Snake Lake

by Jeff Greenwald

  Nepali women sat cross-legged around blankets and plastic tarpaulins, selling homegrown ginger and cilantro. Rickety wooden tables tilted under displays of river fish. The smells were gorgeous and rank, changing every time we turned our heads.

  Grace was already at work, focusing her lens on the flickering butter lamps outside the ancient, gold-roofed temple honoring Annapurna, the goddess of abundance. Every person who entered Asan, whatever their origin, gravitated toward the temple, orbiting clockwise around the shrine before spinning off toward their next destination.

  I left her alone to take pictures and wandered into the Annapurna Cassette Emporium, emerging ten minutes later with a new Sonny Rollins tape. Grace was squatting next to the low, ornate temple doorway, snapping pictures of devotees as they offered rupees and rice to the image of the goddess inside. She stood as I approached. Her knees popped.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “I want to get to the Bead Market while there’s still some good light.”

  We left Asan and walked down Jan Bahal toward Indrachowk. This was one of my favorite parts of town. Everything for sale along this lane held a strong association with Nepal: cream-colored pashmina shawls, block-printed tablecloths, woven rope, formal black topis arrayed in flat, glass-covered display cases. I especially loved the brass shops, their gleaming water pots and dekshis and copper plates spilling out onto the street like the booty from Ali Baba’s cave. I could spend an hour in any one of those shops, searching behind the newly minted wares for the occasional treasure: an old sukunda or temple bell green with neglect, forgotten for thirty years. Such objects were customarily sold by weight; an antique brass bowl, hammered by the artisans of Chainpur, might cost no more than a mass-produced dish trucked up from the Indian border.

  Just before we arrived at the broad, low temple in Indrachowk, we ducked left into a narrow lane. It was as if we’d spelunked into the barrel of a kaleidoscope. The creaky wooden shops selling rice paper and coils of hemp rope disappeared. We were suddenly in a labyrinth of cubicles, surrounded by a million strands of glass beads in a thousand shimmering colors. They dangled in bunches from hooks and hangers, like the seedpods of hallucinatory plants. Each string held hundreds of the tiny beads (which reportedly came from, of all places, the Czech Republic). They could be combined and consumed in infinite combinations, like jelly beans. Muslim merchants in white skullcaps sat in stalls no bigger than phone booths, cross-legged on white cushions. Incandescent lightbulbs hung suspended above their heads.

  Grace walked up to a stall and ran her hands through a curtain of beads. “C’mere. Listen.” I put my ear close. The sound was a sun shower on jungle foliage, or a distant rain stick.

  The fashion possibilities were intimidating. It was seductive to believe that somehow, with the right combination of strands and colors, the perfect necklace could be designed. I’d tried designing necklaces for ex-girlfriends a few times. The end result was that I inevitably left the Bead Market with at least a dozen, each of which had seemed like a masterpiece during its creation, but none of which anyone had actually ever worn.

  Fortunately Grace knew precisely what she wanted, and where to find it. A studious-looking bead wallah with a wispy black beard and mismatched glass eye nodded as she approached. She sat on a pad of the grass matting inside his stall, while I remained standing.

  “Three of the ivory white,” she said, reaching up to run a strand through her hand, “and three of the blue.” The merchant reached for a hook. “No, not those. The dark ones. Midnight blue. Those.” She pointed with her lips. “The shiny, dark ones.”

  Each strand held six thin strings of beads, so the final necklace would be ropelike: thirty-six strings thick. Grace held the strands together, then twisted them into a cream-and-lapis spiral.

  “That’s beautiful,” I said. “How about light green and purple? Or licorice and lime green?” Gumdrops, lollipops, it was impossible to think of anything but candy. And like sweets, the beads provoked a childlike reaction: You wanted them all, immediately, if only to put them all side by side and show everyone what you had.

  She shook her head. “Not my colors.” The merchant offered a wood-framed mirror, and Grace held the strands to her throat. “But this looks even better than I hoped it would. The trick is, you have to know what you’re going to wear it with first. Otherwise you end up buying a million necklaces, and none of them are right.”

  “But how do you know how this will look with your outfit?”

