The Newest Goddess

One day last week in Katmandu, capital of the kingdom of Nepal, the goddess Kumari burst into tears. She begged her mother to take her home from the big white plastered brick house behind the old city palace--home from the priests and the prayers, the worshipers, handmaidens and other perquisites of divinity. For the life of a goddess is a strange and painful thing--especially when one is only four years old.

She is young for good reason. Hindu and Buddhist tradition decree that Nepal's living goddess Kumari (meaning virgin) may never shed blood in herself or another; obviously, she must be replaced by another young girl when she reaches puberty. Black-eyed, pony-tailed little Laksmi, daughter of a goldsmith, was chosen from a field of six final contestants by a committee of priests who had scrutinized the girls' horoscopes and their bodies, for the goddess must be free of blemishes, birthmarks, scars or scratches. The goddess must also be brave; the final test was to shut the children in a dark temple room filled with the recently severed heads of water buffaloes, pictures of skeletons and other horrors. Little Laksmi passed this one with flying colors--but if all the finalists had shown fear, the priests would simply have picked the prettiest.

During Nepal's eight-day festival of Indra-jatra, the Kumari works hard at the goddess trade--receiving the homage of King Mahendra, being toted through the city in a gilt-covered copper carriage drawn by 25 men, giving her worshipers tika (a dot of white powder on their foreheads), getting used to sitting quietly on her throne.

When menstruation at last forces her retirement, Laksmi may face a grim future. Her predecessor, who has just rejoined her family, is so shy and bewildered in the mortal world that she is unable to answer questions, and has difficulty climbing stairs, since as a goddess she was always carried up and down. Most of the ex-goddesses turn into unhappy old maids. Their handicap in husband-hunting: the rigidly held belief that the man who ends the virginity of a former Kumari will die after six months.

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