The buffalo lies in a pool of its own blood, bright red under the glaring morning sun, centimetres away from its head. Two dogs savour the blood around the beheaded animal like a cool treat on a hot summer’s day while locals pad or ride over the crimson puddle on their way to work. The entrance to the brick-red temple on Taumadhi Tol is a canvas of haphazard trails of vermilion paw prints, sandal marks, and zigzag tyre tracks.
Street children riding the brass lions that guard the temple erupt in fits of mirth as they throw a tuft of hair about – a souvenir from the buffalo – like a shuttlecock. The black tussock whizzes past me too close for comfort, so tip-toeing around the trails of blood, I continue on my jaunt about Bhaktapur to make sense of a life so unfamiliar, yet so enrapturing.
A stream of worshippers carrying brass plates of dal bhat or cradling unsuspecting ducks passes by. Drawn by the promise of a religious ceremony, I am swept along until I arrive at Hanuman Ghat, next to Shiva. It is his mother’s death anniversary. Across the riverbank from where we are stands the ghat where his mother was cremated. “Her ashes were carried by this river,” Shiva remarks, his eyes lighting up, “to the holy Ganges.”
On cue, a white bird falls onto the muddy bank. Its wings lift off the ground, but barely. Its chest puffs feebly. Then it is still. I turn to look at Shiva, who has not witnessed the quietus, and now gives offerings to the priest. The food passes the hands of the priest under quiet incantations into the hands of an unkempt child.
“Our society works this way,” Shiva explains as the child leaves, as if reading my mind. “The priest conducts the prayers, we give offerings, and the poor receive the food.”
The shroud of smoke around me begins to lift.
I found solace in knowing that the fallen bird would be carried towards the sacred Ganges; street children can find food whenever the pious give offerings; and when buffalos are sacrificed, dogs get sustenance.
