[ad_1]
It was the night before the new moon, and a swirling palette of colors reflected from the buildings floated like a halo through the fog. Cow silhouettes adorned my surroundings, accompanying the gentle rustle of their riverbank grazing.
As they approached the center of the complex, the crowd came closer together, filling every inch of paths and gorges, a term for stairs in the Indian subcontinent along the sacred Bagmati River. Those not huddled under umbrellas or protected by plastic bags seemed content enough to go out in the rain.
I had visited this Hindu temple before – Pashupatinath on the outskirts of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu – but only in broad daylight and never among this many people.
The air filled the air with the scent of burning wood, marijuana, and incense—like the spicy fumes of cremated corpses on the other side of the river. Rhythmic applause and bells bounced off the temple walls, along with vespers played over the loudspeaker.
I was experiencing the sensory abundance of Maha Shivaratri, the Great Night of Shiva.
Every year, thousands of people gather at Pashupatinath in honor of Shiva, one of the three most revered gods of Hinduism. The festival commemorates the wedding night of the Hindu goddess Shiva and Parvati. According to the Linga Purana, a sacred Hindu text, it is also Shiva took the form of lingamAn object typically found in temples and representing the eternal existence of a god, often seen in the West as a phallic symbol.
Participants of Maha Shivaratri celebrate the holy festival with various prayers and rituals. Devotees begin to bathe in the river at sunrise and descend from the ghats during the day to purify. A puja, or ritual of worship, is performed every three hours at Shiva lingam, with offerings of fruit, sandalwood paste, and incense, as well as bathing in water, milk, and honey. “Om Namah Shivaya”, Shiva’s sacred mantra, is echoed in the temple complex to invoke inner consciousness and invite clarity and well-being. Practicing Hindus enter the main temple, covered with shoes taken off by visitors, to be blessed by the temple priests. Some participants fast while others aim to stay awake all night.
As a sacred dedication to Shiva, Sadhus—Hindu holy men who wear (or sometimes don’t) wear saffron-colored clothing—smoke marijuana or traditional clay pipes from chillum, sharing it with those around them.
When I attended the festival in February 2020, an attendee dressed as the Hindu mother goddess Kali was walking around the temple grounds with an outstretched tongue, bulging eyes and four arms, often depicted with wild hair and a necklace of skulls. He brushed passersby with a bunch of peacock feathers and invited them to place monetary offerings on his plate.
But as is often the case at festivals that attract visitors from around the world, there were also people who came just for the show or to spend time with family and friends in a magnificent, even mystical, setting.
Looking back at these photos, I see that while the world is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, the visual splendor is less striking than the sight of the crowd so close.
Maha Shivaratri would be the last large-scale event for me and certainly thousands of other attendees to attend before the virus spreads around the world.
But at the time, intimacy was not yet a cause for concern. Many of us bumped and poked our way through the busy crowd. Strangers sitting together in a small temple, we sat shoulder to shoulder, passed through a common coldness and thoughtlessly shared the air.
Pashupatinath is regularly used as a place of cremation, but Maha Shivaratri is a particularly auspicious time for Hindus to move on to the next life.
In the early evening, families dipped the toes of their deceased loved ones and washed their orange and marigold-clad corpses with the holy water of the Bagmati River.
Now, leaving the temple, the air freshened as the collective heat of all the bodies close together gave way to the cool air, and I saw five burning wood fires with their orange flames placed in the dark night sky.
[ad_2]
Source link