In the Shadow of Other Anthropologists: Ashok Tharu

I’ve begun a series of interviews with scholars and anthropologists who have also conducted research in Dangaura Tharu communities. I ask them about their own research experiences, and about observations or opinions about Tharu culture. This was an idea I had before beginning fieldwork, inspired by David Shorter’s analysis on the role that anthropologists have played in constructing Yoeme identity—a Native American group found along the border of southwestern US and Mexico. I was unsure of the possibility of doing this, but as I will demonstrate in these summaries, circumstances have both compelled and allowed me to conduct these interviews. These blog posts are not transcriptions of these interviews, but rather summaries of them, augmented with information from other interactions with these scholars. 

In the course of interviewing Man Pari Chaudhary—an elderly Dangaura Tharu woman of Banke district who had taught a particular oral epic for years—she off-handedly commented to me that Ashok Tharu had come and asked her about this same song years ago. Only she had been able to talk to him in her own Dangaura Tharu language (she was speaking to me in Nepali—a second language for her) and that had been so much easier for her.

While Ashok Tharu would be called a folklorist or cultural activist in academic circles in the States, Ashok once described his work to me as that of a cultural mason or carpenter (loksanskritik karmi). In his sixties, he has spent years researching various aspects of his own Dangaura Tharu culture, with a special attention to oral texts such as folk stories and epic songs. Ashok is the son of a jimindar, or Tharu landlord, and educated in India near Lucknow, thus could be considered part of a Dangaura Tharu elite. Yet he describes himself as being part of an indigenous group that has been oppressed and exploited by more dominant groups in Nepal.

I had been wanting to interview Ashok for a while, but decided to hold off until I got to know him and his work a little better. We had traveled in Banke and Bardiya together in November, where he introduced me to a number of musicians (and I became overwhelmed in the course of the week on the diversity of Dangaura Tharu performing arts), and he had recently helped me with a focus group interview in Dang.

I finally put together a series of questions to ask him. My questions consisted of his own research work—especially for his book on oral epics, which he refers to as “folk literature”—as well as his opinions and ideas concerning culture. For this interview, he took me to a hotel/restaurant owned by a friend of his in the town of Gorahi, the district headquarters of Dang. There, we appropriated one of the larger private dining rooms for the interview. With the door ajar, and the windows open, noise from hotel and restaurant clientele were still picked up on my recorder, but they weren’t distracting.

The desire to work with local culture was sparked in Ashok about twenty-five years ago, after he read a poem the Nepali historian Narendranath Yogi. He was part of a cultural discussion group when Giselle Krauskopff came to Dang to research the Dangaura Tharu (this would have been in the early 1980s). A teacher at the local school at the time, he found her research in Dangaura Tharu social structures through the lens of guruwas—shamans or traditional healers—to be so interesting that he left his teaching job at the local school to work with her full-time. Here, he did not describe himself as a “research assistant” but rather as a “collaborator”—asserting himself as a researcher in his own right. Since then, he has been associated with a variety of groups and organizations—including Nepal Folklore Society, and (formerly Royal) Nepal Academy—through which he has conducted research and cultural work.

I specifically asked about his book, Tharu Loksahityama Itihas, Kalaa, ra Darshan (Philosophy in Tharu Folk Literature, Art and History). I asked why he wanted to write such a book and when he started the research for this work. Ashok said that the idea’s genesis took place in 1989, and it came because, in his view, folk knowledge was not being transferred from the older generation to the younger generation, thus this knowledge was being lost. He found that many people could sing Tharu epics, but not everyone understood or knew what the meanings were. He hoped that, after reading the book, the new generation could understand these things again. This would be one way to transfer “intangible heritage” and “wisdom” (Ashok used these English terms) from the older to the newer generation.

