It's the Gathamaga Festival, Not Ghantakarna Festival
Fun With Fire!
Co-Written by blogger, Pramesh Lakhaju
We all can agree on one thing, that the Newari caste, their culture and festivals are very unique. This culture is rich and ancient so the stories and legends of the festivals carry a lot of meaning and stories behind them. There are actually more than 100 different festivals and celebrations each year just for our caste. Today was one of our more lively celebrations. This festival is called gathamaga not ghantakarna. It's misunderstood with an Indian festival It is indeed gathamaga originally. As for the meaning and story behind this festival told by my ancestors or elder Newars, here is a bit of background.
Back in a day, farming was the most important thing in peoples’ lives in the Newari culture. People had to store food for whole year, especially rice at this monsoon season. And as the story goes, back in a day they didn't have machines and tools like in modern days. It was very important to farm and store food for the year for families and even the whole kingdom. And it was a very hard job and lots of physical work was needed to do the entire planting and farming process. So they say back in day they used to call spirits/demons to do all the physical tasks to finish farming which was hard or impossible without this spirit-power.
Every worker is due his pay and these demons were no different. It was impossible to keep feeding these demons because they were bigger and stronger and they ate a lot. The people had to send them away. This festival celebrates this day, the day they stopped the relationship with demons.
During this festival they make statues from bamboo and straw and after carrying it down to the river, or another special place, everyone chants vulgar words and carry this demon statue made with bamboo and straw to the intersections in the villages, as we believe demon resides in these intersections. So we send them away on this day by burning the statues on this intersections, as to farewell goodbye to this demons who had helped us in farming. This being a special spiritual night. People who practice black magic it's a special day for their practice, too, they are supposed to do pujas and sacrifices in the cemetery to go onto next level or receive more knowledge on black magic. So tonight is a powerful night for both good and bad spirits. And I am super glad we still celebrate it regardless as to people commenting about speaking or shouting vulgar words in public.
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