Day 48 — Tihar ceremony

Friday, October 24, 2014

I joined Becca and her parents around 4:45am to take a taxi up to Sarangkot for their famous sunrise. Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy but we waited a little extra after sunrise and the mountains came into view. I had a small breakfast with them afterwards at lakeside and then I went home for a big breakfast with my host family. I joined them in the afternoon around 4:00pm at their relative’s (host father’s brother… my host uncle?) house for Tihar. The actual Tihar ceremony would be at 10:00pm. We had dinner around 8:00pm on their terrace which had a huge garden on both sides, impressively full of many different flowers. Candles were lit on the edge of the terrace like twinkle lights. Everything in the dark with the subdued lights and colourful garden looked beautiful. In preparation for the ceremony, a symbol was made on the cement ground in front of everyone’s seats. I watched my older host cousins and elders trace the edge of a large bowl on the cement, using a flower dipped in water and oil. Then, a 6–pointed star was drawn within the circle. Red dyed powder was generously sprinkled atop the wet outline, with white powder outlining its edges. Finally, a mix of small flowers, their petals, and walnuts, along with other miscellaneous bits, were sprinkled over the symbol. My host mother explained to me that it was a self-puja — worshipping the self. Once everyone was seated (in order of age, I believe), grandmother, holding long thick candle strings lit with fire, blessed each person with some hand gestures over their head. After the blessing, she handed the strings to the the person for them to spread out onto their circle. After she got everyone (in decreasing age), she took the basket of flower mix, scooped it up and dumped them onto our heads about 8x each, in the same order. We were then each given a tikka on our foreheads, ate a hard-boiled egg in some kind of oil marinade, and cracked and ate a walnut. Next, some hard green fruit the size of a mango was passed around (again, in order of decreasing age), which each person had to roll across their circle to put out their fire. Finally, grandmother got the sweeper and in 3 continuous sweeps, swept through our circles on the ground and that, was the end of the ceremony. Tired, we headed back home.