It took Ashok five or six years to do the collection work (I could feel my stomach flip and sink as he said that—how would I ever collect the data I needed to write a dissertation in just twelve months?), and then another five to do the analysis (and my stomach sunk still lower). He not only conducted research in Dang district—his home district, and the district of origin for the Dangaura Tharu—but traveled to Kailali as well to talk to Dangaura Tharu living there. He commented that, after King Mahendra’s land reforms in 2022 VS/1962 AD, many Tharu from Dang moved to the districts of Banke, Bardiya, Kailali, Kanchanpur and Surkhet. This he described not just as a physical migration, but a migration of “intangible heritage” as well.

I asked him how did he collect these songs? He didn’t have an audio recording device, so he would often transcribe the lyrics as the person sang or dictated the words to him. He said the biggest challenge to doing this work was, he would sometimes travel very far, only to have the person he had come to meet refuse to talk to him because they didn’t know him. So, he would have to travel back without having collected any information. Also, during the majority of his time of research, he was unemployed; often, friends would pay his transportation fees. (After hearing that people sometimes refused to talk to Ashok, someone from their own ethnic group, I felt better about my own challenge as a faceless, white, female researcher trying to arrange interviews with some members of Tharu community in which I as residing).  

How had his book been received? He said he had two reactions: for those who were not educated, the book was too philosophical and literary for them, but for those who were educated and academic, they really liked it. He mentioned people like Tulsi Diwas, the renowned Nepali folklorist. I also thought of Sushil Chaudhary, employed by INSEC, a human rights organization. When I asked him a question about the paiya naach, he answered my questions by summarizing a portion of Ashok’s book for me, before commenting that the book was really good—I should read it.

I commented that Ashok had told me numerous times that, for him, these oral epics on which he focused contain a Tharu philosophy of life, the key to a distinct Tharu cultural identity. What did he mean by that? Ashok’s answer was that, these works not only contain folk wisdom, but folk history, folk culture (many epics contained descriptions of material culture, farming techniques, or “cultural actions”) thus provided a distinct Tharu view of the world. However, not all Tharu viewed these epics this way; they just saw music and dance as entertainment, or a way to have fun, rather than “a philosophical thing.” Hence, many Tharu people had left of some performances, because they saw “no utility” in them. His job, as he sees it, is to inform the Tharu people that these cultural performance traditions are “Tharu self-things”—if they leave off performing them, they leave off the thing that make them a distinct people, and gives them an identity. I thought back to the workshops I had seen him conduct, where his arguments hinged on ILO 169, and UNESCO’s “intangible cultural heritage.” He often pointed to my presence, and that of Govinda Acharya—two people not of Tharu origin who saw Tharu culture as worth their time and energy to study.

Ashok Tharu and I at the opening of the exhibit on Astimki art at Nepal Academy of Fine Arts, Naxal, Kathmandu. Usually painted on the inside wall of the village leader's house during the festival celebrating the birth of Krishna, Ashok worked with local artists to reproduce this art form on paper specially for this exhibit. He is currently working on an article concerning Astimki art, funded by the Academy, and these art workshops were part of his research. 

Photo courtesy of a bystander, 26 June 2013.

Being a western-educated ethnographer (and a (A)TCK who has experienced the instability of culture in some rather stark ways), I asked Ashok “But doesn’t culture change?” This Ashok did acknowledge. He gave me the metaphor of a river: a river flows for twelve months, but in Asar, Saun, Badau (June, July, August—the monsoon season in Nepal) the river floods. During this time, the river is very dirty, but in Asoj (September), the river becomes clean again—all that dirt that came in the floods goes to the side, and the water is clean again, and goes forward again. The river changes, but the good things continue and the bad things get put aside. Such it is with culture—good things continue and bad things get put aside.

I thought back to another conversation we had where he used this same metaphor, but a little differently. Then, he had said that a river winds through several geographic areas, carrying a variety of things from many places. There were things that were now part of Tharu culture that had not been there before. Take Christianity for an example. There were lots of Tharu congregations now—some villages had more than one—and while this religion had come from another place, many Tharu had adopted it as their own. Another time, he had commented that many Tharu now celebrate bhai tikka—a day during the festival of Tihar where sisters return to their natal home to bless their brothers—but this is a recent adoption. However, this tradition strengthens the relationship between brothers and sisters and reifies the daughter’s relationship to her natal home after getting married; therefore, this was a good adoption of high-caste Hindu culture in Ashok’s opinion.

