Photo: At Bhaai Tikaa in Bungamati.

Photo: Ma Pujaa, showing flour mandala and little dough figures.

Photo: Afternoon daalbhaat in Bungamati! They weren't given much notice that the photo was being taken. Left to right: father, brother, mother, me, niece.

Photo: Me with family. Sister on right, brothers, two, farthest left. Others are cousins on father's side.

Photo: Tikaa from Aamaa on Lakshmi Pujaa.

Photo: Plates of sweets and fruits on Bhaai Tikaa, prepared and set on kitchen floor.

Photo: Didi at Lakshmi Pujaa.

Photo: Unhusked rice drying in the sun.

Tihaar: Lakshmi Pujaa, Ma Pujaa, and Bhaai Tikaa

When I was in Nepal two years ago, I was in a Gurung (ethnic group name) village called Tangting when Tihaar rolled around. Mainly what I remember about the festival then is that I missed my host family’s bhaai tikaa (literally: younger brother blessing) because I was in language class, that there were wreaths made of marigolds hung above the doors, lighting of candles all over the place one night, and that same night a couple of groups of children coming around and singing for a couple rupees each.

This year, I had to schedule my way through Tihaar, going back and forth between the Chhetri village and the Newar one. Tihaar is one of the biggest festivals in Nepal (you may have heard of Diwali, this is the word they use for Tihaar in India). It involves an interesting blessing of animals – the crow, the dog, the cow. They can’t really put tikaa on the crows, but they make garlands for the dogs and cows. The cow is obviously an important animal in Hindu religion, and especially so on this holiday because of its connection with the goddess Lakshmi. There is a complicated religious explanation for all of Tihaar, but I’d say in general it revolves around the worship of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. Unlike Dashain, the festival I wrote about in my latest long email, Tihaar involves no animal sacrifice, as only certain fierce deities (like Durga in Dashain’s case) can be offered blood sacrifice. Lakshmi is not fierce, and she is usually depicted revealing a benevolent hint of a smile.

Her puja, in Balkot (which I should really be calling Shangithali, as Balkot was the name of the village where the Pitzer program was/still is for the time being), involved my aamaa making an initial puja to the small stones representing deities in the front of the house, and from that point a path of the usual mixture of red mud/cow dung made its way through the front door, up the wooden plank stairway and across the living room on the second floor (they’d call it first floor here) right up to the Lakshmi-worshipping area against the wall. Every represention of Lakshmi in the house was brought here, including a fancy just-for-Tihaar picture which had little lights all around it, and played a computerized version of a religious song. In front of these Lakshmi representations, a complex offerings of fruit, uncooked rice, sweets, money, incense, and different colored tikaa powder is placed. My brother and sister and I spent a while lighting lamps for every door and open window, and everywhere upstairs on the large open balcony/roof of most of the house. From the roof you could see that everywhere in the village and in neighboring villages and beyond, the same lighting up was taking place. These little lamps are made of a small brown (ceramic?) bowl, in which is place some cooking oil and a handmade wick. They complimented the Christmas lights that had been put up some time beforehand. The house was also decorated on every window and door with garlands of marigolds.

My family had for some time before Tihaar been working like crazy making garlands of these little hard purple flowers, which my mom would take into the city to sell in the mornings. I also did my best to contribute, but my garland-making skills aren’t what I would describe as ‘honed,’ or, if you will, ‘good at all.’ I made one garland for every ten of theirs. These little purple flower garlands are a necessity for bhaai tikaa.

