Kevin-the-teenage-goddess

Right then. Still have lurgy (will it never end?) so am back in bed. Anyway, I said I'd tell you about the living goddess, so here goes: The story is that in the seventeenth century the Hindu goddess Taleju was playing a game of dice with King Malla. Here the story gets a bit confusing. I've heard that either he inappropriately lusted after her, or she gave him some important advice about running his kingdom. Anyway, for some reason or other she decided to be incarnated as a pre-pubescant girl from a local Buddhist caste, and has done so ever since. Now King Malla divided the Kathmandu Valley into three kingdoms because he had three sons - so each could inherit a kingdom upon his death and not have a big old civil war. So now there are three incarnations of Taleju, one for each of the ancient kingdoms (Kantipur, Baktapur and Lalitpur). The name given for a living goddess is a kumari. The kumari is a young girl, chosen between the ages of three and six. She's chosen from a local Newari caste through a combination of astrology, physical attributes and the priest's gut feeling. Her tenure as a living goddess lasts until her first period.

So it's all quite interesting, and I have been vaguely thinking I ought to write something about this since I've been here. Anyway, I was very excited to finally, via a Nepali photojournalist and fixer, have the opportunity to meet my neighbourhood kumari, here in Lalitpur. She lives less than a mile away, near Patan Durbar Square, in a skinny house on the main street with her mum, dad, and two younger brothers. She is fifteen, and has been a kumari for nine years - so she's knocking on, in goddess terms.

Meeting her was worth fighting through the 'flu for, not just because it was exotic, etc. But because it was so interesting to see the combination of arrogant goddess and sulky, embarrassed teenager morphed into one bejewelled person.

As interviews go, it was probably one of the most challenging I've done. Because she's a goddess, people aren't supposed to talk to her. And as she's only allowed out of her house in her palanquin on festival days, she doesn't get to see much, so doesn't really have much to say. Pretty much nothing at all, in fact. Although by the way she looked at me when I stammered out my clearly ridiculous questions, her heart was saying, "yeah, whatever."

I did manage to wrest from her that she wants to study accountancy in college (which, dull as it sounds, has got to be way more exciting than being locked up at home from the age of six).

She also gave me her email address, because she said she'd rather answer questions in writing. Which is how I came to have a living goddess's email address.

So I emailed her last night, and hope she will find time in her goddessy existence to check her hotmail account, because with just a teensy bit more information I can write up the interview for the Sunday Times magazine, if they'll take it...

Need to get out of bed now and tell Meena what to make for lunch (feel a bit like a living goddess myself, sometimes!) x