Growing up as a living goddess

Updated

Preeti Shakya's feet didn't touch the ground outside her palace until she was 11. She became a goddess at three years old, but when puberty hit, it was back to an anonymous life in the suburbs.

The sun rises over Kathmandu as a tiny toddler, dressed in red and bedecked in gold jewellery, is carried into a temple.

They say she will be left in a "dark place" filled with something horrifying. Some say it's snakes, others say slaughtered animals.

She's beat hundreds of other girls to get to this final test — screened for 32 qualities of perfection by the highest priests in the land.

If she cries, she'll be sent home to an unremarkable life.

But if she braves the horror in silence, she'll be initiated as a "living goddess" called the Kumari, worshipped by Nepal's Newari people in a tradition stretching back 300 years.

But no-one really knows what happens on the induction day, not even the Kumari herself, being too young to remember.

The Kumari's life is kept hidden. Unless she chooses to tell you about it.

From goddess to student

Preeti Shakya is dressed in jeans, smartphone in hand, as she enters her house in downtown Kathmandu.

It's hard to imagine this 21-year old was once a living goddess, taken as a toddler from her parents' home.

There are 12 Kumaris in the Kathmandu Valley. All are considered goddesses but Preeti was the Royal Kumari — the most important of all.

She began her reign at three years old, living with the official Kumari caretakers for eight years, before returning to an anonymous suburban life.

Preeti spent her entire childhood inside the Kumari Ghar, except for a few times a year when she left the house for festivals, but even then her feet were not allowed to touch the ground.

"I wasn't allowed to step outside and if I did, they used a traditional cloth kind of like a red carpet."

Her real family visited just once a week, so her friends were the caretaker's family.

During the day, Preeti had to wear traditional clothes and makeup.

"I remember watching TV and seeing modern dresses and I really wanted to wear them," she says. "I used to wear them when I was studying in the house, but only in red — the colour of the goddess."

When she wasn't playing or studying, Preeti would sit on her throne and offer blessings to believers.

"I could feel that I was important. My favourite thing was when people brought me chocolate and toys."

Blessed by a child

One caretaker, Gautam Shakya, has been looking after Kumaris since he was old enough to carry a cup of tea. His family have seen hundreds of girls, having passed the job from father to son since the first Kumari.

He saw thousands clamour to meet Preeti as she was paraded around Kathmandu for hours during the festival of Indra Jatra, with crowds of believers following her golden chariot, throwing offerings and shouting for her blessing.

"She gets visited by so many people but she's always calm," says Gautam.

"The rest of us have to go to the restroom, take a rest, eat something, but the Kumari doesn't. That is the power of the god — she's not a normal child."

"More than six or seven hours I had to sit and I had that patience," says Preeti.

"I felt completely calm."

It is believed the Royal Kumari's blessing sustains the peace and prosperity of the country. During her reign, Preeti blessed the King of Nepal seven times and the Prime Minister once.

"They say they feel some kind of fire, a positive energy around me," she says.

"The people praying to me have actually been blessed but I don't feel anything."

Legend has it

The Kumari tradition started in the year 877 in the Newari calendar, Gautam says, which is 1757 AD.

"The last king of the Malla Dynasty used to meet with the goddess Taleju, but nobody was allowed to know about it."

One night, the queen secretly followed her husband. The goddess knew she was hiding and vowed never to meet the king again.

The king pleaded with her to return — Nepal was on the brink of unification and his people needed the goddess's protection.

She told him to find a "pure" girl from the Shakya family, the Newari's highest caste, who she would manifest in. The custom grew from there.

Some speculate the tradition was part of a now-forgotten Newari religion, but when the country was unified it was mixed with other beliefs. Today, both Hindu and Buddhist devotees worship the Kumari.

"Everything is mixed in Nepal," says Preeti. "Hindus and Buddhists live together, so our traditions meet with their traditions."

Every decade or so, a new Royal Kumari is selected. The process begins with a call for nominations through 16 monasteries across Kathmandu.

If the nominee's Jaata, a zodiac birth chart, matches the national leader's (once the king, now the president), she moves to the next level, where she is screened for the 32 qualities of perfection.

"Only the priests know exactly what these qualities are," says Gautam. "The girl has to be beautiful, then calm and not afraid."