However, from other conversations we had had, Ashok also seemed to understand that too much change could mean a loss of identity. Take all these performances I was looking at. Younger Tharu could not sing, dance, act or express the way that the older generation could. Some learned more from popular culture than their own traditions, and were better at a Pahadi (hill—the Tharu live in the flat Tarai area of Nepal) style of dancing and singing than a Tharu style. They couldn’t even pronounce their own Tharu words right—according to Ashok, the Tharu language has no dental sounds, only retroflex. But since Tharu children attend Nepali schools from a young age, their mouths become accustomed to making dental sounds and they employ these indiscriminately in pronouncing their own Tharu words. Hence the Tharu language is also becoming “broken.”

Ashok’s cultural activities are not unique. I thought back to the “cultural orientation” during the Fulbright orientation when I first arrived in August of last year, given by a former Nepali Fulbrigth scholar, centered around structural inequality—a very different orientation of Nepal’s culture than the “ek bhasa, ek desh, ek bhesh [one language, one country, one dress]” that I was used to sitting through. Nepal is a country with significant cultural diversity; one pair of scholars estimates there to be over 100 distinct cultural groups, each with their own language (not just a dialect of the Nepali language). But with a 250+ year of Hindu rule, and an especially intense time of Hindu monarchial hegemony between 1960 and 1990—the country only emerged as a democracy in 1951—this cultural diversity was heavily downplayed in an attempt to create a pan-Nepali identity, based around high-caste Hindu norms. After two people’s movements demanding democratic rights (1990 and 2006) and a ten-year Maoist civil war (1996-2006—where the Maoists were quick to capitalize on the marginalization of various groups, creating ethnic fronts in addition to their People’s Liberation Army), the political climate within Nepal now heavily emphasizes distinct ethnic identities. Many groups are now seeking to regain cultures they believe to have been lost or taken away from them during previous nation-building projects. 

Thoughts on security

I had passed through Bardiya National Park in Western Nepal at least three times previously in the past two weeks, always on a local bus. There are three army checkpoints in this park. This time, I caught the attention of the army officer who came on board. He asked me the usual, “Where are you going?” “Where did you come from?” and “Is this your bag?” but his interrogation continued: “What are you doing here?” “Which country are you from?” “How old are you?” and “Are you married? Single? Do you have a boyfriend?” “Are you alone?” “Are you meeting friends at your destination?” He wasn’t that happy with my “you don’t need to know,” and “I don’t have to answer that question.” My fellow bus passengers were all ears, leaning forward to hear my answers given in Nepali. He finally left the bus. My fellow passengers related this incident to new passengers after we passed the Karnali Bridge and made the routine stop at Chiaspani, marking our entrance into far western Nepal. “Ho ra? [really?]” I heard more than once, with eyes turning to me.

When I related this to some Nepali guy friends, they rolled with laughter. “That’s so funny!” In retrospect yes, it was rather amusing; however, at the time, I was anything but laughing. While the officer was perhaps just curious and surprised to find a foreigner, and woman at that, traveling on a local Nepali bus and was trying make sense of it, I had no idea where his interrogation would lead. Nepali security personnel are not necessarily safe—police and army are known for their corruption, and abuse of their authority—and I did not know what this officer might be capable of.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that I draw the attention of Nepali men when I travel alone. As a white woman, I fall between gender lines as fair game. I’ve evaded giving my phone number to Nepali men for hours on cross-country microbuses, giving excuses or just saying no, but they often persist. I’ve had men “fall asleep” on me—whether its purposeful or not, they get a rude awakening with a quick jab in the ribcage with my elbow or thrown off my shoulder. Once, I bluntly refused to make room for a guy on a city microbus in the seat next to me (I was sharing with another foreign female friend), telling him there was no room. I felt rather bad right after, as he got off the micro to catch another, and the other passengers seemed a little miffed that I would be so selfish. I moved over later for a woman to sit at the next stop.

