Image at right: learning to perform a Newari style blessing on my last day in Kathmandu in July.

I’ve spent enough time overseas at this point that I often find myself watching events here in my motherland with the conscious distance of a foreigner. So while Hindu pujas may have lost their exotic veneer, ostensibly familiar ceremonies strike me conversely as peculiar: the intricate social dance we enact with polite acquaintances, for one, or rituals of restaurant decorum. Certainly the episcopal Christmas eucharist I found myself at today (thanks to my girlfriend, a divinity student) struck me as about as strange as any of the festivals I was privy to in Southasia: eating the body and blood of Christ actually seems much stranger than eating actual meat that has been first been sacrificed and offered to a god.

Part of me is most at home when I am out of place, for in not atypical modern fashion there is no one place I truly belong to: I’ve never quite felt like a New Yorker, though I drive like one when I’m in Manhattan, jaywalk like one anywhere, and I’ll fiercely defend my old neighborhood pizza joint, Sal and Carmine’s, as the best slice on earth. Meanwhile, living in Caledonia county, VT this fall, lovely as it’s been, has held constant reminders that I’m an unusual breed in those parts as well, if not a flat-out flatlander in most eyes. In Nepal, at least, I’m obviously “from away,” a bideshi, which status begets a certain amount of tolerance towards me when I fail to act in expected ways. Perversely, for someone like me it becomes easy to feel at home in a place where one is an acknowledged outsider. Perhaps this is why I felt so at home last night, Christmas Eve, at the home of a high school friend and his first-generation Polish immigrant parents: an American most at home elsewhere, at the home of foreigners who had made America their home, and for whom (I surmise) Christmas serves both to connect with traditions from the old country and to reground themselves in the new one.

The venue was the Moore residence (the name is an Ellis island substitute for an original I can best approximate as Zbienievski), a neat house on a quiet street in Riverdale. Gathered there were Kate and John Moore and their son David, Kate’s twinkly-eyed grandmother who speaks not a word of English, Kate’s sister Margaret and her two sons, the pregnant wife of the older son, and a two couples of family friends. I arrived with my girlfriend Thandiwe and my mother; my father, who lives in a dementia care facility in Manhattan, was with us at the Moores’ two Christmases ago, just days before we “placed” him in his first institutional home.

Christmas eve dinner has been a mainstay of the Moore family for years, presumably ever since John Moore arrived in this country from Poland via an Austrian refugee camp with his wife, a few hundred dollars, and two or three words of English. And though no word is spoken during dinner about the provenance of the dishes shortly to be described, the meal smacks overwhelmingly, deliciously of tradition. I mean, would any single person acting independently come up with the idea of serving five different cold fish dishes as part of an appetizer course? The reasons for this single-minded extravagance lie in Catholic observance and long family practice accommodating it and now, in this generation, standing in for traditional religiosity: somewhere along the line, the operative question was “what is the most enormous feast we can have without eating any meat?”


The evening begins with a breaking of bread: wine glasses wielded, everyone mills around the kitchen breaking bread with everyone else and wishing them a merry christmas in a series of quick face-to-face encounters. This simple practice has the effect not only of introducing or reacquainting everyone but also of building a feeling of fellowship: we’re all here together, doing the same thing, with the same sorts of wishes and hopes. Then it’s to the table, where we sit at assigned places marked with slips scrawled in Polish-inflected phonetics: to my left sat Yvonne, once she deciphered the slip marked “Ywon” on her plate. The Maestro, John, has already set the cold appetizers out along the length of the table he and his son had expanded with a new leaf just for the evening: two kinds of pickled herring (one in cream sauce), cod with a tomato and onion “Greek sauce,” a fresh tuna salad with roasted red peppers, a canned tuna salad wrapped in lettuce leaves, a salad of diced vegetables, peas, apples and pickles dressed in mayonnaise, a wild rice pilaf, and bread and butter. By any normal standards, this is already a meal in itself, and a generous one. But the guests know what’s coming, and each seems to have a strategy in mind for how to cope with the onslaught of delicacies--some have primed their metabolic pumps with cannabis brownies, and at least one guest is taking a power nap on the couch.

