Christmas in a Nepalese village

Press, 24 December 1985, Page 10

Christmas in a Nepalese village

By

WENDY BLAXLAND

Fancy an Anglo-Nepalese Christmas? Try Darjeeling, which is technically part of India, but whose people are mainly of Nepalese stock.

Getting to Darjeeling means spending the best part of a day in a small bus climbing into the foothills of the Himalayas. Near the worst of the frequent hairpin bends you will see large warning signs painted on boulders at the side of the roads. They specialise in ponderous municipal humour like, “Better to be late, Mr Motorist, than the late Mr Motorist.”

At first you’ll pass enormous tea plantations. These give way to forests, and, further up, the monasteries start to appear, heralded by huge bamboo stakes flying fluttering pennants of ragged cloth. Or you can choose to go to Darjeeling by train, chuffing up the hills in one of the world’s slowest and most enchanting steam trains. At times the grades are so steep passengers swing overboard and walk alongside the train; it even has to reverse its way up the worst hills. Finally, when the mountains have become bare and steep apart from huge pine trees and carefully cultivated terraces, you will see Darjeeling up ahead. There is little flat land, so Darjeeling’s houses cling to the sides of the hills. Mostly, in Darjeeling, you walk, but keep pausing to look across the valley at the unveiled majesty of the snow-frosted Himalayas. The Youth Hostel used to be a school during British rule, and it has a superb location high up on the brow of a hill jutting out into the valley. The dormitories are bare-boarded, large and echoing, still smelling faintly of chalk and orange peel.

The optimistically named hot water trickles lukewarm from the showerhead, and the sagging wire bedsprings have suffered under generations of bouncing adolescents. But it’s worth it for the view. However, when sunset has flamed its way into twilight, Darjeeling starts to get very cold indeed. Several of the grey wool blankets under your sleeping bag and several on top are a sensible precaution. The Christmas spirit of commercial anticipation hasn’t made much of a dent on Darjeeling. Its marketplace continues crowded with Nepalese draped in striped shawls, bargaining over vegetables and plastic buckets. In the couple of restaurants and shops still valiantly upholding the British way of life appear a few banners of tinsel and flyspotted paper bells. A bakery advertises Christmas cake and mince pies. Outside the beggars in their filthy grey rags are as persistent as ever.

Few Nepalese are Christian, but the Catholic church advertised a carol service and a midnight Mass, so I decided to see what the ritual would be like in Nepal. By 10.45 p.m. when I left the Youth Hostel, Darjeeling had been in darkness for hours, apart from a few dim streetlamps. The mists made the beam from my flashlight almost palpable, and my footsteps sounded loud on the stones. The small church was tucked down in a steep hollow among huge pines, so I followed the path down.

- Suddenly, around a bend in the path, I saw the church; not just glowing with light from inside, but fully outlined with coloured Christmas lights — red and blue and yellow. The church was like a gaudy Christmas tree, framed by the dark pines. I took a back pew. The church was almost full with devout Nepalese huddled in shawls. The chorus of coughs and sneezes told its own story about the mountain air. Of course, the familiar carols were in Nepalese, wavering out in a slightly different tempo than I was used to. It was only at the comfortable Latin lines like “Adeste fidelis” that I could join in. I contented myself with listening. Down the front of the church was a creche, with the familiar figures standing, half life size, slightly unsteadily around an empty crib. The statue of Mary was stiffly blue as ever. A cow leant at an odd angle against a horse whose legs seemed too short. The donkey was slightly cross-eyed. But all at once it was midnight, a bell was ringing, the congregation shuffled to its feet, and there was the bishop in his Christmas robes walking down the centre aisle with the “Christ child” in his arms. When he reached the creche he turned, presented the doll to the congregation, and “Christus est natus,” he announced. Christ is born. Then he knelt, while we all craned to look, and placed the “child” tenderly in the crib. There was straw clinging to his robes as he got to his feet. I didn’t follow much of the service in Nepalese. My neighbours coughed and snuffled much as before. But it seemed as if the cross-eyed donkey had a slight smile, as the doll in the crib held its arms out stiffly to the world.