By Rashmila Shakya as told to Scott Berry Rs 660
From Goddess to Mortal is a biography of Rashmila Shakya who was fortunate enough to live two different lives in one lifespan. It’s the story of a girl who was first a Goddess and latter a mortal.
The book is a sum of her experience initially as a goddess and later of mere mortal. Rashmila was four years old when she was chosen to become the Royal Kumari. Her world was to change as she was now being promoted to Goddess.
She was now Dyah Meiju, the living goddess and had to move into a new house the Kumari Che. She was the Royal Kumari from 1984-91.
Committed: A sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage
By Elizabeth Gilbert
Rs 798
At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who’d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous horrific divorces.
Enough said.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government, which—after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing—gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again.
Told with Gilbert’s trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, her memoir is ultimately a clear-eyed celebration of love with all the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, actually entails.
The Cult of Kumari: Virgin Worship in NepalBy Prof. Michael Allen
Rs 535
Newar Buddhist girls as young as two years old are selected to become living incarnations of the Hindu goddess Taleju. Called ‘Kumaris’, the children are worshiped daily by both priests and laity. In this book, Dr. Allen provides a detailed ethnographic account of all of the principal manifestations of this remarkable form of worship.
The book is a substantially revised and enlarged edition of a monograph first published in 1975 by the Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. The book has been out of print for many years and Dr. Allen has in this new edition included much additional contemporary material, including 46 beautiful plates.
The Cult of Kumari provides material of great interest to scholars of South Asian religion and society, to students of gender and women’s studies and to all those who have visited Nepal and wondered greatly at the strange lives of these young girls worshiped as living goddesses.
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