noon. In the coming hours, as noon became 3, then 5, and finally 7 in the evening, I would begin to question my show of solidarity.

Spotting a group of men peeling potatoes, I saw an opportunity to talk some nutrition. I sat down, grabbed a potato, and asked why they were removing the peels. “They’re not good for health,” said one of them, a teacher. “The skin is the healthiest part of a potato,” I replied. “That’s where all the vitamins and minerals are.” “Well, they taste bad. You can eat them, if you want,” someone said. So I ate a bit of the skin I’d removed. “Now the whole potato is jutho (impure)!” they cried. “You have to throw it away or eat it.” So I ate the rest. “Now you’ve broken your fast!” they exclaimed. Frustrated that my attempt to teach had backfired, I stormed off to find some other work. Now a group of women were placing bundles of short holy threads dipped in ghyu (clarified butter) in tapadis; these threads when lit, would become the lak batti.

A few females were smearing diluted cow dung on the shrine and ground to fill in the cracks.



Some guys around my age were setting up a bunch of metal poles for a tent, so I went over to help with that. Some of my nephews and neighbors used this as a photo op.

The priests (nine of them, many from the same family) soon arrived and set to adorning the shrine with designs of colored powder and rice. Large thapadis of rice, barley, and other offerings were placed in the shrine.







Sensing that the ceremony would soon begin, I changed into my formal clothes, the traditional Nepali daura surwal. This delighted my friends and family, and I was feeling pretty good myself—until the priests asked me to dig a hole. Why they asked me, a foreigner and the most formally dressed male around, to do manual labor with Nepali tools for a Nepali ritual, I’ll never know. At the time, I didn’t know what the hole was for, only that it had to be square and half a meter deep. By the end, I was feeling a bit hot and bothered.

Just before the ceremony began, my host sister pulled me aside and informed me that at the start, only the true Thapas (my family’s last name) would be doing the puja offerings. Even three of my host sisters would not be participating, as they had changed their names when they married. A little bit later, everyone else so inclined would be allowed to do puja. After a few minutes of my family’s own puja, I was instructed to make my way to the shrine. I was seated next to a twelve-year-old banja (sister’s son) whom I hadn’t met before that morning. It seemed to be his first puja too, because he was just as confused as I about what to do. Silently, we exchanged questions of procedure in furtive glances at each other. Should we throw the red rice now? How many times? How high? Ok, now it looks like we should take a flower, pour some water on it, and clasp it between our hands in prayer. Now we should throw it on the shrine. Wait, was I supposed to toss it whole or break it into petals first?

After sitting cross-legged on the ground for two hours, listening to a language I didn’t understand and performing acts that meant nothing to me, the sun burning my face from the front and a fire heating my back from behind, I couldn’t take it much longer. An aunt informed me that I could get up and walk around whenever I wanted, so I moved into the shade to meet my friends. I had invited all the volunteers in my district, two of whom (Maria and Christine) were able to attend. I pointed out my family members to them, and we chatted for a while. A considerable crowd had begun to gather, many of whom were community members I knew.

I spent the next few hours going back and forth between chatting with crowd members and sitting behind my family. The priests read aloud prayers from a book in Sanskrit through a microphone. At one point, my host mother gave gifts to the priests and covered their heads with pink tika. At last, my family began assembling the leaf plates of thread by the shrine. Soon a priest instructed them to light them on fire, pick them up off the ground, and walk around the shrine. I too was handed a flaming leaf plate and ushered into the procession. We circled the shrine several times, the blaze blowing in our faces and gradually burning through the bowls of leaves. An older woman behind me nearly set my sleeve on fire, but I was saved by an attentive aunt. I passed my plate off and took a seat. Visions of disaster, of people afire and a shrine consumed by inferno, flashed across my mind, but my fears were quelled as the last of the participants made their way to the front of my house to discard their fiery loads.

Now the guests flocked to the tent to eat. It seemed like a natural culmination, but the worshippers resumed their seats and the puja continued.

After some more time, the participants moved sit around the ditch I’d dug that morning. There was more tika, puja, and other things beyond my grasp. Finally, the worshippers gathered under a long piece of thin white cloth, a priest scattered water over their heads, and the ceremony was over, just over six hours after it began.

As evening fell, I broke my fast with the sweet treats that had been prepared in the morning. Three men performed a traditional dance, two of them dressed as women, while two others sang and played drums. A larger dance circle formed on the opposite side of the shrine, where individuals or pairs of women took turns dancing to a quickening song. I was hustled too and fro by friends and relatives, told to sit down, come here, go there, and, above all, dance. Soon I was thrust into the circle and got right down to it. My older host brother and younger next-door-neighbor brother joined me for a few rounds, and then I declared I was done. I ate some more and watched others dance but was hassled by those who hadn’t seen me and demanded I give them a performance. When my friend Christine was dancing, my host sister told me our mother insisted that I dance with her, so I reentered the circle and we danced, twirling our arms and shuffling our feet to the rhythm of the music. The next morning, my host mother would tell me she had said no such thing, and was disappointed she hadn't gotten to see me dance.

I consider myself very lucky to live in such a welcoming community, but a person can only tolerate so much attention. As the night wore on, I felt my composure and vigor waning. Inconspicuously, I ducked out of the crowd and shut myself in my room. Sleep came as the drums beat on.