KATHMANDU, March 10: As kids, Shivaratri meant blocking roads with strings and ropes, listening to others talk about the crowd at Pashupatinath. Grown up, the festival is closely associated with smoking marijuana. [break]
Blocking roads during Mahashivaratri, as many of us might have realized, is a phase. Children do it for pure fun, more often than not, not knowing the myth behind the tradition.
“It used to be very cold during Shivaratri before and people, who fasted and awoke all night worshipping Shiva, blocked roads asking for firewood to keep themselves warm through the night with bonfire (samidha). With time, kids started blocking roads asking for money,” shared Madan Kumar Rijal, Associate Professor of Culture at Tribhuvan University.
The kids, however, grow out of it once they are teenagers. Samrat Sigdel, 18, recalls blocking roads in his locality until he was 15. “I remember a lot of people would get annoyed when I was blocking roads with my friends while some would just laugh and hand over coins to us,” he said, adding, “After that, it was embarrassing to stand by and ask for money on the road and everyone my age had grown out of it and it was no longer fun.”
Samrat had a faint idea about the myth behind blocking roads, “I know originally people asked for firewood instead of money but I don’t exactly know the story behind collecting firewood,” he said. He admits that when he sees kids blocking roads these days, it annoys him.
Similarly, Reetu Joshi, 18, continued with it till she was in her fourth grade although she didn’t and still doesn’t know how the tradition of blocking roads came about. “I started blocking roads with my cousins simply because I’d seen other kids do it. Back then, this was how we had fun during the Shivaratri holiday,” she said.
“We used to do it amongst our family, calling up relatives and asking them to come out and give us money. If we couldn’t collect money by blocking roads, my father used to give it himself and would buy us something at the end of the day,” she shared.
The tradition in Reetu’s family originally started when her grandfather asked the kids in the family to ask for vegetables and firewood while blocking roads. At the end of the day, her grandfather would buy lentils and rice from the guthi’s money and the collected vegetables were cooked with the collected firewood. “He would then distribute the food among the poor families in our locality,” recollected Reetu.
“After that, me and my friends thought blocking roads was childish and a little embarrassing for teenagers.”
Shivaratri meaning ‘the night of Shiva’ is celebrated by the Hindu population on the ‘magh chaturdasi’. While ‘Krishna parksha chaturdasi’ of every month is called Shivaratri, this one is the Mahashivaratri which is believed to be the day when Lord Shiva is happiest.
While there are various mythical stories and different versions of each associated with the day, according to Professor Rijal the two stories from ‘Garudh Puran’ and ‘Skanda Puran’ led to celebrating Shivaratri.
“Sundarsen in Garudh Puran and Chandal (Kirati) in Skanda Puran both were hunters who ended up spending the night in the forest. They decided to spend the night on a Bael tree and because they were hungry and couldn’t sleep, they plucked leaves off the tree and threw them on the ground and their bottles leaked water too, which fell on the shivalinga (phallic symbol) under the tree.
Later, when they dropped their bows and bent down to get it, it was considered as worshipping the shivalinga. Since they had worshipped the shivalinga , although unconsciously, both of them were blessed with salvation and hence, the day is celebrated every year as Mahashivaratri,” added Professor Rijal.
Worshippers of Shiva (shaiva–margis) fast and worship different forms of Lord Shiva by staying up all night. This is where the marijuana smoking comes in as Shiva is believed to be an avid smoker and marijuana smoking on this day is called taking ‘Shivako Prasad’ or ‘Shiva Buti’.
Rijal also expressed that Shiva is known for accepting negative habits and worshippers, sadhus and babas smoke particularly on this day in reverence to Shiva.
Nineteen-year-old Siddhant Subedi plans to visit the Pashupati temple with his friends and smoke up in honor of Lord Shiva. “Although this has become more of an excuse for people to smoke and less of a tradition, society is liberal when it comes to marijuana smoking on this day,” he says.
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