It worked out fairly perfectly for me that bhaai tikaa is celebrated in the morning in Chhetri culture, and the evening in Newar culture, so that I got to see both. I only participated in the tikaa in Balkot, as my Bungamati (Newar) family cannot perform religious offerings for one year after my grandfather passed away. Bhaai tikaa involved making huge plates of sweets and fruit to give to each brother/male cousin (older and younger). Like I mentioned before, I had never seen this before, and ended up not contributing as much as my sisters/cousins did, and felt embarrassed. My sister told me in Nepali, basically, “it’s the thought that counts.” Oh geez. Anyways we passed out these sweets and garlands made of the purple flowers, and the brothers/male cousins gave us each envelopes with a little money inside (to reimburse for the treats, apparently). We then gave them all a regular red tikaa, then a yellow stripe running down their forehead, then little tiny dots of color (in a specific order that I don’t understand) in a row on the yellow stripe. They gave us this same tikaa afterwards. All of the girls also circumambulated the group of seated boys – all the cousins had come over from their respective houses next door, and we were all upstairs on the balcony-roof of my family’s house.
Two evenings during Tihaar in both my villages, kids came around singing songs for a rupee or two, on two specific nights. The song consists of one or two creative kids singing using traditional words, or lines that they’ve thought of beforehand, or making up lines as they go along, and an answering phrase consistently given from all the others in the group. They travel around in large groups, and often stay out all night, as the money they accumulate over the course of the event can add up to enough to buy some sort of nice toy or gadget, depending on their age.


In Bungamati, my sister took me to her best friend/neighbor’s house so I could see bhaai tikaa there. In Newar culture, a small mandala made of flower is made at every seat-place. The same sweets and tikaa powder are given, along with a passing out of yoghurt which is dabbed at the temples. Everyone was seated in the kitchen, and after the puja was complete (or possibly as part of the pujaa), everyone ate, a lot of different kinds of Newar food. A non-vegetarian would be better able to explain to you all the varieties of meats they have in Newar society – including little tiny whole dried fish that they cook up with chilis and garlic and ginger. To me it seems a little bit awful, but, you know. I don’t say anything of course. They like to eat fresh chilis, and my sister will do this in front of me on purpose to shock me.. because I can’t believe it – it’s just so spicy. That night they fixed me up some of that yoghurt with banana and apple, because I couldn’t eat anything else after I had been to the “ma” pujaa at another friend’s house right beforehand.

Ma in Nepali means “I,” and the ma pujaa is a special Newar ceremony in which every member of the family basically blesses themselves. Remember that one aspect of Hinduism can be generalized as every person (and every creature for that matter) being in some way an incarnation or having some part of God (in a very wide interpretation of the word God) in them (as opposed to a separate external deity). The ma pujaa seems to be a more formalized version of the self-blessing that goes on every day in Nepal – an offering is made to any god or gods, and the materials of the blessing are then considered… well, blessed, and you dab your right ring finger into the tikaa and place it high on your forehead, the flower petals lodged in your hair, and the fruit might be divided up between everyone present – its food status has changed to that of ‘prasad.’ The Newar people have an interesting ritual of making little tiny figurines out of steamed dough for ma pujaa. Here too I saw the mandala pattern out of flour and the yoghurt on the temples. They made me eat a lot of different things, flattened rice, boiled-and-fried egg, deep fried honey, other fried dough, little chick-pea curry… I gave my sister a hard time for having given me the regular daal-bhaat to eat before we even left her house… she had said maybe if we told them we had already eaten then they wouldn’t make us eat as much. She must have known better though. I had to beg out of drinking the rice vodka, I claim it is because of my health rules and I can’t drink anything un-boiled, which is also true, but also it just isn’t tasty to me. While eating and keeping an eye on the aamaa of the house, who was walking around with each type of food and depositing it on everyone’s plate unless they held their hands over it to prevent this, a knocking noise came out of the store room behind us. It continued, loudly, for some time, and there was lots of semi-serious talk about ghosts, until eventually a brother went in there to search for the mouse. They ended up pulling out the wall (all their rice harvest was stored in there, they don’t want mice eating it up), and banging around to scare the mouse out. My poor didi (sister) who was holding a board, ended up being in the path of the jumping mouse. It just jumped against her and then ran away and hid again, but she yelled. Ah, well. We still had a good time.

On our way out from this house, I asked my sister out of surface curiosity whether or not she felt bad because she couldn’t do these pujaas this year, and I was sort of surprised at her reaction. She became very serious and said she felt really sad at not being able to do bhaai tikaa; that it was her favorite religious ceremony of the whole year. I hadn’t thought about how hard it must be to watch everyone else having such a fun time, and asked her if she felt worse because she was coming with me to see, and she said no. They really do though have a tremendous amount of fun doing these rituals and spending time with their family and friends, despite that the women have to cook a lot more, and then wash more dishes.