Less a festival, more a traversal time was Dashain for me for far too many years. It felt like travelling from the scorching summer time to searing winter in almost an instant. The time between Dashain and Tihar felt like an entirely different timeline. Needless to say, Dashain was the reason I only recently learned what Autumn felt like and that Kathmandu even experienced Autumn at all. We were always going from complaining about Kathmandu’s moderate heat to somehow tolerating Terai’s unbearable one every year. Summer never left, it only lingered a little longer.
What felt like a mere time lapse at the end of each vacation held memories that felt infinite in that moment. The smallest things meant the world. The star studded night sky seen from my mamaghar was enough to make me happy. Just seeing my grandparents’ happy faces when we arrived at their doorstep made my heart flutter. Then came the treats that followed; like: installing a ping in their garden at my little insistence, lessons they found worth sharing, and stories they passed on; some they made up themselves.
Meeting cousins was a different feeling on its own. What was happening in our lives beyond the festivals didn’t matter then, we made up our own worlds. Amid the chatter and laughter, Dashain’s rituals and elaborate pujas each day demanded audiences which we were happy to be. We watched even the most gruesome rituals of sacrificing animals without a care, often joking and making conversation with the butcher(s).
Though Dashain left me with empty feeling every year, it also left me something to look forward to the next. How this anticipation slipped through with each subsequent year never made sense back then. Looking back at it in retrospection now, it was inevitable, since we kids grew up, as our grown-ups made strides, and maintaining kinship once a year started feeling like too much of a hassle.
Like all nostalgics, I too find myself comparing Dashains and complaining about how things used to be but my complaints go beyond fewer kites in the sky or the lack of space for lingey pings. In fact, I now see people embracing Dashain’s spirit even more; kids being excited to fly kites weeks before dashain and the locals turning any open space into one for pings. I suppose the long distance travel is what made Dashain worth it then, which isn’t to say that the festival now means nothing.
As the season makes its slow descent towards winter, Dashain clings to both hot and cold weather. And so, though I can no longer marvel at the starlit night sky, I’ve come to love the windy sunny days that make the hills around my house come alive. Though there are no private pings or elaborate rituals, there are still people (though fewer), sharing their tales, just like before. In the years I’ve learnt to leave that past version of Dashain behind, I’ve realized that the festival doesn’t ask me to recreate old memories, rather to understand that circumstances of celebration change, and so do our expectations with it. The important thing is to keep the essence of it alive wherever celebrated.