Now, gentle reader, be advised: the appetizer of would-be lofty rumblings on sense of place has been cleared, the soup of interpreting traditions has been supped, and the main dish to come smacks of a different flavor entirely. This essay is about to devolve into a sort of carnal blow-by-blow description of a meal that simply deserves to be commemorated. Let the food porn commence.

An hour after the meal has begun, half of us have migrated to the kitchen, where John is heating up pierogis he’s made with chanterelles from his woods. It’s not hard to coax everybody back to the table, the axial center of the universe on this night, where the delicate pierogis are followed at a leisurely pace by a light, pure-tasting mushroom soup made from dried boletes (porcini). Matt, the older of Margaret’s sons, mentions in his understated way how he looks forward all year to this soup, and how it always tastes the same. Dave admits that he always dreaded it--apparently he spent his formative Christmas Eves eating bread and butter. In one of the evening’s more self-conscious moves, Dave has been called upon to record some of the recipes for posterity, but it hasn’t happened this year.
More milling follows the dumplings, along with plenty of wine and a brief jam session (electric guitars and drums) by a few of us downstairs. In the kitchen, John calmly sautees breaded scrod and amasses the tower of fillets, teetering, on a platter. Into another pan goes sauerkraut with yellow split peas, and mashed potatoes are in the works. Somehow everyone finds the appetite to fill their plates once again: fish and kraut and buttery, golden mashed potatoes, along with a salad of shaved cabbage, onions, parsley and vinegar. I a point of saturation with food and wine--not overindulgence, for I have been mindful and even up to now restrained--but fullness, a brimming over of contentment and good will. I catch the bright eye of Babcha, a grandmother “out of central casting” as my mother puts it, and someone mentions with a wink that she’s really in it for the sweets. Sweets. Course number five, and it’s nearly midnight. But a really good dessert makes room for itself, and without forcing it I sampled all four confections: first thick, rich chocolate cookies that resembled burger patties and rolled cookies with apricot jam, lemon zest and walnuts--Sarah’s creations. Then John’s poppy seed roll, a handsome labor of love. Finally, along with the last drops of coffee from the tall, ornate porcelain pot, comes Babcha’s contribution: a poppy seed cake laced with what I can only assume is chocolate ganache, dotted with golden butter frosting, and soaked in spirits. It’s sheer soft, heady, sumptuous pastry heaven. I catch Babcha’s eye and make what I hope is a universal sign of dessert appreciation. I go back for seconds, finally tossing in the white flag with a single bite of cake left on my plate. We’ve been sitting (and standing, milling, drumming, napping) for nearly 6 hours.

(End of explicit content)

Today I found I hardly needed to eat anything, but to call it a fast would be ridiculous.
I don’t know quite how to wrap this up. A final nod in the direction of tradition? Ah, tradition--a word I find myself using a lot these days, and one that has taken on an almost hallowed aura in my own mind. But what separates beautiful, wise, sustaining, and nourishing traditions from rigid, unyielding, repressive and lifeless ones? Is there any clear distinction, or way to cultivate the one while shedding the carapace of the other? To be continued, perhaps.

Endangered Species of Ayurved

Top image: Bishunath Karmacharya, traditional baidya and head of the Banepa Ayurveda Sangh (association). He wants to pass the tradition on and is willing to teach anyone willing to learn, at no cost. On the floor in front of him is a box of Yarchagumba.

Lower image: Keshab Baidya, a traditional Ayurvedic doctor/pharmacist in Banepa, Nepal. With his son pursuing a different career, Keshab is the last of his lineage. Above his right shoulder, a jar of shuddha paro, purified mercury, is visible.



