What is a temple?

Pathibhara, Mukkumglung, Cable Car, and Desires.

I woke up at four (AM, not PM — I’ve temporarily become a better person) because of the rustle of creaky wood pounded by the feet of tourists like me who had sought a hotel at Thulophedi as their abode for the night. The kitchen hands and the owning head of the hotel had suggested all of us take an early shower, as was the practice, before starting our hike to the temple on top of the tall hill. We all had hiked almost-halfway through the hill the previous evening. I wanted more sleep, I thought sleep was good. But the devotees wanted to head out early, as early as three AM, as I had heard their plans the previous night.

The stamping feet would have gone and I would have fallen back asleep were it not for raucous shouts of ‘Pathibhara Ma Ki Jay’. The tourists were from everywhere. There were a group of friends from Padsari, a family from Biratnagar, and a big team of eight from Bihar. A deeply broken sleep cannot be reconciled with ease; I had no other choice but to wake up.

I went down and the owner lady offered me hot water. I drank a cup and asked for a refill. Everyone was trying to get done with the shower — one group had already left at three, like they had planned. I asked myself – what’s the point of the shower if the uphill climb was supposedly steeper than yesterday? I did not find a satisfactory answer, and without waiting for anyone, I headed out on the journey on my own.

I enjoyed the climb. I used to hike quite often a few years back, but the habit had died. Thankfully, my two weeks stay at Phungling and my daily uphill and downhill walk to my workplace had trained my walking muscles. The path in front was paved with stone, like most commercial hiking trails in Nepal. But the shift in altitude was steep; the eyes had to constantly face upwards to locate where the path would turn towards after every few seconds.

I crossed an older man of about fifty years of age walking slowly but with intent. He had a wooden stick accompanying his two legs. I was then mostly by myself throughout the journey. Two-thirds of the way in, I came across another man but younger, and we started walking slowly, making small talk. He was in the construction business in his hometown of Beni in the district of Myagdi. “Religious tourism is the only way for Nepal to move forward,” he said. He kept on using the word adbhut for almost everything. The sound of the bell? Adbhut. The sight of trishul being planted at certain designated spots? Adbhut. The surrounding nature? Adbhut. I did agree to his last adbhut. The nature was indeed beautiful. The ring of bells were okay, they didn’t really inspire me too much.

As we approached closer to the hilltop, a mountain peak gave us a sneak-peek. A few moments later, I could see its belly being revealed alongside its smaller younger sisters. The peaks had to be Kanchanjangha/Sewalungma, Kumbhakarna/Phaktanglung, and others in the family. The long, arduous journey had taken fruit for me. If there really was God, it had to be this. Not the mountain as a manifestation of God, but the sheer beauty of nature: the sight of white mountain peaks foregrounded by gently swaying white clouds and the touch of a soft, chilly wind on the hot sweat trickling down one’s cheeks.

We reached the top after a few dozen steps. The religious brother continued to fulfill his duty. He took out many things, most of them red, to prepare for his darshan. I only had a half-empty bottle of water and a plastic sheet as a potential make-do raincoat. I left him and went to meet the Goddess Pathibhara.

The Goddess did not look like any of the Kathmandu Gods or Goddesses. She looked neat. Her statue still gave a lustrous shine. It felt like I was in a rich Hindu family’s house, looking at their commissioned kuldewata statue. I was expecting the grimy gods of Kathmandu, covered with vermillion red, melted wax, grime of thousands of hands, and everything else possible in this human world that would make an archaeologist faint and her material stratigraphy fail. But this Goddess was just there, almost like her statue was born yesterday.

A friend from Phungling told me later that the old statue used to be layered with blood of all kinds. As per the belief, a bali given to Ma Pathibhara would be soaked dry because of her cool powers. But this new statue was regulated to be separate from the bali zone.

I watched the Goddess watch me (or others, who knows?) and bade her farewell. There was a slight geographic bulge next to the temple (was it a temple, she was out there under the open sky), and because my newfound God was the surrounding three-hundred-and-sixty degree view, I paced towards the highest point of the hilltop to get the best view possible.

As I climbed the last few steps to reach the hill’s true peak, many things started revealing themselves to me. A completely new set of buildings stood there. There was something like a tablet surrounded by a big red cloth and accompanied by many coins in front of it. Close to it was a newly built statue of Phalgunanda, the hero of the Kirants (or Yakthung people, more on that later). The statue was pretty big and the multiple metal placards had names of the donors who helped create and establish it. There were a lot of locals from Taplejung but the biggest ones were Limbus from Hong Kong and the UK. Lahures, as the locals refer to them with a tinge of jealousy.

There are sources that state that the worship stone of the Limbu people was removed and Ma Pathibhara was placed at the location instead. This was twenty-four years ago, in 2001. I wondered if the stone tablet had anything to do with it?

