Shoba dancing
Betrawati, September 16th, 2015 – Teej
Shoba has a shop next to the bridge,
where her one-year-old son is adored by all comers,
with smiling neighbors vying for a turn to hold him.
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A short video clip of Shoba dancing.
Students at Niharika Shishu Kunja High School
Tuesday, September 15th, 2015
Tomorrow is the first day of Teej, the woman’s festival in Nepal;
today was Children’s Day and the students at the Niharika school had an exhibition of dance;
a fantastic time was had by all.
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Nisha dances
Kathmandu, May 21st, 2011
My first visit back to Niharika Shishu Kunja High School, I discovered they were putting on a dance exhibition the following day. Over thirty students of varied ages performed beautiful dances, both traditional as well as Bollywood-style.
Nisha was one of the especially brave students who took her place in front of her entire school and danced alone.
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Students playing
Uttargaya Secondary English Board School, Betrawati, autumn of 2000
A few of my students play a dancing game of their own creation.
The game is played by standing in a circle, with each child putting one foot out behind them, and resting it behind the knee of the child next to them.
(Serika, the tallest in the photo, described it as "making a web just by putting in one leg")
They then would then sing a song and clap along, hopping and turning-as-a-group on their remaining feet.
I just messaged Serika to see if the game had a name, but she said it didn't—so I think we’re going to call it “The Serika”.
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Now fifteen years later, Serika is a talented photographer and sent me some portraits that she has taken recently.
I have included them below:
(images copyright Serika Thapa)
Baklu, Serika’s nephew
"His real name is Subhan but everyone calls him Baklu."
Anubhav and a friend
"That guy with guitar is my brother Anubhav."
Sapana
Serika’s friend Sapana playing a card game called Judh Patti during the festival season.
Sapana’s name means dream in Nepali.
Sanju and her family
Balaju, Kathmandu, 2011
I met Sanju in 2002, when I was teaching the schoolyard game Red Rover to a bunch of children in a fallow rice field in Kathmandu. I was trying to teach how you try to break through the other teams line but, at the same time, not hard enough for them to hurt each other.
That rice field is now covered with a house, the surrounding area being more built up than nine years ago.
On this visit, Sanju's ama made me tea that was piping hot in it's metal cup, and it became a bit of a good-natured running joke upon my visits—the extreme heat of the offered tea, and my seeming inability to cope with such.
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Below, is a set of four photos that I took while I was demonstrating my best Nepali dance moves for Sanju's family. They seemed rather amused at my effort.
Children dancing to the beat of a madal drum
Uttargaya Secondary English Boarding School, Betrawati, 2000
[text below from a postcard I wrote on September 26th, 2000]
"...most of the students were already mentally on the two-week Dashain festival that starts in a couple of days. At lunch, I asked Kove, one of the teachers, if there was school tomorrow—I had so far heard differing accounts. He checked with the office and then told me it was still undecided.
After lunch I stuck around and noticed that of twelve rooms, only one or two had teachers. In the second-level class all of the kids were singing in Nepali while one boy danced at the front. I joined in and they all burst into laughter. From the "nursery" class I heard crying, so I went down there. Danuze, a small boy who speaks no English, was in tears. I squatted down, speaking in soft tones knowing that my words wouldn't help, but perhaps my voice would. He stopped crying and I think I may have gotten a smile once I started acting goofy—"Look at my hand Danuze... it's HUGE! It's the biggest hand I've ever SEEN!
The bell rang and all of the kids started yelling excitedly and running out the door—their little backpacks hopping up and down as they went. I followed them out the door and watched as they all ran across the field. It would seem there was no 7th period today and no school tomorrow. I'm going to miss seeing them all over the next 2–3 weeks..."
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