Men are not always rude. On one small jeep in Nepalgunj, the passengers—all men—had a discussion as to whether my backpack was too big and they should put it on top of the vehicle. When one of them suggested asking me, everyone was like “she doesn’t speak Nepali.” When I answered that I did in fact speak Nepali, and that my bag would stay on my lap, they fell into friendly conversation with me about my travels and research, relating where they were coming from and where they worked (many of them abroad as migrant workers). Many of the boys and young men who collect fares have given me directions as to where to connect to my next bus if its my first time in an area, making sure I get down at the correct cross roads or passing me off to one of their buddies to make sure I got to my next ride. The men who conduct the bus to and from the village in Dang where I am based are some of the most patient I’ve met—they primarily deal with women coming to and from the bazaar, usually with loads of supplies (think of it as coordinating a bus for a dozen or more women who have just done three-month’s worth of shopping at Costco—which in this case can sometimes include live animals!).

While I don’t mind bus travel, and have had some good experiences, my first time flying domestic in Nepal was sweet relief—no one harassed me. I credit the presence of the flight hostesses, that it’s a different kind of Nepali who flies, and that there are generally more foreigners present. Expensive as it can be—almost ten times the amount of a bus ride—I’ve flown more frequently this time to my far western destinations than previously. When one of my Nepali guy friends heard that I was flying, his reply made it clear he thought it a frivolous expenditure—I could find a nice bus to take me instead. I decided not to argue—I had had similar thoughts myself, but often at the end of a research trip, where all I’ve done has been talk to strangers, a hassle-free trip “home” to Kathmandu is well worth it.

Bazaars can be a whole ‘nother hazard. I receive catcalls, “hello,” “namaste,” from guys piled on three or four deep on a friend’s bicycle. Men try and initiate conversation with me just because they can at bus stops; I ignore them and move away, or if they persist I’ll just say, “I don’t have to talk to you.” There have been two times in Kathmandu where a motorcycle driver has slowed down and crept up next to me, asking in English, “Want a ride?” or “Hello, Namaste, how are you?” The third time it happened, I rolled my eyes—then heard my friend Ashish’ voice “Tori! Where are you headed? Oh, I’m going that way; can I give you a ride?” I hoped my exhale of relief wasn’t too obvious.

Dealing with Stateside prejudices is another ballpark. I recently filled out my Fulbright midterm evaluation, where I was given the space of 1500 characters to relate the “specifics” of my research project to date, and approximately 6000 characters to talk about strategies I had derived for surviving the dangerous and crazy wilds outside of the United States borders, and 3000 characters to talk about how the US Embassy staff or Fulbright Commission had been my angels or knights in shining armor—whichever I chose. I’ve had concerned church members ask about political stability in Nepal and comment on how “brave” I am to travel abroad—I casually reply that I have a better chance of getting raped or robbed outside my current university and that I’m glad members of my Nepali church daily lift me up in prayer; I don’t know how I’d survive life in the States otherwise.   

Yet there are people who see to my safety. There’s the radio station owner who, despite his busy schedule and responsibilities, puts me in the same jeep as the Nepali celebrity singer who performed at his station’s anniversary, to make sure that I’m not harassed by the crazies who continue to hang out by the entrance to the fair grounds. There’s the cultural activist who calls my host in the village, insisting that he meet me at the bus stop to take me the rest of the way home on his motorbike, to insure that I don’t have to walk through remote fields or cross a river alone and in the dark. There are older sisters from church who I will walk home with after an evening fellowship. And there are numerous Nepali brothers who will good-naturedly throw me on the back of a friend’s motorbike, or friends who will ride with me on the micro bus at night and then call to make sure I arrived home safe.

Yet in all this, where does my safety really lie? It is “the LORD [who] watches over the sojourners” (Psalm 146:9). 

