Page 55 - My Creative Writing Portfolio

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taking coffee, and go for walk until about 10, come home, take breakfast, work for 2-3 hours, take
lunch and go for walk. Come back, work for 1-2 hours, and prepare dinner.

nd
On 22 August, I came back after a walk. I looked at Face Book before starting to do some work,
and then found that it was Janai Purnima festival. This caused me some reflection on my life. Now
that FB needed to remind me. In my childhood days in Pokhara, we knew that this festival would
be coming prior to about a month or so as people start preparing for this. Priests would start
making the thread well ahead of the festival day. On that particular festival day, they would
organize a ritual by a body of water (lake or a river) to purify the thread, and then priests would
distribute thread, and put a thread on the wrist – to protect people from devils (the power or urge
to do wrong things or wrong things). Special food used to be prepared. As I come from priest
family, I also needed to shave my head in the morning, take a bath, wear sacred clothes and help
in the distribution of thread, which required me to go from house to house of my father’s clients.
Later on, as I was affected by the wind of modernization, I resisted doing this, which used to anger
my father. In any case, I do not have nostalgia about this festival. But I was just reflecting on how
in a new place, we are cut off, from the traditional practices. Covid has intensified this, as I would
have been invited by my Nepali friends (with families) at least for food on this occasion, or there
could be some celebration of this (of course in modified form) in some place, and friends would
invite me too.