big puja finish

Today is the last day of this ten-day puja they’ve been doing. Tomorrow we’re going to Jhargot. Still not clear on whether we’re sleeping there or coming back every day.

After lunch the ani-haru take blankets over to the wide stream by the water gompa. 19-year old Yangzum Bhuti and I hold a basin to the water—nearly lose it to the powerful current. Yangzum Bhuti gives me a resigned look—“I go in!” Jumps into the freezing water, fills up the basin. Sets it on the little bridge over the stream.

The other ani-haru arrive and strip off their socks and sandals. I do the same. “No! You, no. Very cold,” 15-year old Chenzom tells me.

They fill a couple other basins, throw a blanket and some detergent in each basin, and jump up and down on the blankets as if making wine. The water turns black-brown. Hira and Chenzom stand knee deep in the stream holding the washed blankets, and the current acts as the rinse cycle. They twist the blankets and wring them. I “help” by carrying the wrung blankets to a rack of bells to hang them until they can be carried to the rocks to dry.

An older ani arrives and says something along the lines of, “Stop being ridiculous and pretending you're not cold. We know this isn’t normal for you! Come with me.” I follow her inside—the ani-haru have a kitchen and bedroom on the top floor of the admin building next to the water gompa. We drink hundreds of cups of “black tea,” which I learn for the first time is actually very diluted coffee with lots of sugar.

Later the sun comes out. The ani-haru sit in the sun with the p.o.s. Usual bickering and flirting. One p.o. keeps bothering Yangzum Bhuti while she’s reading, poking at her hat and flicking her book. She gives him a really hard slap on the arm.

Back at the fire gompa, in the kitchen. Ani Hira cooking dinner. The largest of the p.o.s stops by the kitchen—he has a face like a cheerful dog, and speaks just a little English. “You lucky,” he says to me. “This very holy place.”

Chenzum darts in and holds a cigarette to the firepot, darts back out. It’s gotten dark outside. The power is out (it usually goes out every night).

Then—a male voice raised in song, drawing closer and closer—a blue penlight shines—all of a sudden five of the p.o.s are in the kitchen—the only light from the wood stove and the blue penlight—loud voices, laughing. The p.o.s sit. They sing—the ani-haru dance—the Eghara also—clapping in time to the song. The singer teaches me the words. The p.o.s get up to leave, sit back down, leave, come back, dance, leave, dance through the doorway again—the Eghara flushed with excitement—laughter and jostling and bumping. “Oh, you’re waiting for your dinner, we should leave!” And they do finally. But after we’re all in bed with the lights out, the p.o.s come back. Dancing and singing in the courtyard.

I don’t know if other Nepali women party like this. The ani-haru certainly have as much fun as any Western young people. Still havent seen any signs of the repression of women my guidebooks talked about.