Yesterday I took a long-overdue trip to Banepa, a sleepy Newar town slowly transforming itself into a modern city. In other words, it’s a lot like what Kathmandu must have been like in the seventies. The main strip, all that most tourists ever see of the place, is all traffic and bustle, with the usual assortment of shops, fruit peddlers, pan-spitters, etc. But head ten yards off this long, straight, dusty thoroughfare and you’re in another world of quiet brick-paved streets and brick-and-woodwork houses. Ducks puttering around the streets, and women scrubbing sudsy clothes just outside their doorways.
My mission was to meet with a couple of the old-timer Baidyas I’d met once or twice before, men who still practice (or if not, still know how to practice) rasa shastra. They work with minerals, metals, and animal parts like deer musk glands and conch shells as well as countless herbs from India and from the Himalayas. They are clinicians, too, but what separates them from so many other practitioners is their skill and knowledge of medicine-making. The first baidya I sought was Keshab Baidya (his last name indicating that his family have been Ayurvedic doctors for generations). I’d spent a wonderful couple of days with him during the winter watching him make medicine and tend to the few patients who came into his pharmacy-room, crowded with hundreds of jars of raw ingredients and finished compounds. This time I went straight up the back way to his herb room and got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw it was cleaned up, practically empty. Could he have fallen ill and died so suddenly in a few short months . . .? A possibility that seemed all the more real and disturbing because of the recent, sudden passing of another old man I had loved, on the other side of the world. But going around to the main entrance of his house, I was greeted by his daughter-in-law who explained the herb room had just been moved down a few flights. My worries weren’t entirely unfounded, though: Keshab-ji wasn’t well. He was suffering from a failing heart. The move was to make it easier to access his work without having to climb up flights of stairs. Just now he was resting, and I sat amongst the hundreds, thousands of plastic jars and waited for him to appear. When he finally did I barely recognized him. It was his presence more than any specific physical characteristic that had changed: he seemed such a thinner, slighter figure than the engaged, lively man I remembered. After exchanging 'namaste's we just sat there, not exactly looking at each other but acutely aware of each others' presence, for a good 5 minutes. Something in the man’s eyes had changed, too—instead of a lively sparkle there was a dull sadness, a sense of resignation. It wasn’t hard to guess what this might be about. Finally he broke the silence by asking me, in his typical style, 'what would you give for hepatitis B?' I'm never sure when he does this if he's quizzing me or if he’s genuinely curious what herbs a foreign ‘baidya’ would use. But somehow, that's what I seem to be both to him and to another, salty baidya I’ve been hanging out with. Not a peer, really, but in some sense one of their own. The salty baidya, Shyam Man Shrestha, referred to me recently as a 'kaviraj,' an almost embarrassingly high compliment meaning something like 'king of doctors.' Then yesterday dear old Keshab Baidya said in Newari, when another old Newari man came in gestured at me, grunting a question, that I was an "American who knows everything about herbs." This is hardly true either, but the thing that really struck me yesterday is I may be the closest these old baidyas have to an apprentice, someone to carry on the tradition. And i'm very far from that, really. But in Keshab's case it's so clear that that is what's missing, the next generation. That’s what’s behind the dullness in his gaze, the resignation in his movements. Eventually I broached the subject with him by asking if the boy I'd seen once helping him by grinding some herbs was still coming. Nope, not really . . . all of sudden he said straight out, “after I go, my kids'll wait a few years maybe and then they'll say, ‘look at this mess, we could put this room to a better use . . . and they’ll throw it all away. All this tens of laakhs worth of medicine.’” There’s no one to carry it on.
One of the reasons i'd come back was to buy some bhasmas and other medicines from him to bring home. I didn't want to suddenly start talking business, but I brought it up by asking what he thought the most important bhasmas and non-perishable medicines were. We compiled a list of 10 or so things (shankha, abhrak and mandur bhasmas, shilajit, some guggulus . . .), and I said I would like to buy them from him. He told me to give him a week before I come and pick up what he puts together for me. Leaving his place, having arranged this, I felt some of the weight of tradition settle on my shoulders, and let me tell you it was a strange feeling. I have a chance to carry on parts of their lineage, in however small a way. Later, at the Nawaranga guest house in Dhulikhel amongst people who feel after 8 months like old friends, thinking about the whole scene with Keshab brought a tear to my eye. I could feel the pain of this old man, bearer of such a proud and venerable tradition, watching it come to a dead end.
Of course Ayurveda is not in danger of dying. By some estimations it may be more popular than ever. But it’s losing it’s old-growth, it’s deepest-rooted lineages, as the younger generation pursues easier, more lucrative and more prestigious occupations. In flirting with the New Age it is in danger of severing its links with the past.
For my Ayurvedic student friends: there is still an opportunity in Banepa to come and learn the techniques of classical rasa shastra hands-on. Bishunath Karmacharya, a first-rate baidya, is willing to teach whoever wants to learn, for free. The catch is that he has no longer has a workshop. An interested group of students, though, could come to Nepal and study medicine-making intensively for months with a rare teacher for little more than the cost of building a rudimentary workshop/lodging (plus food and airfare of course). If anyone is interested in such a possibility, contact me!

