Vehicle worship

I returned to our children's refuge in Godawari this morning to continue with my experiments in smoking food. The results of yesterday's fish smoking looked very appetising but might have been a little overcooked. The taste was great though and received the thumbs up from the local staff members who'd helped me with the smoking yesterday. Today I am trying to produce tandoori smoked chicken in advance of letting the refuge children try all the products when I attend the main Dashain ceremony there tomorrow.

Driving through Kathmandu it's very quiet at the moment with most shops closed and few vehicles on the road. Dashain is the main Hindu festival and it's really a time for being at home with family or going back to one's ancestral village to visit relatives, hence the deserted streets. There are quite a few homemade swings ("pings") made out of bamboo poles to be seen in open spaces (including one at the refuge) that are designed to take the child literally and metaphorically heavenward and away from earthly things. However to my eye this doesn't quite fit with some of the other, more material, devotions. As I left the refuge today the staff were decorating the NGO's vehicles - bus, jeep and motorbike - with garlands and sugar cane leaves as part of a worship procedure while children were playing on a ping in the background. The Director, Shailaja, who is a practising Roman Catholic, smiled indulgently and told me that if she didn't allow this then if there were any future breakdowns she'd be blamed for not have allowed "puja" or "prayers" to have taken place. So she's gone with the flow which is actually a very Nepali thing to do and this easy going, tolerant approach I suppose is part of the charm of this place.