That Wooden House
Audience in public
From what today
And that whacked the entrance
I am the mansion thorn
I am that there are
The sense of master
You’re cole and left
Haven’t you got a rug
Not the hypocrisis to gateways
The sense of master
A Saxophone’s tones guillotined
Developed by an eye on Springfield
Movie Stars that you love and hate
To another home, that wooden kate
That wooden house and a lob
Bring the jewelry to the railway cops
Turtles, Busters in China
A refugee on angina
Donald Amy, Set Whinfield
The guards described, the guards that yield
Coconut, Tetris and raft
A hustler smokes what is left
The director has enough to read
Write miseries on sheet
That wooden house and a lob
Bring the jewelry to the railway cops
It’s the entering thief
That wooden house and a lob
Bring the jewelry to the railway cops

~The Wooden House, by Pierre Rausch

Kathmandu is a lot like an old house. These deep internal supports, centuries old or more, overlaid by the patchworks of time. New cement walls painted with bright pinks and yellows, jarringly brilliant blues, and all wrapped precariously around 18th century brick-work and 12th century woodcarvings. Intricate Naga snake-women and ancient Vedic, Tantric, Buddhist, and animist deities overlooking sliding glass windows, rooftop water tanks, and an accumulation of about eight decades of creative electrical engineering. Is it any surprise that there’s only about 6 hours of electricity per day? Kathmandu is a city that shows its wear and misuse, its wealth and its poverty; in short, its life, in so many ways. Finger-stained door jams, trash discarded in the streets, kumkum and sandalwood powder caked on roadside shrines, the constant bustle, screech, and hum of streets filled with taxis, buses, cars, people, stray dogs, meditating sadhus, and cows. People hanging out on balconies overhead, women attending to the washing beneath alleyway waterspouts, beggars crying out for alms, fruit sellers plying their trade from rickety carts and bicycles, children running after a toy or a pet bouncing down the road. It’s a city in perpetual decay, with the veneer of life constantly building on top of it. Kathmandu is rotting underneath, but as the people of Nepal will tell you; this is how the soil of life is made, from which the wildest flowers grow.

Today marks, roughly, the half-way point of my long-term fieldwork. I have been in Nepal now some five months (with three months previous to this a year ago, and another three months previously in India) and will remain in Kathmandu until the spring, when I leave once again for the Kali Gandaki River valley of Mustang. This is the point of ethnographic fieldwork where one is generally advised to take stock, review everything collected so far, and consider what gaps might remain outstanding that can be addressed in the coming months. It seemed like such a simple task at first.

My fieldnotes are already, and some might say miraculously, somewhat organized. My primary notebook, which is sadly starting to show its mileage at this point (thanks Duct Tape!), is replete with colorful tape flags and Post-Its marking areas of specific interest or categorizing certain discussions for certain chapters. I also have a sense of an overall framework already in the works and have been plugging in information to relevant sections as I go along. This drafting stage for the final book isn’t specifically to just “get it all done,” so to speak, but to help me see what might be missing or what might not be as clear as it first appeared. This way, when I conduct more interviews or sit-in on a few more pujas and festival celebrations, I’ll know what it is I need to ask. But this still leaves me with something of a conundrum. A large portion of my fieldnotes are in drawings.

As I discussed earlier, many of these drawings (which are mainly drawings of specific Shaligrams) will be incorporated into the final piece of the larger work as a kind of “field guide.” But this still leaves out many other drawings that don’t quite fit the needs of such a chapter nor does it address the countless jottings and annotations covering almost every inch of two additional notebooks, two sketchbooks, some pilgrimage pamphlets, and a quick-access field book. I am certainly not the first ethnographer to encounter these problems. As such, there are even books and classes on just this problem; each with their own perspectives. How to fight with fieldnotes, and win.

There is never more poignant a day when you have to sit down with everything you’ve collected and try make some sense out of it. In my case, the metaphor of the museum collection is rather apt. I have a pile of objects in front of me (both notebooks and literal fossil stones) and now I need to arrange them in such a way as to tell the right kind of story. To construct some kind of coherent narrative out of the bits and pieces of encounters and conversations and observations made over more than a year of research. It’s at this point that the academic truly begins to struggle: how do I craft a narrative out of this that will both do it justice and be readable? How am I supposed to decide what is what, when half the time my research participants couldn’t even decide that!? Am I doomed to failure no matter what I do?