  Grace squeezed my hand, delighted by my stupidity. “I’m wearing it,” she said.

  She picked up a matching blue bead bracelet, which looked about right for a child. “That won’t fit,” I said. But it rolled easily onto her wrist.

  “From the time I was a girl, I wanted to play the piano. But my hands were too small.” She held her wrist out, self-approvingly. “Can I have this, too?”

  “Of course.” I paid the price without bargaining. The merchant tilted his head, motioning us around a bend to where three patwaris sat. Grace selected her clasp of choice: a simple gold ball and loop. Using gold thread and a spindle, with hand motions too quick to follow, a necklace-spinner wrapped the ends of the strands together in a perfectly formed coil, the clasps affixed to each end.

  Grace opened her vest and leaned toward me. “Care to do the honors?”

  I reached behind her neck, lifted her hair, and pushed the small ball through the loop. The necklace lay on her throat, a little longer than a choker. It looked dazzling with her saffron blouse. Before I pulled my hands away she reached up, held my wrists, and kissed me.

  “Taboo behavior,” she sighed. “It’s such a turn-on.”

  Behind her, the patwaris averted their eyes. I was culturally sensitive enough (or self-conscious enough) to feel slightly uncomfortable. But I breathed her light perfume and wondered if I’d get to take the necklace off, later.

  Which I did—along with her earrings and cream-colored sweater. Though she didn’t spend the night, we frolicked by candlelight until nearly midnight. She seemed to have come to a decision; any apprehensions about her personal history were being ignored. As was my ambiguous situation with Carlita. Before she left she’d suggested we meet this morning, and ride together to Pashupatinath.

  Three dates in a row would make us suddenly significant. That was all right by me. I was becoming infatuated with her smart humor and edgy relationship with Nepal. And I found her gorgeous, physically, with cool, responsive skin and a delicious mouth. I’d loved touching her, and being touched, in a way I hadn’t felt for years.

  RAMANA CLEARED HIS throat, waited a beat, and spat a ball of mucus the size of a walnut. A bicycle rickshaw circled in the nearby square. Usually, the area around the towering pipal tree was clogged with vehicles; this morning the chowk was nearly empty. All the shops were closed. The rickshaw boy, perched on the seat of his rickshaw, began peddling backward as fast as he could. A black dog jumped up from the curb and barked maniacally at his feet. Within seconds, an avalanche of yelping cascaded through the neighborhood. The melee was so inspiring that even Ramana’s mongrel, snoozing on the cold walkway along the pool’s edge, rose on his arthritic haunches, bent his tired neck, and croaked into the fray.

  The fog was thinning. The cobra on the capital in Nag Pokhari gleamed in the mist, sacred and lonesome. Few people ever entered the shrine; most were content to leave their offerings by the Ganesh statue in front. But the truth was that even Ganesh got scant attention. There was an older, more revered statue of the elephant-headed god a short walk away, in Tangal. Devotees mobbed that shrine every Tuesday and Saturday, their puja trays heavy with fruit and flowers.

  The problem, I realized, was that Nag Pokhari had never been user-friendly. Not in my memory, at least. During my first visit to Kathmandu it was a stagnant trench, more a mud hole than a sacred site. A film of green algae had covered its surface like a moldy tarpaulin. The central column stood at a precarious angle, and the old stone walls surrounding the pool wer
e collapsing into the soup. An effort was made to restore the place, but they’d overdone it. Nag Pokhari now seemed cheaply, self-consciously modern. The bricks were too pink. The framed pictures of “Panch and Rani” (the king and queen) were ostentatious, and the ritual bell in the Ganesh temple—cast from cheap new brass—tinny and shrill. The purpose of temple bells is to alert the god who is being petitioned, but this one sounded like a cheap telephone. When a passing devotee rang it, I half expected to hear Ganesh’s answering machine click on from some celestial alcove.

  The mists shifted above the water, and the cobra’s tongue flickered. The truth was, I barely knew anything about this place. Had a naga been seen here long ago, like the ones that created a sensation at that muddy pond near Boudha in 1983? Or had some well-connected nagaraja, a serpent king displaced from his throne during construction of the nearby palace, been forcibly relocated to this down-market neighborhood?

