In one of those village grounds I remained buried inside a life size pit with only my head and hands out from the earth. Barpak village, Gorkha district. Epicenter of the 7.8 Richter scale Gorkha Earthquake of May 12, 2015. The 'epic center' of my journey.
I was facing up blowing the earth sound vibrations of the didgeridoo towards the clear blue sky. In sky-blue shirts and navy-blue skirts and pants, students from the Shree Himalaya Higher Secondary School pushed against each other crowding the performance site. They had dug the pit that morning on a small mountain slope near their school and had buried me there as a part of our performance art together. The big chunks of earth and patches of grass they placed above my belly moved and collided against each other every time I pumped my breath out to make sound on my instrument. To that, everyone shouted: "Look, an earthquake!" We symbolized the movement of the tectonic plates in a miniature form above the belly of the earth, her sound epitomized by the droning instrument.For a long time we stayed still at the spot feeling and hearing the unbroken droning sound made from continuous circular breathing. Everyone closed their eyes, folded hands, and started humming the word 'O'. It was a spontaneous utterance. Together we dedicated this low hum to pacify the earth tremors and then to offer our prayers to the departed souls of friends, family members, village folks and people in other regions of Nepal who lost their lives in the quake.
We also paid tribute to all the local heroes of Barpak, of Nepal, and helping countries who tirelessly put their efforts in rescuing and organizing relief operations and materials to keep their village, towns and cities safe. We did it right at the spot buried inside the earth from where that 'seven megatons of nuclear energy' burst out creating this unprecedented natural disaster, destroying lives and our structures, but binding our social bond ever more closely together.
Next, performing artist Sandip Dangol who was dressed in tight black costume and face painted in white started miming gestures in the air as if he was pulling out a very heavy object from under the ground. That object was me. In this performance art ritual we were symbolizing the act of pulling out the vibrating earth and make it interact in real life. I reacted maneuvering myself out from the pit. We made a performance-walk down towards the basketball court of the school. Earlier, right after the school assembly, students had squatted on the court painting and coloring a 16-meter long white canvas, didgeridoos and rain-sound making sticks. The colors had dried up revealing patterns, shapes, lines, symbols, local basketball team names, and two big bold lettered words—"Barpak" at the center.
At one end of the canvas 60 years old Lama Guru Laxman Gurung sat holding a Vajra and a bell. He was chanting his prayers one and half months after the quake. The ancient scriptures he safeguarded were buried and caught fire that started from a fallen house next door where a mother and daughter-in-law were cooking Sel Roti in a hot oil cauldron that got spilled from the quake. Many of his neighbors died, he was unharmed, but remained terribly broken. His eyes were full of tears while he called upon all the deities of the land, heaven and skies to wish for the departed souls to rest in peace. It started out as his personal healing process and eventually became everyone's process as they contained their tears and attuned to the feeling of the moment in this collective chanting.
I played an old red rainbow-snake painted didgeridoo sitting close to him symbolizing a monastic space. I was still the earth spirit dressed in a white Nepali dress splashed and dabbed with random colors. Sandip improvised upon the canvas his soulful dance of the happy spirit at play. The students and teachers started to interact as a part of the performance picking up the canvas, arranging prayer flags and starting the long march to Kot Danda, the southernmost hilltop with a sweeping view of Barpak.
Many didgeridoos pointed up towards the sky humming like bees, the long canvas illuminated under the afternoon sun, and the Lama Guru's bell filled the remaining void. And then started the pranks, noise, cheering, laughing, and singing of the children as they held the canvas above their head and walked in an undulating flow of the rainbow colors through the village path towards the hill. They exchanged "Namaste!" to everyone they met along the way. This broke the silence and brought smile on the worn out faces of their parents and family members who got up from among the heaps of rubbles they were clearing out, to see what the noise was all about, in the otherwise devastated, forlorn, grey and burnt out landscape.
Eight years ago I was at Kot Danda recording the lost songs of Barpak sung by the elders. I was then leading a team of mobile radio unit called the Doko Radio on its maiden journey to rural parts of Nepal and Barpak was its first location. Amazingly, the same lively, humorous and friendly people of Barpak having gone through a harrowing experience still display the same level of optimism to preserve, dream and act to realize their dream. They have set remarkable example by building their life back on their own.
In this regard, the people and the village of Barpak both symbolize the essence of what the Nepali people in every village, town and city are capable of. Youth leader Jit Bahadur Ghale, social entrepreneur Bir Bahadur Ghale, Ama Rasani Ghale, elder Busari Ghale, singer Ganesh Gurung, student P Gurung whom I personally know are only the few names I can draw in this space who constitute the poetics of Barpak's history, culture and new direction. Documentary filmmaker Pradip Pokharel who was in our team has managed to weave their stories for this forthcoming film about Barpak.
We ended the performance walking down through the village back to the school and installing the canvas outside the school premises where headmaster Bishnu Dev Shah thanked the students and teachers. It was the afternoon of 30th May, the third day of the school's reopening. The colorful images, lines, patterns, and words became an open exhibit of the happening we collectively created. The buzzing and gurgling sound of the colored didgeridoos and rain-sound making sticks that the children took home were heard resonating inside tents and alleys in the village as the evening twilight approached.
As we washed away the mud and dirt from our bare feet that Sandip and I had walked with on the sun scorched stone slabs, broken wood, twisted nails and rubbles, it was the moment we connected to the pain of that land and its people in its ephemeral form. It was nothing compared to what the people faced during that fateful day and now. But it did remind us that to keep walking on the path of memory of the loss is not easy and comfortable. Perhaps that is why each one of us defies logic during crisis and continues to make journeys further deep into our heart's 'epic center'.
The author is performance and visual culture worker
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