❝AT TWENTY-SEVEN DEGREES NORTH LATITUDE, In these last two days, when I wasn't planning on going there as usual because my stomach was a bit upset, I discovered an improvised kumari school in Durbar Square, in front of the temple of Siva and Parvati, where they will observe all the ceremonial requirements of the next "living goddess" of the Kathmandu Valley, about whom I had no knowledge or read anything. A group of Newari girls, accompanied by their mothers (and fathers, they participate in some parts of the rite, but in the background), under a colorful tent in the full sun, learning and rehearsing how to act.
Well, we postpone the school of kumaris, without a doubt a much more serious and interesting post, because of the language of P, because, as you may have guessed, La Macarena is not in the mood for taffetas tonight when the degrees of latitude and temperature have decided to synchronize.
The hermit of the Temple of Siva and Parvati, an 18th-century construction which did not suffer dramatically from the consequences of the 2015 earthquake, but which appears with its facades still propped up, has a cat that this morning we mutually named Parvati.
Fierce in appearance, she's actually very affectionate and ended up playing with me, sticking her tongue out at me. Tied up, but not because she'd run away, she was constantly going in and out of the old building through its single French window as far as the rope would allow. I hoped that with the jokes the little woman would soften and tell me some details about the apprenticeship to be a good kumari, which she and her husband conducted jointly, but it wasn't easy at all. "You Americans know everything" (in short, with broken English, I mean), she blurts out as soon as I begin. "When you say Americans," I answer immediately, "do you mean all Americans or all foreigners?" "Well, you understood me," she replies with some sarcasm. "Well, honestly, no. The thing is, I'm not American, I'm Spanish." "Near Malta, then?" she replies. "Close, close, not too close, between Portugal and France," I clarify. The conversation had definitely stalled. But I try not to get discouraged. I'll come back to show him some photos of his cat Parvati, and talk about the other goddess, the living one, Kumari. The name Parvati, I have to say, amused him, he liked it.●
The jewels of the hands.
Foot jewelry.