  It was ironic. I’d studied many of the Kathmandu Valley’s major religious sites, discussed them with locals, and described their legends in my books. But Nag Pokhari, so close to home, remained a mystery.

  “Namasté. Been waiting long?” Grace walked up and kissed me, flaunting Nepali mores. The pockets of her photographer’s vest bulged with gear.

  “No, no. Just chatting with my saathi over there.” I nodded toward the shrine-keeper.

  “Hey, did you hear what happened to Dr. Mishra?”

  “No.” I felt my face flush. What had I missed?

  “Larry Prince called. After Wednesday’s demonstration, he and some other doctors headed over to Singha Durbar with a list of demands for the prime minister. They made the delivery, but were arrested as they left.”

  “Shit.” Prince was the Asia Week correspondent: a brilliant, loud-mouthed photojournalist who’d lived in Nepal for more than twenty years and seemed to know everything two beats before anyone else. “I guess I’d better phone the Examiner.”

  Grace shook her head. “No need. It was just for show; they let them all go after an hour.” She glanced at me impishly. “You sleep okay last night?”

  “I slept alright. A bit of an ache.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “You know where. What about you?”

  “I was up awhile.” She leaned forward and kissed me again. “We’d better go,” she said. “This light’s not going to last much longer.” She peered at me with narrowed eyes. “Did you remember your film?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me.”

  9

  Shivaratri

  THE ENTIRE POPULATION of Kathmandu seemed to be funneling into a single purposeful stream and flowing down the narrow, brick-surfaced road that dipped, past ramshackle brick houses and screeching chickens, toward the temples along the Bagmati River. Pilgrims arrived from Kathmandu city apartments, Helambu’s rhododendron-covered hills, and the dry villages scattered across the Terai lowlands.

  This late February morning had the sweet sharpness of early spring. An unexpected rain had polished the sky. Tin can buses spun their wheels on soggy soccer fields, gave up, and disgorged their passengers onto the flattened grass. A thousand bicycles navigated the mucky streets, spraying thin fins of mud; taxis honked their way into the surging crowds, only to find themselves mired in a stew of humanity. Their fares abandoned ship and walked, carrying garlands of marigolds.

  Shivaratri, the Night of Lord Shiva, begins before dawn on the new moon of the month of Falguna and continues for twenty-four hours: through the whole day and night. It is an uninhibited celebration of Pashupati, the protector of animals; Mahadev, the supreme lord; Nataraj, lord of the dance; and Shankar, the sound-source of all existence. These are just four of the 1,008 names of Shiva, the all-powerful creator/destroyer who wields the double-headed drum of creation in his right hand and the flames of annihilation in his left. His scalp is the source of the Ganges; live cobras nest in his hair.

  In all of Kathmandu, the city of ten thousand gods, no deity is more feared or revered. Shiva is the consummate ascetic, smeared head to toe with the ashes of cremated corpses, meditating in the jaws of a live volcano. He is the spouse of Parvati, a goddess so gorgeous that a single glimpse of her naked body will make a mortal man self-immolate with desire. Only Shiva, an incomparable lover whose divine phallus is the flaming lingam, can fulfill her. In his wrathful form he is so terrifying that the Earth itself shudders and the moon skips across the sky like a skittish deer. In his female aspect—as Durga or Kali, with her necklace of severed human heads and limbs—Shiva is distilled into pure shakti: the liqueur of universal energy, whose source resides beneath the ribs and between the legs of all women.

  GRACE AND I purchased boats, made of folded banana leaves and filled with flowers and incense, from a little girl squatting behind a blanket just outside the temple grounds. After rising toward a masonry bridge, wide stone steps brought us down to the edge of the Bagmati. The water was shallow, but quick. We placed our leaf boats in the current, intoning private prayers. They sailed away, spinning and tipping. From the cremation ghats across the water, bodies burned. The smell, a pungent barbecue, drifted toward us.

