Oooooo I’m Blinded by the Smoke..?
Ashwyn k -
Welcome back, readers! In this post, I’ll discuss the final Bratabandha preparations, the day itself, and the after-party that followed.
The night before my Bratabandha, we had one final small puja before the long one on ceremony day. This puja was unlike the others, because I was finally at the center of the rituals! During this puja, I had to “do puja,” basically worshipping and paying respects, to 9 piles of assorted cultural goods. It started with sacred water that had been worshipped prior with flowers, then some yogurt, cow dung (because cows are viewed as sacred in Hindu/Nepali culture), those same red flowers from before, some sort of seed (i feel ashamed for not knowing what it exactly was…), and a few other things. Then after I did puja to all 9 piles with sindoor–a red cosmetic powder– we made the piles into 3 balls using the fabric we had them sitting on before, tied them onto the my head with the fabric (one on the left, one on the right, one on the back). After all of that work, I still had one more step before I could sleep soundly for the next day: I had to put porcupine needles through the balls and sleep with the needles in… yep. We put porcupine needles right next to my head, and I was supposed to sleep with them like that, meaning that I had a chance of waking up to needles in my head. Luckily, we thought that would be too dangerous, so we took out the needles and put them under the mattress. I still had to sleep with the fabric tied around my head, though, haha.
Finally, the day had come! I got up early in the morning at around 5:30, because the guru was supposed to come at around 6:00 to start with all the pujas. The ceremony took place just in front of our home, and the decorations looked amazing! It was really cool to see all the different cultural symbols and colorations since I had only ever seen pictures in the past. My tasks didn’t start until 9:00-10:00 AM, but I still had to sit down criss cross near the ritual area, because the gurus needed to do their thing. By around 8 AM, we had 4 gurus, because they have so many pujas that they need to do that; if they were to leave it all to one guru, it would take more than 12 hours to get through it all. The 4 gurus were all doing their own things, sometimes with my dad, sometimes with my mom, and even my grandma too. Meanwhile, my sister was just sitting on a chair like any other guest since she had basically zero duties.
At around 10 PM, her duties started, and so did mine. It was finally time for me to go bald… I wasn’t excited about it, I had never been excited about going bald, but it was a necessary process of my Bratabandha. I sat down in a chair, and they wet my hair so that it would shave off more smoothly. For the first few cuts, my uncle was responsible for shaving (more like trimming my hair for now) the first part of my hair, then afterwards we would have a local barber complete the job as a professional so that it wouldn’t look atrocious. My sister was tasked with catching all of the hair that drops with a large plate and making sure that none of it drops. Sounds like a pretty hard task, right? You see, the puja from the night before, where I tied up my hair, was a process of making my hair “holy,” for lack of better words. Since my hair is sacred or holy, whatever term you prefer, my sister isn’t allowed to let any of it touch the floor, but I had quite a lot of hair, so it’s only natural that some hair would fall. The hair cutting didn’t take long at all, and by the time it had finished, I didn’t even feel a difference from when I had hair. Then, I touched my head. Yep. I was bald.
I took a quick shower since my head started to burn a little bit, then I changed into a yellow top and bottom, and headed back down to complete the rest of the pujas. By this time, it was around 11 AM, and the pujas all ended at 4 PM. In between those two times, a majority of it was spent sitting down while the gurus chanted their pujas in Sanskrit. I didn’t understand a single thing they said and asked me to do, but I sure did what they told me to. Apart from that, it was honestly a bit miserable. You see, our house is built upwards rather than outwards, and our “front yard” isn’t much of a front yard, but more like a little gateway leading into the streets. Because of this, we had the pujas on the ground floor. I was sitting in the corner of the puja area, and since we had a fire lit in the center, all the smoke started flowing towards my face. After a couple of minutes, my eyes were already watering, and I could feel the burn (pun intended). By the end of the pujas, I thought I would have a health condition because of how much smoke entered my eyes, but luckily, I’m not blind (yet).
The final act of the Bratabandha before it ended for the day was for me to go around and ask for money, fruits, and rice grains from the guests. I had to balance a stick on my shoulder with small bags on both sides that would hold the rice, money, and fruits. I had to walk with a cane, and had a strap go around my shoulder and to my waist. Afterwards, I changed into a suit, wore a mala (necklace of flowers or grass), a topi (traditional hat), and “ran away” from my uncles. We went to a nearby mandir/temple, I “ran away,” and that concluded my Bratabandha day. The guests gave some final gifts and congratulations, and then, as they left, I was finally able to eat my first meal of the day! The food tasted so good after fasting for almost 12 hours, but there was still no meat :(.
That night it felt really weird to sleep, because I had never slept bald in the past before. My head felt terribly cold at times, but I soon got used to it as my hair was slowly growing back.
The following day was the post-Bratabandha party, but I didn’t really start getting ready until an hour or so before we left for it. The whole day was spent packing everything we needed for our Everest base camp trek. It didn’t take too long, and before we even started, my sister and I went to a nearby bakery called European Bakery. For as long as I can remember, that bakery has been there. We got cinnamon rolls and a cheese croissant, and by the time we left for the party, they were both long gone. We finished our packing pretty quickly, and then we started getting ready for the party.
There isn’t too much to really say about the party, but it was a blast. We went early since we were the hosts, and the first 30 minutes or so was spent just taking photos and videos, let’s just say I probably didn’t do very good at following the photographer’s instructions, lol. I danced away to some Nepali and Hindi music that I forgot even existed, and ate lots of food. There was an all-you-can-eat momo and pani puri bar, and let’s just say I think I ate over 30 pani puris… It was worth every bite.
By the end of the night, I was super tired and almost lost my chain that someone gifted me the day before, so I went to sleep as soon as I got home.
The next morning was the morning that we finally left for EBC! Or so we thought. We had a 6-hour drive to Ramechhap, which I was not a big fan of at all, albeit there were beautiful views. A majority of the ride was on very bumpy roads on the sides of mountains, as well as detour paths that we had to take due to a major landslide that swept large portions of the main road. I was convinced one too many times that maybe this car ride would be the last car I’d live to be in. The roads were extremely sketchy, but luckily we made it to Ramechhap at around 6 PM, early enough to eat dinner and get some rest for our flight to Lukla, and the start of our EBC trek the following day.
That’s all for this post! My next two posts will be all about my trek to EBC and my final days in Nepal. Until next time!
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