In the end, I have decided that the best route is to combine drawing and writing, photography and textual references, so that this research can focus more on the process of drawing out analytical connections from my informants’ multiple threads of narrative and experience. This is because Shaligrams truly do evolve over time (double-meaning intended). As I start now to sit down and write out these narratives, I will continue to try to preserve the numerous voices and perspectives of Shaligram practitioners themselves as the core of my ethnographic and theoretical discussions. As one Shaiva sādhu explained, sitting outside the gates of Muktinath as he had off-and-on for some twenty years or so: “The beauty of Shaligram is that it can be many things to many people. This doesn’t mean that you should not learn to read them properly, but that whatever Shaligram is to you may not be what Shaligram is to me. And that is ok, because Shaligram always is what it must be.”

While at the time I took him to mean that the nuances of Shaligram interpretation may sometimes be left to individual perceptions or insight, I later began to understand that what he was really referring to was a far-reaching sense of the formlessness of the divine: where the superficial nature of the material object and of the narrative was meant only to lead one to deeper understanding, not to be that understanding in and of itself. He contentedly assured me a few moments later that because of this, whatever it was that I would write couldn’t be completely correct no matter what I did, but that it would be enough, for the right person who could read it properly.

Having already experienced some of the challenges of the academic peer review process, I take a strange comfort in that.

Outside of the annals of the Anthropology of Food, I find it interesting that anthropologists don’t often discuss their diets in the field. This may be partially because their daily food intake is likely to be relatively unrelated to their actual fieldwork or, it may be partially because we often don’t think about it. Until we have to, anyway.

I have written previously on my decision not to wear traditional clothing in the field (in short, because my informants would find it extremely odd and it would create more problems than it would solve) but I have yet to discuss the culinary flip-side for partial cultural assimilation in my particular section of the world. I may be off the hook sartorially, but I am hardly off the hook when it comes to food. In short, the people I work with may not care what I am wearing (within reason) but they care quite a bit about what I am eating (or, as in some cases, not eating).

Vaishnava Hindus typically adhere to a strict diet on religious grounds. This diet is, for the most part, vegan, in that it doesn’t allow for any animal products (of which meat is the obvious, but also includes eggs, fish, honey, insects, and bone meal). However, it does allow for dairy products; as cows are kept and cared for as sacred beings and their milk is “given in love.” This means butter, milk, yogurt, and cheese are common staples. It is vital that I keep to this diet as well, given that the objects I primarily work with (Shaligram stones) are deeply holy and the people I work with are in active pursuit of them. To handle a Shaligram with hands or body contaminated by blood or death is to disrespect the deity and to disrespect the deity is to disrespect the devotees.

As ethnographic dues-paying goes, it isn’t so bad and I quite enjoy many of the elaborate curries and other local dishes (potato burgers are spectacular!) designed to appeal to pilgrims’ dietary requirements. I also consider it one of the many ways in which anthropologists in general endeavor to “take seriously” the practices they study. Contrary to popular belief, to “take seriously” a particular cultural practice doesn’t necessarily mean to adopt it wholly for oneself. Or as Westerners would say, to “believe in it.” Rather, it refers to the many ways in which anthropologists in the field attempt to participate as fully as possible in the daily lives and meanings of the people they work with. For me, this means retaining my usual Western clothes (a short-list ensemble of jeans and long-sleeve shirt) but shifting the ways in which I perceive food as well as how others perceive me preparing at eating it.

However, I only wish this was as uncomplicated as it might first appear. Vaishnava Hindus and practicing Buddhists (whose diet is very similar) are only two of the cultures endemic to this region. Among the local Thakali (many of whom practice an indigenous animistic religion), eating meat is simply par for the course. For most of them, as it typical in high Himalayan regions where cultivation is next to impossible, this means a lifestyle rich in herding and husbandry practices and a diet similarly rich in goat, sheep, and yak meat. As ‘mobility’ and ‘sovereignty’ are the main themes of my current fieldwork, I have often found myself in one ethno-religious context in the morning and quite another by dinner-time. For example, this might involve taking a carefully prepared meal of dal bhat (cooked lentils and rice) and vegetables with Buddhist nuns in the morning and then sitting down for a meal of chicken and dumplings with a Thakali family at night. Needless to say, this has made navigating my shifting dietary requirements something of an unexpectedly complicated undertaking. The good news is that, for the time being, I have been rather successful in modifying my diet based on the day’s expected activities or, if necessary, participating in the washing and cleansing rituals that ensure I do not accidentally disrespect the focus of my research. In other words, I am never quite sure exactly what is going on until I see what I am eating.