Thoughts About Hospitality

My pastor in the States has been on a series on Romans for quite some time now. A recent sermon was on the little phrase, “seek to show hospitality,” in Romans 12:13. He used an illustration from the church’s recent past of hospitality gone wrong: they used to have a “hospitality night” on the fifth Sunday night of a month, where church members had the opportunity to sign up as a “host” or “guest”; and people would be hosted in other’s homes. After some time, they noticed that the same people were signing up as “hosts” and “guests.” So the pastor sent the person in charge of the ministry to survey all the “guests” and see why they never signed up as “hosts”. The surveyor gave the pastor the answers, with names detached. Here are a few that my pastor received:

“My yard really needs landscaped.”

“I don’t have the gift of hospitality. I have the gift of being a guest.”

“I’m too lazy.”

“I’m not a good cook.”

“It takes too much effort to clean my house.”

My pastor commented that all these answers revealed a skewed understanding of hospitality. Hospitality is not social entertaining, where the focus is on the host and how well s/he can entertain. In Christian hospitality, the focus is on meeting the needs of another person. Hospitality can happen in a messy house, while the host and guest do chores, and over a dinner of canned soup. Hospitality is about telling someone “I have room in my life for you.”

I have been the recipient of numerous aspects of hospitality in Tharu homes. The Tharu are famed for their hospitality—not because they are great hosts and entertain their guests; rather, they show that they have room in their lives for others.

Anita and her sister came over to the house I live in while researching in Dang. They had come to get photos of a recent family wedding from me; Anita had her pin drive on which she wanted me put them. After doing this for her, Anita phoned my didi—host sister—to see if she had really gone fishing in this cold weather. She had me talk to her over the phone. My didi asked where Anita et al were. “They’re downstairs,” I said, as instructed.

“Did you give them the photos?”

“Yes, they’re on Anita’s pin drive now.”

“Are you going to their house now?”

“In a bit.”

“Ok, well, make tea for them first, then go.” My didi had recently entrusted me with making my own tea in the afternoons. Though she still surprised me sometimes—like coming in from her work in the fields unexpectedly in the afternoon, just to scramble an egg and make tea for me while I worked away at typing notes on my computer. “I thought you might be hungry,” she would explain as she left to go back to the field. Like I should be the one who was hungry from work?!

“Alright,” I replied.

Anita and her sister first said for me to go to their house for tea; they didn’t want to cause me dukha [pain or suffering]. “What dukha?” I asked. “I boil water and throw in tea. It’s easy!”

So I made the tea; I even added sugar and black pepper. Before giving it to them, I warned them that it might not be sweet enough; I rarely put sugar in my own tea. The grandmother—my didi’s mother-in-law—took a sip. “Gulio chaina [its not sweet]” she placidly commented before taking another sip. Anita smiled, “It’s fine.” They did me the honor of drinking my unsweetened tea.

“Do you like popcorn?” Anita asked me. I replied affirmative. “Then come over to my place and I’ll make you some.”

On the way over, she asked me how old I was. “Twenty-six,” I replied.

“Then I will call you didi [older sister],” she said. “I just turned twenty-two.”

I did some math in my head. “How old were you when you got married?” I asked.

She smiled slyly. “Fourteen!”

A love marriage at fourteen?! The biggest decisions I made at age fourteen were what Friday electives I wanted to take at school, and whether I should go to Sunday night youth fellowship or not because I wasn’t sure I really enjoyed it.

Anita continued: “My husband is three or four years older than me. Our little girl is now six years old.”

We arrived at her home. She and her daughter live in a small room above a kitchen, in the same building as her in-law’s livestock. She started a wood fire the chimney-less kitchen; smoke soon filled the room, smarting both our eyes. “Don’t worry,” she told me, “it will stop in a minute.” She was right. The smoke rose and drifted out the open door into the yard. She started laying on dried cow paddies for fuel. “We Nepalis are poor,” she explained, “so we burn dried cow dung. But it makes good fuel.”

Soon, she had a clay pot on the fire, in which she popped corn and roasted soybeans. We continued our conversation over these hot snacks—she asking about the States, I asking after her husband. Her husband currently works abroad, as a migrant worker like so many Nepalis. “I don’t like it that he’s abroad,” Anita said. “But what to do? There’s so much unemployment in Nepal.” She said that he works in Malaysia, in a plastics factory, making plastic jugs and putting the company’s stickers on them. He comes back once every two or three years. “He just left again, about five months ago,” she said.

