ani-haru means nuns

Around 6:30 a.m. a nun sticks her head in my window. “An-to-nia! Eee-snow!” Trees and rocks covered with thin layer of crisp snow. Very cold. Spent the morning in kitchen, breathing wood smoke, drinking tea, and helping, or perhaps hindering, to make breakfast.

The nuns kitchen is a source of warmth and cheer, not only for themselves but for the other inhabitants of Muktinath. Most mornings, there’s a police officer or two drinking tea and bantering with the nuns. The police are large, for Nepali men, and carry themselves with masculine bravado, but they’re not above helping out in the kitchen. While I rolled dough into balls, a nun plied the rolling pin and a p.o. tossed dough circles onto the hot pan.

At ten o’clock we carry a huge pot of roti and chickpea soup to the gompa and eat breakfast.

Outside, guide: “This is temple. Nuns eat breakfast now.”
Tourist: “Oh, really? D’you think they’ve got some champa (porridge) for me?”
Guide: “Uh, no.”

After breakfast, into the hills. An utterly different world today. Very pale and bright—not so good for photographs, but lovely to dwell in. The clouds making huge shadows over fields and houses. Lacey snow over cracked rock and scarlet thorns. Thought of Lama—back in Boudha—how his eyes smiled when he told me about throwing snowballs as a child in Muktinath.

The word nun, for me, conjures up images of Catholic school and chilly resignation—frowny faces and anti-sex primness. These nuns aren't like that at all. They’re sexy, stylish, boisturous, hearty and cheerful. The Nepali word for nun is ani, or ani-haru for the plural. I like these words much better, so from now on that’s what I’ll say.

Came back from the hills for lunch. Sitting in my room huddled in blankets, writing with icey fingers and a shaking pen. Outside, falling snow. The ani-haru chanting. Faded prayer flags flapping in the wind, the brown hills still dusted with the earlier snowfall.

The ani-haru speak Tibetan or Mustang language among themselves, which is completely different from Nepali. A relief to realize that all the time I thought I wasn’t understanding their Nepali, they weren't speaking it at all. But—disorienting and at times nightmarish to not be understood, to not understand anything that is said.

One of the young ani-haru has a happy, funny face with a dollopy nose and white teeth and lots of energy. Her name’s Chenzom. She’s 15. She reads very well—“Who taught you English?” I ask. She says school a little bit, but mostly Kelly. Kelly’s legacy is very apparent. The ani-haru all know the English words for parts of the body, colors and vegetables.

The first word I learned in Muktinath was jado, which they pronounce more like tzaru. We have many conversations about the weahter, “You cold, no cold?” “Yes, it’s cold. I'm very cold. I'm not cold. I'm a little cold.”

“Cha khaanus!” means “Drink tea!” The ani-haru say it to me every five minutes. I love their milk tea and black tea so I comply. The butter tea tastes like curdled water and vomit to me, so they don’t offer that any more.

One ani is pounding something white in a large mortar and pestle made out of a tree root. Large black pot bubbles over the wood fire. Kartok is standing next to the stove draped in her red robes, looking like a madonna carved out of marble. Diki Kunzum comes in. She’s the most stylish of the ani-haru. She usually sports a pink shirt over her robes, and wears a brown goat-skin coat trimmed with tawny fur. Her face is broad and flat, with soft features.

The ani-haru eat with their hands, and they don’t wash either before or after eating. Use the same pan for cooking over and over without washing it. Serve rice with the same hand that scrubbed the shrine floor or rooted in a nostril or ear. Completely different standards of hygeine. I'm sure I do things they think are very dirty.

15 year old Chenzom dancing around the courtyard in the moonlight, skirts around her waist, long underwear flapping, shrieking wordlessly. The teenage ani-haru are like any other young people: emotional, high-spirited, argumentative, at times pensive and sulky, at other times wild and uncontrollable.

The two child ani-haru absolutely ferocious—they shout at each other in these deep husky voices, nothing calculatedly cute or pretentious about them. All quicksilver spontaneity and confidence, unleashed like lightening in a child body. One is smaller, with very burnt rosy cheeks. I ask them how old they are. I thought, maybe 8 and 10. “Eghara,” says the burntcheeked one. She shows me on her fingers—eleven. I asked the other’s age. “Eghara, eghara,” they clarify, pointing back and forth. They mean they are both eleven, but from now I will always think of them as the Eghara.