An audience with a living goddess

Yesterday was a work day, so I stayed indoors all day.

After breakfast this morning, I walked up to Durbar Square to get a taxi to take me to Durbar Square in Patan, the second of Kathmandu Valley's three great medieval cities. It's only a few kilometres from Kathmandu, and as the cities have grown, it is now only separated from the sprawling capital by the Bagmati River. Many locals still call Patan by its original Sanskrit name of Lalitpur, meaning City of Beauty. Patan's charm lies in its medieval network of tole (squares) and bahal (courtyards), which together house more than 1000 Buddhist monuments. Its Durbar Square boasts some of Nepal's grandest temples and royal architecture, most of which date from the Malla glory days of the 16th to 18th centuries.

There were road closures around Durbar Square, so my taxi driver had to drop me off about a 15-minute walk away. This turned out to be quite fortuitous as the walk took me past the Ratnakar Mahavihar, home to Patan's Kumari (living goddess). I would probably have missed this if I'd been dropped off in the main square. Unlike Kathmandu's Kumari, Patan's is accessible to the public (for a donation!). You go into the adjoining temple, through a door into a scruffy storeroom, remove your shoes, and climb a steep, narrow ladder to an equally scruffy anteroom, where one of the Kumari's chaperones takes you in to meet the goddess herself. It's a very bizarre experience. The goddess doesn't speak, so you have to be directed by her guardian and ask any questions you might have through her.

So, what do you do when you meet a living goddess? How do you behave? Well, the etiquette is quite simple. You kneel on a cushion at her feet, place some money on the floor, she marks your forehead with a bindi, gives you a silent blessing, and you are dismissed! She doesn't smile or interact with you. It seems to me like a pretty miserable existence. She is available for these 'audiences' between 10am and 12noon and 2pm and 4pm every day. This Kumari has held the position since she was five years old. She is now 12, so she will soon be relieved of her duties and will be able to have a normal life. If I were her, I'd be looking forward to that day very much 😊.

Suitably blessed, I continued my walk. Just outside the Kumari's house, there were several prominent 'Free Palestine' posters. I don't know if these were anything to do with the living goddess 🤔.Read more