Gaijatra: A festival of cow & humor

‘Gaijatra’, a popular festival in Nepal, is celebrated in the month of Bhadra with great excitement and enthusiasm especially in Kathmandu valley by Newar community. On this day, a cow or a child dressed up as a cow is taken in procession in the name of the dead and it is believed that the cow will help them in the journey of freedom into heaven. Besides sending a child around the city, different other things are done in Bhaktapur e.g. stick dance called “Ghintang Ghising”. People also have fun on this day as they dress up in comic way and the political and social problems are mocked publicly.

In ancient period, people used to celebrate it as a festival of worshipping god of death “Yamaraj”. Later, King Pratap Malla established a new trend of celebration. The most renowned king of the Malla era, Pratap Malla had two wives and five sons from them. King Pratap Malla being an enlightened soul, he wanted to experiment with a new concept he had in mind. He wanted all of his five sons to have the experience of ruling a kingdom in his own lifetime, so he allotted one year of rule for each of his sons. As luck would have it, the second eldest son, Chakrabartendra, was trampled to death by an elephant on the second day of his taking over the reins. King made a pond named Ranipokhari. The king filled the beautiful pond with water from all the holy rivers of the kingdom. This was to fulfill his queen’s wish of wanting to sanctify herself by bathing in the waters of all the sacred rivers of the kingdom. The queen, was devastated, since her dead son happened to be her favorite offspring. The sadness was such that she fell into a deep depression. The king brought in all sorts of entertainment and entertainers to the court in repeated attempts to make her forget the tragedy. However, no matter how hard everybody tried, nobody could make her even smile a little, let alone laugh.

Finally, in desperation, the king asked his subjects to organize a parade in which one member of every family that had suffered a loss that year would take part. He ordered that they dress up in crazy and flashy costumes and drag a colorfully decorated cow along behind them. Those who didn’t have a cow could have someone dressed up as a cow. On this particular day, the king allowed his subjects to make jokes about existing social norms and people in powerful positions. Every sort of buffoonery and lampooning was permitted. This flamboyant parade was to pass along the main gates of the royal palace, from where the king and his queens would watch the revelry.

As the parade drew near, the king pointed out the huge contingent of participants, and told the grieving queen that every participant in the parade had suffered the death of a family member in the year gone by. On knowing this, the queen realized that she was, after all, not the only one who had been so aggrieved. Many others were grieving for the loss of a loved one, just as she was. However, that had not stopped them from moving on or taking part in a very funny kind of parade, dressed in weird clothes and cracking all sorts of jokes, laughing till their bellies hurt. Gradually, a smile of merriment began to form on her hereto grimly tight lips, and eventually a giggle escaped from her, which finally turned into laughter.

Ref. : www.insidehimalayas.com , The Rising Nepal.