And who else was there next to Mr. Phalgunanda and the numerous Limbu religious buildings and artifacts? Nobody except me.

The end point of the contested cable car is supposed to be closer to Mr. Phalgunanda than Ms. Pathibhara. Who wants what, where, and when is deeply contested in the entire district of Taplejung. There are academics who claim different histories of the origin and nomenclature of the Limbu people. Some claim ethnicities like Rai and Sunuwar to be within the larger umbrella term of Kirant. Some want them to be their own entity and claim themselves to be the Yakthung people, further claiming that they were the first settlers. There’s a divide in the Yakthung identity too — some claim a migration from elsewhere, others simply want to follow their Mundhum and settle down on its saying that the Yakthung people were born out of thin air.

And while there are debates about many things, the Pathibhara Development Committee website by the Nepal Government, an entity responsible to cover all information of the region amongst other things has absolutely no information of the Limbu/Yakthung/Kirant history of the area. No mention of the word ‘Mukkumlung’. All it yaps about is Pathibhara.

I hiked down to the same hotel for lunch. The owner lady was a Bhattarai married to a Karki, both of them being either Bahun or Chettri last names. I asked her where she was born and she pointed out to the house next door, which had been turned into another hotel.

“How many generations from your family have lived here?” I asked her. “My great grandfather came here from Okhaldhunga. He went to Dharan, made money, asked for money, and climbed up here. The local Limbu leader had apparently brought him here to kill bears. He was a daredevil. Later, he bought the land from the leader. The Kipat system had changed a little bit, but it still held authority. He gave them two mana coins and there was verbal agreement that the land was his. Later, about twenty years ago or so, when the land was taken by the Nepal Government, we had no paper to show. Now, we have to pay sixty thousand in tax to the different government entities — from two ward to the Phungling municipality and sometimes also to different committees in Phungling. They did the lakhe naach at the (Phungling) bazaar last week, we had to give them money too. But at least there are more tourists coming in. We don’t own the land now but business is good.”

I wanted to talk to more Bahun/Chhettri families to understand the migration pattern a bit more but talks about family histories are weird to start, especially since I was a visitor just for a night. I had been wondering about the accent of the Bahun/Chettris here. They retained the contraction and nasality of Bahuns from more Western areas. I wondered why they didn’t speak similarly to the other groups here, who don’t have that feature in their speech. I wondered about why my Newar and Tamang friends and my Bahun self from Kathmandu speak with quite similar linguistic features. Were all of the Bahun/Chhettri migration in the immediate Taplejung region recent? Or was the retaining of accent just a feature of subconscious ethnic demarcation? Was Pathibhara a really new God and the temple a really new site (and sight)? And where were the sadhus and the jogis? Why was a young priest the only one managing the entire worship endeavor?

There are many questions unanswered. If answered, they are difficult to find online. On the way back, I had to share a Bolero with the gulmeli Bahun gang. They talked shit about the Limbus of the East, the Christian converts (they thought everyone converted recently, and didn’t assume them to have migrated or being born in the region), the Madheshis of Madhesh Pradesh, and the Magars of their own hometown. They did talk shit about themselves too, but just about the ‘unclarity’ of their Nepali speech. I had to wonder — what is Pathibhara doing to all of us?

The drivers and the people of the immediate trail want the cable car to be made. Most people in Phungling want it to be made as well. The reason is mostly economic — more tourists, that too from India, would mean more money for everyone. But what about local histories, beliefs, and the fight for identity? Should the Hindu fever — the kind that the Myagdeli gang held — be the only fever allowed? And how stupid is it that the Government of Nepal does not have any brains to go and have a look at the site, talk to the people, get academic insights from historians & anthropologists, and realize the long history of the Limbu people, their mundhum, and their desire to be identified, that too at their own place at the East of Arun, along the Tamor.

The conviction of the general locals is that the cable car will be made hook-or-crook. The mayor of Phungling Municipality Amir Maden, who is Limbu himself and belongs to Nepali Congress, has shown heavy support in the project. The small-and-middle scale hoteliers are waiting for the project to be realized. The numerous coffee shops selling local coffee seem to await more tourists.

I don’t know what the future will behold. Perhaps my interlocuters are limited and operate from their own biases. Perhaps the cable car will really not be made. But I do wonder about the ‘religious experience’ of it all. To be able to view the mountains without sweat (and blood). To not realize that history is long and deep, and not everything is written down in text. To embolden one’s own religious ego in the name of fighting ‘their Christian religion’.

And then I think of Manakamana, and the desire to place cable cars near places of desire-churning-into-reality sites. Can desires really come true without the fruit of one’s labor? Without realizing that we have to care for and about each other? That listening is more important than yapping? That not all things were created equal but that an attempt can be made to make things better? That we could possibly be better human beings?