I have to say though; the yak sandwich I had a few days ago was delicious.

A few days ago, despite the monsoon rains, I was able to visit one of the ammonite fossil beds located a few hundred meters above the Muktinath Valley. The layer of fossils, the remnants of an ancient sea floor, sits up around 5000 meters and is slowly eroding out of the mountain to form a large wash of broken stones and fossil shells that extends some 300 meters down the mountain, slowly tumbling en masse towards the Thorong La river (which joins up with the Kali-Gandaki at Kagbeni a few kilometers to the south west). My purpose for visiting this particular fossil bed was two-fold: one, it allows me to observe the earliest geological processes that will eventually result in some of these ammonites becoming Shaligram and two, it gives me a chance to see unmodified structures in the stones that, given an additional few thousand years rolling through river silts, will become the characteristics of deities as read in the stones’ final manifestations. For example, one of my favorite Shaligrams is called Krishna Govinda (Krishna the Cowherder). It’s a typically palm-sized, smooth, and perfectly round black Shaligram which bears a white “cow hoof” impression on one side (an effect created by the breakage of a concentric quartz ring). As luck would have it, I was able to find just such a structure in one of the “raw” ammonites in this particular fossil wash-out as well. Naturally, many photos and comparisons followed.

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At first glance, it may appear that my approach in this particular case is largely a scientific one; replacing religious interpretation with geological analysis; or “cow hoof” for “quartz erosion” to look at it another way. But my intent is not to replace one method of analysis with the other necessarily. Rather, one of the things I find most fascinating about Shaligram stones in general is their capacity to join scientific discourses with religious narratives, as opposed to assuming these interpretations to be mutually exclusive. Shaligram stones are ammonites and their geological history spans roughly 175 million years, through dozens of evolutionary taxonomies, and they provide us with a tremendous amount of information about the early ocean environments of ancient Earth. Shaligram stones are also the direct manifestations of divine movement in the form of deities of the Hindu pantheon, joining a physical landscape to a sacred landscape and linking individuals and families to profound cultural histories and ritual practices that have been in use for at least 4000 years. In other words, not only have Shaligrams passed down through eons of wind, river currents, and tectonic uplift but they have also equally passed down through inheritance, births, deaths, marriages, and pilgrimage. A Shaligram is not a Shaligram absent either one of these threads. In short, Shaligram stones exist at a juncture wherein Science and Religion are having a very fascinating conversation with one another, in particular, a conversation about what it means “to be” something. This is how Shaligrams can be both ammonite fossil and divine manifestations, just as rivers can be both vital economic and social waterways emerging out of the glacial melt and tirthas (bridges) into the sacred world of gods and goddesses.

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Shaligrams are largely venerated by Vaishnava Hindus (devotees of the god Vishnu) and one of the defining characteristics of Vishnu’s story is the theology of the Dasavatara, or the 10 incarnations of Vishnu. In this particular aspect of Vishnu’s lengthy mythological history, is it said that he has appeared on Earth in some form on 10 separate occasions (or will, given that we are currently only up to 9 in the 10 avatar stretch). This does not mean, however, that each avatar was human (or even human-looking); rather each avatar took on a specific form and function designed to accomplish some particular set of tasks necessary for the given time in which the avatar appeared. Given the circumstances of his appearance, Vishnu has manifested as a fish (Matsya), a tortoise (Kurma), a boar (Varaha), a half-man half-lion (Narasimha), a dwarf-man (Vamana), a warrior bearing an axe (Parashurama), Sri Ram the god-king of Ayodhya, Krishna the divine lover and hero of the Mahabharata, the Buddha (depending on what tradition you come from, there is some contention on this one. As some traditions place other famous gurus or teachers in this position), and finally Kalki, the destroyer of the current age who is yet to come. Given all this, one might imagine that becoming a stone can’t really be all that difficult in the grand scheme of omnipotence (though I must save discussion of the many Shaligram origin stories for another post).

