| Bubba |
Posted
on 08-Mar-01 03:14 PM
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) Goddess needed: Palatial accommodations,
round-the-clock personal service, public adoration guaranteed, school and
homework optional. Must be 5 years old or under and willing to serve until
puberty.
It sounds like Nepal's dream job. So why aren't the applicants beating down the
doors? Just ask former goddess Rashmila Shakya.
It was great while it lasted, she'll tell you. But it all came crashing down eight
years ago when she reached puberty and was tossed out of the palace, woefully
unequipped to cope with the real world.
In light of her experience, and that of others before her, fewer parents are eager
for their daughters to be goddesses. They'd rather the girls got an education and a
well-paid job.
"With society turning more commercial and modernized, people are losing their
touch with religion and tradition, and most parents want their daughters to take up
careers as engineers or doctors," said Tej Ratna Tamrakar, who heads the
department that looks after Durbar Square in Katmandu and its palaces and
temples.
The goddess is called a kumari, Nepalese for virgin, and is revered by both Hindus
and Buddhists, who believe she has blessed the king and 22 million people of this
Himalayan nation with peace and prosperity.
But once a kumari menstruates she becomes a mortal and is shown the door.
In the old days, life as a goddess was viewed as a route to a better life. But Nepal
now has a constitution that guarantees equal rights to women, and more women
are getting educated and competing for jobs once held exclusively by men.
Meanwhile, the modern world has been encroaching relentlessly ever since the
kingdom was discovered by hippie travelers and Himalayan trekkers in the 1960s.
Nowadays, Internet cafes are sprouting next door to the goddess' temple.
Shakya, the former goddess, is now 20 and has been struggling for eight years to
adapt to normal life.
"As the living goddess I was carried everywhere and did not need to walk or go
out to the market. I played and everyone listened to me," she said.
"Now my whole world has changed."
She lives with her family in a small mud and brick house on a narrow alley quite a
comedown from the palace and its dozens of attendants ministering to her every
whim.
Shakya the goddess had a personal tutor for an hour a day, but he, mere mortal,
would never dare order her to study. So her schooling fell behind and at age 12
she had to enter second grade.
"It has been the biggest handicap. We had to teach her everything from alphabets
to activities of a normal life, like conversing," said Pramila Shakya, her older sister.
Now that she has caught up, she is in college majoring in physics and wants to go
to the United States to study architecture. But her family doubts it has the
financing.
Being a kumari isn't good for one's marriage prospects either. Nepalese folklore
holds that men who marry an ex-goddess will die young, and most of the eight
living ex-goddesses are unmarried.
A living goddess must come from a specific Buddhist clan the Shakyas. She can
have only a few selected playmates. She sees the outside world a few times a
year when she is wheeled through the capital on a chariot pulled by devotees.
The goddess must always wear red, tie her hair in a topknot and have a third eye
painted on her forehead.
The kumari candidate must endure difficult tests, including spending a night among
the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes. She must also have perfect
skin, hair, eyes and teeth.
Officials and priests will spend April and May the first month of the Nepalese
calendar year searching for the new goddess. They hope to introduce her to the
public around October, in time for Desain, the biggest Nepalese festival.
To sweeten the pot, the Nepalese government is offering the next incumbent, as
well as all previous ones, a pension worth about $40 a month. That's barely the
minimum wage, but more generous than the annual gold coin previous goddesses
got from the king.
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