On the eighth day of the festival of Dashain, the chosen girl is said to face the dark room of horror. If she doesn't cry, she's believed to be the true goddess and her parents relinquish her to the Kumari house.

"That was a painful time for me. But I also felt proud," says Preeti's mother, Reena Shakya.

"Preeti was very happy because she was going to be the goddess. She was wearing a beautiful new dress and dancing around, people were worshipping her, she loved the attention."

Most believers are happy for what happens inside the Kumari Ghar to remain a secret and even if they did ask, there may not be an answer — the Kumari tradition is passed on through word of mouth and many of its early secrets are now lost.

A lot of the conjecture surrounds what happens in the "dark place". But Gautam says it's a myth, conflating the Kumari's initiation with the mass-animal sacrifice that takes place on the same day of the festival.

The end of an era

As soon as Preeti reached 11, it was time for her to re-enter the mortal world.

The caretakers usually begin looking for a new goddess a few years early as it can take a while to find the right candidate.

"If we don't change her now, we'll have to wait until next year which could be late," senior official Deepak Bahadur Pandey told Reuters at the time.

"If the girl starts menstruating while serving as Kumari, it is considered inauspicious."

While Preeti was excited to live with her family again, leaving her life as a goddess was a painful process.

"I cried a lot," she remembers. "I was treated like family in the Kumari house. I love them very much."

Reena had to manage Preeti's transition to life as a normal child.

"At first we still treated her like the goddess. So for example when it was time for dinner she was offered first and then others would eat afterwards," says Reena.

"She was afraid of going out alone because she didn't have the habit … I had to take her to school and take her back."

"I felt like cars were coming to hit me," Preeti adds.

"I was behaving strangely while walking. I used to get tired very fast. It was very difficult for me as I was watching a car for the first time."

The hardest part was dealing with criticism.

"After my retirement I realised the world is so cruel," she says.

"Teachers started scolding me as I was a little poor in my studies, and when I first went to school one of my classmates said I look so fat. At that time, I was completely broken because nobody used to talk in that manner."

But after a while, Preeti began to enjoy meeting new friends, wearing whatever she wanted and visiting new places.

Robbing girls' childhoods?

In recent years, critiques of the Kumari tradition have emerged. In her '90s memoir From Goddess to Mortal, ex-Kumari Rashmila Shakya described her lack of education and the difficulties of returning to normal life.

Since then, critics have called for an end to the tradition.

"Nepal has ratified the convention on the rights of the child. It says that you can't exploit children in the name of culture," one of Nepal's leading human rights lawyers Sapana Pradhan-Malla told The Guardian.

"The Kumari is forced to give up her childhood to be a goddess instead. Her rights are being violated."

In response to Rashmila's memoir, the Nepalese government made education mandatory inside the Kumari house and established a monthly stipend towards ex-Royal Kumaris' education.

Preeti was homeschooled in the Kumari house, then continued her studies at a normal school.

But old customs are hard to shake. One belief is that if an ex-Kumari marries, her husband will die shortly after.

"There was one Kumari in Patan who chose to live a single life," Gautam explains. "Because she thought like that people thought the Kumari must not marry."

Preeti, for her part, intends to marry when she's older.

Another belief, which Gautam shares, is that the Kumari caused 2015's Gorkha Earthquake.

A week earlier, Kathmandu's City Museum exhibited a likeness of the living goddess with a condom packet for the red tika on her forehead.

The artwork enraged believers, who saw the earthquake as an act of retribution from the goddess.

"I had no intention to disrespect the goddess," artist Sudeep Balla later clarified.

"The work is a representation of how our society sees women; they are goddesses inside the temples but mere objects outside in society."

Freedom of an ordinary life

Today, Preeti maintains close ties with the Kumari caretakers, and the Newari community recognises her as an ex-living goddess.

"For her whole life she will get a pension — the municipality pays 10,000 [$A122 per month] and the government pays 6,000," says Gautam.

Now a university student with her future ahead of her, she's looking forward to the rest of her life.

"My aim is to be a successful banker but maybe I will change my mind," she says.

"Now that I am no longer a Kumari I don't have to fulfil any duties.

"I am a 100 per cent normal Nepali girl who is free to do anything!"

Credits

Words and photographs by Zoe Osborne

Archive photography from Reuters

Video by Lakheaa Maharjanz, edited by Leonard King

Edited and produced by Annika Blau

Topics: religion-and-beliefs, nepal

First posted