Manakamana, the goddess who listens to prayers from the heart. The temple I have been hearing about since my birth. The temple my mother says is connected to my birth. She has the whole story of how that temple fulfilled her prayers to have a daughter.
This story is told every time she reminisces about my birth or on my birthday. Whenever I hear it, I feel as though my parents truly wished for my arrival. I was born about a decade after my elder brothers, maybe that’s why she always remembers my birth story so vividly and shares it with everyone.
In Nepali society and culture, we believe in ‘Bhakal’, which means a prayer or vow made from the heart. When the wish is fulfilled, people repay it with an offering or a pilgrimage to a temple. That’s what my mother says she did when she prayed to the goddess of Manakamana for a daughter. She vowed that if her wish was fulfilled, she would visit the temple with me after my birth.
Her wish came true. I was born. A few months later, she took me and the whole family to Manakamana. Though I do not remember the place at that time,she tells me how it all felt destined as my relatives were also planning their trip to the temple just then.
I have been there only once since that first visit, when I was eleven or twelve. It was the end of magh or falgun, a crowded time, as the following month no puja would be held in the temple. . We went after the earthquake of 2072, when the temple structure, street paths were demolished, yet the pilgrims still prayed with devotion for the goddess.
I remember that the whole aura of the place was truly something else. Having always known the temple through my mother’s story, , I felt as though the temple welcomed me.. as if it wished to see me. I strayed here and there in the temple space among the lines of pilgrims. I walked along the broken gaps of the pathways and looked through the cracks of the damaged temple.
My mother nudged me to take the tika and offer prayers. While I received it, she whispered, “Manakamana goddess is the one who gave you to me”. In that moment, it felt as though the goddess was indeed my spirit mother, speaking through her.
That’s the speciality of how my mother believes in the goddess who granted her wish, and how she forever ties my birth to that temple. She tells the story again and again, as if to remind me that Manakamana truly fulfilled her heart’s kamana, which means her deepest desire.