Bhaktapur

When I first schemed up a way to get back to this part of the world, I set my sights on a singular city, Bhaktapur, on the eastern side of the Kathmandu valley. My project proposal for a Fulbright grant involved exploring the agricultural and culinary life of this city, which is so often described as 'ancient' and 'traditional.' I wanted to see through the lens of food production, processing, preparation and consumption how this densely populated, undeniably urban place has (had) succesfully supported itself in near self-sufficiency for centuries.

Bhaktapur was and still is largely a Newar city. Although in modern Nepal the Newars are seen by others as just another one of Nepal's dozens of ethnic/linguistic groups, they see themselves as the quintessential Nepalis. From ancient times (arguably) the Kathmandu Valley and its three major cities--Kathmandu itself, Lalitpur (or Patan), and Bhaktapur--had been Newar territory. Theirs is an urban culture, highly structured, with a complex caste society encompassing both Buddhist (Mahayana/Vajrayana) and Hindu (Shiavite/Vaishnavite) "Great Traditions." In the late eighteenth-century the Valley fell to the great conquest by the Gorkhas, Pahari (hill-dwelling) Hindus sweeping in from the West. Although the Gorkha policy was, of necessity, to leave most of the existing Newar infrastructure and culture intact, there nevertheless began the irreversible process of diversification in the Valley. Today Newars are no longer even a majority, and their language is at risk. Newari has gone from a mainly linguistic category to an essentially ethnic/cultural one, as the Newars are forced to overlook some of their caste and religious differences in favor of an assumed ethnic solidarity. But the culture that defines this place is still that of the Newars, from their striking brick-and-woodwork pagoda architecture to the layout of the streets, and the gods that reside in every neighborhood temple.

Of the three cities of the valley, Bhatapur was the one that remained the most intact, at least until the mid-20th Century. Even today it stands aloof from the hustle and bustle of modern Kathmandu, which has swollen together with Patan into one choking metropolis. Of course such distinction doesn't escape the notice of tourists, who have been flocking to this ancient, traditional city for decades now and leaving their mark. The buildings are all either ancient or (more commonly, after various earthquakes) restored, but in many cases these picturesque shells house fluorescently lit internet cafes, luxuriously appointed tourist quarters and restaurants serving fries and imported lager. Still, Bhaktapur itself is still more than 95% Newar, and more than anywhere else in the Valley, Newari, or Nepal Bhasha as the Newar themselves call it, is heard spoken in the streets. But the kids, ever attuned to the trends of the day, are foregoing the clipped, nasal sounds of their ancestral tongue in favor of this nation's lingua franca, Nepali.

A week into this 10-month chapter of my life, I'm having second thoughts about transplanting myself into such an environment as Bhaktapur. It's an alluring place, but an elusive one--it's both more natural and more artificial than Kathmandu, more joyful and more laden. Moving to what is still a Newar city would mean becoming once again an infant, except when I'm a member of the tourist species, i.e. an alien to the cultural life of the city. The traditions I'm interested in--agricultural, culinary, medical--are all highly cultural, which again places me neatly at odds with the overwhelming trend away from exactly those traditions. Given my interests, is it not better to go somewhere where these things are still more prevalent? Yes, but what is more painful than watching the cracks forming in the walls of the last remaining stronghold of a culture? And knowing myself to be, despite my best efforts, a likely agent of that change?