  It was a short walk to a terraced hillside, where a row of benches overlooked the river. We bought three tangerines from a fruit seller and sat down to enjoy the sweeping, smoky vista over the balconies and gilded rooftops of the Pashupati complex. From here, we could see into the area forbidden to non-Hindus. The grounds swarmed with activity. Thousands of men and women, each carrying a heaped offering tray, formed a snaking queue toward the inner sanctum of the main temple. Other worshippers stood knee-deep in the Bagmati, faces raised to heaven, tossing water into the air.

  A brown rhesus, one of hundreds that lived on the grounds, leaped onto the back of our bench and snatched Grace’s tangerine right out of her hand. She yelped with fury, and moved to grab it back. The primate bared its teeth. Grace picked up a rock and brought her arm back. The animal scampered off, peeling the fruit as it ran.

  “Fucking monkeys . . .”

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I stuffed my tangerine peel into my jacket pocket and offered Grace a wedge. “They’ll imitate everything you do, except for that. Something in their brains stops short of learning how to throw rocks.”

  “Thank God. Can you imagine where we’d be if they could?” She tossed the stone down. “On second thought, maybe that’s exactly where we are.”

  We ate the third tangerine and set off to explore the hill. Shivaratri is a sacred circus, a carnival of ecstatic devotion. Babas and sadhus arrive in Kathmandu from all over the subcontinent, some journeying hundreds of miles by foot. Devotees evoke Shiva’s transcendent consciousness with alcohol, or by smoking enormous balls of hashish. Nepalis and foreigners alike flock to the temple grounds, surrounding troupes of musicians as they beat tambourines, pump harmoniums, and chant bhajans to their Lord. Curious crowds mass around red-eyed sadhus meditating on tiger skins, their ash-smeared bodies surrounded by human skulls.

  Some ascetics go to even greater extremes. Over the river from the main temple is an open-air hostel, a dharamsala where visiting sadhus eat and rest during the festival. Here one finds the real fanatics: men compelled to prove their love for God through divine self-mortification. One sadhu has held his right arm in the air for fourteen years; his bones and muscles have rusted, Tin Man-style, into place. Other sadhus sleep standing up, perch for days on one leg, or fill endless composition books with the divine name of Shiva. Rumors circulate about a sadhu who, every year at Shivaratri, cuts off one more inch of his arm.

  Most popular of all, though, is the celebrated Penis Sadhu, who’s become sort of a cult figure among these career cultists. “I saw him last year, right here, at Shivaratri,” I said, stopping on a patch of flattened grass just a few steps from the paved pathway.

  “Let’s steal his spot.” Grace spread out her shawl and sat down.

  I flopped down next to her. “It was a scene. Hundreds of locals were massed around
his little tent. When he finally came out, I was underwhelmed. He was just your average middle-aged sadhu, with sad eyes and gray dreadlocks. He kind of gazed at the crowd and lifted his loincloth, revealing a long, completely flaccid cock. Then he tied something around his balls—a kind of collar with two metal rings—and slid a bamboo pole through the rings. And he started turning the bar around and around, winding it up like one of those rubber band airplane propellers.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Tighter and tighter. Until—you can guess—he arched back and let go of the pole. I half expected him to take off.”

  “It couldn’t have spun that long.”

  “Just a couple of seconds, but it definitely got everyone’s attention. And that wasn’t even the main act. One of his assistants put together a stack of bricks. It must have weighed at least fifty pounds. He wrapped the bricks in a burlap sack and tied it with leather straps. Then the sadhu slid out the bamboo pole, and pulled the straps through the rings. He crouched down, tightened up the straps, stretched out his arms, and began to stand up. Very, very slowly. The stack of bricks shifted slightly, and rose off the ground. Like, a foot.”

  “All of you guys must have been howling.”

  “The crowd went wild. And at that exact second, with everyone pushing forward, I felt a hand slip into my pocket. In and out. When I checked for my wallet, it was gone. I tried to turn around and see who’d done it, but it was hopeless. Everyone was pressed together. Everyone was staring straight ahead. You couldn’t even see where anyone’s hands were.”

  “No one looked suspicious?”

  “Everyone looked suspicious. Luckily I hadn’t lost much—a few hundred rupees, and my press pass.”

  “Wow. The pickpockets must love that guy. He’s the ultimate distraction.”

  “I think there’s more to it than that.”