Written by: Arshan Shrestha - 28012, Grade VIII
Posted on: 19 May, 2023
There are many festivals like Dashain and Tihar. The festival, which is performed by my family, is a bit different. It is kind of relatable to Dashain, as in Dashain we sacrifice a living goat at my family's cultural festival. It's the same, but the goat is killed so brutally that you will literally get goosebumps. So, let's start on the trip.
At 4 am on April 23rd, 2023, I woke up, did my morning assignments, and me and my parents hopped in the car and did a 4-5 hour journey from Kathmandu to Ramechap. It was a pretty rough ride, but for the first time in my life, I enjoyed a highway ride somehow. I didn’t like highway rides, so it was surprising that the worst part of the highway ride was that the whole car was congested with people. It was over 11 a.m., and my dad had the crazy idea that we would be eating our breakfast at the hometown or village we were going to, at which we would arrive at like 3-5 p.m.
It sounded pretty dumb, but when we arrived at Kurkot, a small town in Sindhuli where my maternal uncle's house was, and my dad told us to eat lunch there, I couldn’t understand that when we could just eat breakfast at Kurkot, it was just a waste of time anyway. After an hour, we reached Ramechhap Chisapani. The beautiful scenery of the hills and dried trees was a pretty different view. Finally, after a 5-hour highway ride, we ate our breakfast. My dad and my other relatives were listing the stuff we needed. My dad and my relatives started reading about the place where we were doing the puja. My grandmother, on the other hand, wanted to observe the place where we were going to do the puja. She was very weak in Kathmandu and trudged to walk to the bathroom. I declined to let her go to the place where we were going to do the puja, but she forced me to let her go. I was stunned to see my grandmother walk so fast. I mean, it was the place where she spent years.
The next day was the day of puja, and none of the village members were allowed to eat anything until the puja. My dad and the village members had set the time to do the puja, and all of us had to bathe because even if you bathed a day before the day of puja, you had to bathe again because it was known that the body had already been dirty even when you had bathed a day before. At the place of the puja where we aren't allowed to wear our shoes and belts because we weren't allowed to eat meat that day and all of our shoes and belts were made of animal skins. After 1/half an hour we finished the puja, it was time to sacrifice the goats. There were steps to kill the goat: first of all, block the nose of the goat, which will panic the goat a lot; second, grab the goat's neck and slice it. I saw that I got goosebumps; the shattered blood was spilled at the god, which is supposed to protect the village.
After the terrifying scene of the puja, I ate lunch and went home to the village. The next day, we returned back home in 4-5 hours.