She also told me that she’s not Tharu; she’s Pahadi (from the hills). I had suspected as much; she had the bridged nose and more angular features of a Pahadi rather than the characteristic round moon face of Tharu women. I had also heard her speaking in Nepali to her daughter, while everyone else spoke to the little girl in Tharu. How was that, marrying into a Tharu house? I asked. “Oh, it was so hard—it was like you, coming from the States to Nepal! I didn’t speak the Tharu language; I didn’t know if people were scolding me or complimenting me! My husband taught me though. It took me a year. Now, I’m fluent.”

Her mother-in-law came in after a while; she wanted Anita to come cook at their place that night, to make their dinner. As their daughter-in-law, they had the right to her labor. I went with her to the main house. The mother-in-law brought in a basket of greens. She told me to pluck the coriander leaves from the stems, and the dead ends off the green onions, and to peel the onion bulbs.

After finishing this, I got up to leave. The mother-in-law asked me to stay for dinner. I told her that I had already committed to going to the neighbor’s place that night; they were having a good-bye party for some family members returning to work abroad, and had promised to record a song for me. I would come have dinner at their place another time. She had me take dhikiri—steamed rolls of rice dough—to my didi. “These are from Bishna’s aunts,” she said, recalling her newly married daughter. These must have been left over from the wedding feast. Once I got home, these treats were happily devoured by my didi’s sons, just returned from school.

One of the pastors I recently interviewed commented that he liked the hospitality of the Tharu; it naturally provided an opportunity to share the Gospel. “Most people just ask us ‘why have you come? What work do you have?’ However, the Tharu first ask you to sit, they give you water, then they ask why you have come.” Their hospitality provides a space to share the Gospel.

Is hospitality a burden? My pastor commented that the Apostle Paul’s soul expanded as he embraced new believers—at first strangers, to become beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. While none of my new Tharu acquaintances in this particular village are believers, I am still humbled—and challenged—that they would show such kindness to a stranger like myself. And while we’re still new to each other, we’re no longer complete strangers. My didi asked me as I left the house, to begin my roundabout journey back to Kathmandu, when I would return? I said in about a month’s time. She said to call them when I knew the exact date, so they could expect me. And she plopped a fried egg on my plate, right after I had finished my rice, before I could protest. “Bahini [little sister], anda khau [eat the egg],” she lovingly commanded. 

Defying Expectations

We all sat around the fire out back, staying warm on a chilly Terai evening. The conversation was primarily in Tharu, so I didn’t understand everything—just when subjects were being switched, or when Sangita gave my introduction to newcomers around the fire. Sometimes I asked questions in Nepali, or answered questions addressed to me. Well into our time around the fire, one woman commented how pleased she was that they could actually talk to me. I then found out that, because Sangita worked for BASE—a large Tharu NGO—as did many of her relatives, she would bring visiting donors to visit her in-laws all the time. But none of them spoke Nepali. “We say our ‘Namaste,’ they say their ‘hello, Namaste,’ and then we sit and smile at each other!” one woman laughed. “We can actually TALK to you though!” Questions followed concerning the United States, namely, what was my government’s development plans for schools in rural places? I didn’t know, I had not gone to a rural school; I had always lived in cities. Well, the schools I had attended then, what were they like? I said that I hadn’t actually gone to school—there was a system where all I had to do was show up for exams. This was my abbreviated definition of “homeschooling.” Sangita commented, “Oh, that’s just like college here—you don’t have to go to class, you just show up and pass exams to get your degree. Ok.” Nonplussed to discover that the United States wasn’t so different from Nepal, she stirred the fire and the conversation turned to Tharu concerns.