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Unsurprisingly, the Dasavatara are also represented in Shaligrams. There are Matsya Shaligrams and Kurma Shaligrams, Ram Shaligrams and Krishna Shaligrams, each appearing according to the characteristics laid out in the Puranas and in the Epic stories of the exploits of the Dasavatara. But what is more, I can’t help but notice that we live in a time where the narratives of religion and science are increasingly at odds, and they are certainly fighting about much more than ammonites. Both religion and science have become a part of the political project, in service to various agendas seeking national or geo-political power. As such, they are pitted against one another as two presumptive sides to the same Almighty Dollar coin. Religion is poised to reject Science, and Science employed to tear down Religion. So the more I think on it, perhaps Shaligrams, just as all the rest of the incarnations of Vishnu, have arrived both as fossil and as deity, in just the right form for what this time needs most.

Another ammonite fossil emerging out of the erosion wash.

A quartz structure in a “raw” ammonite fossil resembling a “cow hoof”

Fossil wash-out near Jhong village.

Hard at Work

Ammonite fossils — Kshetra Shaligram (Mountain-born Shaligram)

I’ll be the first to admit that I am no fan of flying. While it might not rise to the level of phobia precisely, I have had my fair share of white-knuckle afternoons at the hands of an A320-Airbus (Have anxiety, will travel). Therefore, I am sure that it is with no small amount of irony that I chose a profession, and a field-site, which requires days of air travel and at least two small propeller plane jaunts through steep mountain valleys to reach. However, as fate would have it, the monsoon rains here in Nepal have been preventing all flights between Pokhara and Jomsom for days (stages 1 and 2 of my route to Muktinath respectively). Yesterday morning, I sat in the waiting area of the Pokhara Regional Airport, and not for the first time in a string of days at the crack of dawn, waiting to hear if the day’s flights would be able to leave. As it had been for nine days running, my flight was cancelled yet again.

Then I had the fortune of meeting two Hindu pilgrims, just a few seats down, anxiously awaiting the same news. They were originally from south India, they explained, but now resided in North Carolina. What is more, having encountered a box of Shaligram stones just recently in a shop in lake-side Pokhara, the husband (who, for the sake of this entry, I will call Raj), had been suddenly reminded of a number of fond childhood memories involving his father’s and grandfather’s Shaligrams. He had not inherited any Shaligrams, and at the shop-keeper’s behest was left to wonder where the ones in his family had gotten off to. Now, he and his wife Priya were taking a rather spontaneous journey to Muktinath to explore the inexplicable pull of these memories further. Sadly, it looked as though there would be no flights that day and they would not be able to reach Mustang in time for their departure home.

But serendipity works in mysterious ways, and as we chatted there from the discomfort of our molded, plastic, seats a new plan began to take shape. Rather than wait for the storm clouds to finally grant us the blessings of safe passage, we decided to split the cost of renting a Jeep and driver and road-trip our way across the Himalayan foothills to Jomsom. Nine hours and several very sore tailbones later (it is a profoundly rough ride through rocky, narrow, mountain roads!), we made it. Flight time from Pokhara to Jomsom is only about 15 minutes. Our 180km drive lasted from 9AM to 6PM and involved fewer than four total stops: 2 for brief bathroom breaks, 1 for lunch, and 1 to check our permits at the Tatopani police checkpoint overlooking the Mustang border. So while we remained cheerful in each others unexpected but welcome company, it was a long trip on a number of levels. Not to be discouraged though, as I was happy to take Raj and Priya Shaligram hunting on the Jomsom shores of the Kali-Gandaki that evening (wherein a particularly lovely Krishna-Gopala Shaligram was discovered!). A calming end to a challenging day.

Challenging indeed. I have been in the field now just 15 days, but only a week in, I lost my beloved grandmother whose funeral was only a few days ago. I sent a letter to be read at her memorial, but that was all I could do from here. Without a doubt, it has weighed on me heavily. But even as the end approached, she didn’t want me to come. She wanted me here, in the high Himalayas, doing the research I love and working towards the PhD she so proudly spoke about to anyone and everyone who stopped long enough to listen. She kept every article of mine, every academic paper, every mention she could find. And usually multiple copies, since she couldn’t risk lending out her own (it might never come back). Every time I visited, she always wanted to know how much longer until I was a doctor (professor would also do, she used to tell me), and then should would marvel at the years that ticked by faster and faster. 2 years of a Masters degree done. 5 years to the PhD, and then 4, and soon enough 3. Now, only 2 years left.

Such a short distance, but it takes a long time to get there.

Kali-Gandaki on the way to Jomsom