On another day, as Sangita and I sat in her kitchen where she was peeling potatoes for dinner, she commented that donors would always stay at hotels—never with staff, like I was staying with her—and usually just go out to the villages during the day. Sometimes they would stay the night, but not always. None of them spoke Nepali, just English, and as Sangita’s English was limited to a few words and phrases, she couldn’t communicate directly them—they always had translators present. Students would often come too, doing research for their theses—like I was—but none of the ones she had interacted with spoke Nepali. With one researcher, they had communicated via a phrase book, which contained the English phrase, and the translation in Romanized Nepali, and Nepali Devanagari script. She and the other staff had ended up reading the Devanagari, I assumed because the researcher’s pronunciation was so bad. And some students didn’t even speak English. How did they do research then? I asked. Sangita shrugged. It’s really hard, was all she said, picking up another potato to peel.

Sangita and I sat and talked over Sita’s transcription of the words to the sakya song—written in Devanagari, but because the language was Tharu, so I couldn’t understand it, even if I could read it when I deciphered Sita’s handwriting. I asked Sangita to read out the titles of the parts of the song, as Sita had written them. Sangita did, going through each letter—“ka-n-haa, mu-wa-ee-naa”—as I wrote in Devanagari. Sangita paused. “When did you learn to write Nepali?” she asked abruptly. I then realized she had expected me to Romanize the script. “When I was little…?” I mumbled shyly. Sangita commented, “You write really well.” She continued to read out the titles to me.

On the jeep ride back to Kohlpur, Sumitra commented that the message that the Gurbaba FM competition was supposed to be a Maghi song and dance competition didn’t compute with the competing teams; many of the teams had chosen to perform the hurdunga naach, which, according to her, wasn’t a Maghi song or dance—there were lots of Maghi songs they could have chosen from, but they didn’t use them. She went on to talk about the quality of singing. She said that many of the groups didn’t sing clearly; sometimes she couldn’t understand a word of what they were singing. For example, the first team was a group of old men; their voices were so croaky that she couldn’t understand what they were saying. But they were old men and that excuse was justifiable; the younger groups though? They had no excuse. I commented that, when people sing as a group, their voice should be as one, but so many of the groups didn’t sound like that—I was trying to say that, when a group sings in unison, they’re supposed to sing on the same pitch. Sumitra agreed; much of the singing had just been bad. During our conversation, several heads in the front of the jeep turned to look at us—did they want to be sure that the bideshi indeed spoke Nepali?

During the lull in our conversation, the guy sitting next to Sumitra asked where we had come from. Sumitra informed him that we had just come from a competition on Maghi songs and dances sponsored by a local radio station; she had been one of the judges and I was a student researcher here to observe the proceedings. The guy commented on how clearly I spoke Nepali. Sumitra explained that I had grown up in Nepal and lived several years in Kathmandu, so that’s how I came to speak Nepali—only, I couldn’t understand when people spoke fast; they had to speak slowly to me, and then I would understand.

In Kohlpur, as one guy was trying to convince us to come to ride to Nepalgunj in his jeep—which was packed to the max, although he said that he would arrange for us to sit—the same loud-mouthed bus boy who had managed our morning ride jumped between he and Sumitra and yelled at the top of his lungs, “au, au, eta au, aba jam [come, come, this way, let’s go now]!” We sat right up front, next to the driver, in the same vehicle we had ridden in that morning. The driver asked where we had gone and what we had done that day; Sumitra said she had gone to judge a song and dance competition at a radio station in Bansaghadi. Had I also judged the competition, he asked? No, Sumitra said, I was a student researcher looking at Tharu song and music. She gave my same abbreviated history to this jeep driver too.

Back at Sangita’s house, I sat with her five-year-old son, Sajeet, in front of the electric heater, trying to stay warm. He had picked up a puck from the landlord’s daughter upstairs. He held it out in front of him, said something in Hindi then turned to me, expecting an answer. “Come on, say it,” he said in Nepali. I told him I didn’t know Hindi. “Just try!” he insisted. He asked the question again. His cousin Yogish—a young man of about twenty—smacked his shoulder. “She doesn’t know Hindi, just Nepali!” he told Sajeet. Sajeet still pressed me for an answer. Finally, his other cousin, Srijana, gave the answer for me in Hindi. He looked at me, “now just say what she said!”