Dubby Bhagat

Kathmandu:

The old road from Kathmandu to Bhaktapur wound between the tawny villages of Thimi and Nade and dipped for a while through the verdant, miniature landscape of Thimi’s vegetable garden. The fields are small, patchworked, always green; shaded by feathery trees and watched over by thatched guardian huts and pot-headed scarecrows. In the very early mornings before dawn light has separated mountains from sky, the narrow dirt road with its hedges of wild roses and Lantana is filled with muffled men carrying great loads of vegetables slung from bamboo across their shoulders. These were the fathers who went unrecognised by their children because they left their homes too early and returned too late. Now, early villagers more often pile their vegetables on mini-buses and if their day in the city is successfully short, they may return by micros that speed along the Chinese-built highway.

Thimi, which spills shops upon the old road filled with pottery and brightly painted mache masks, is better known and more often visited. Nade which presents a fortress-like façade, a moat of fields, is less familiar despite the fact that legend has it founded by the snake-king, Nagaraja, and considered a place of bliss. Though I have photographed Nade from the old road. I have never ventured through the fields to enter its enticing doorway of a Ganesh shrine that appears to be the entrance to the village.

Thimi, though now bypassed by the highway to Bhaktapur and the Chinese border, is saved from being another forgotten mediaeval village because of its vegetables and its two famous industries, pottery and mask-making. Also, because of its three vivid festivals, that course through its narrow lanes.

I am torn between the belief that Thimi was set up by the earliest rulers of Bhaktapur as a bastion against attack, and thinking that it grew up around a colony of artisans like those by whom the young king Bhupatindra Malla was brought up and with whose help he returned to the throne. Either would account for the name Thimi, known to be derived from Chemmi, meaning capable people, which they were called by Bhaktapur kings in recognition of their valorous support.

In the last few years, shops selling Thimi masks have greatly increased. Of the original two I can remember, Kancha Chitrakar’s was the best known. It was his son and daughter I met, deftly adding colour to piles of freshly made papier mache masks. And I noticed there were pots of poster paint among bowls of traditional powder colour, and the brushes were imported.

In his father’s day, Kancha told me, the paint was locally produced and the masks themselves made only on the occasion of festivals and that when the old maskes were worn out and had to be replaced. The shop below his house came with the need for masks smaller than those for the dance, for tourists to carry away. He made not only smaller masks but miniature ones as well-a fashion that has spread throughout the Valley. Because other artists were quick to realise the popularity of “carry-home” Nepalese masks, Kancha’s son Purna Krishna Chitrakar has, since I opened a shop of his own just down the road.

Between Thimi and Bhaktapur is the potters village of new houses known as Nikosera. Earthen flowerpots, urns, terracotta animals, wall plaques, lampstands and great Ali Baba jars cascade from windows and doors onto the road. Once only concerned with traditional design, these progressive potters will now turn out almost any object you wish made. With the sudden spurt of hotels and interest in interior décor, the potters of Nikosera grow deservedly popular and well-to-do. My friend, Ratna Bhagat, who once pleadingly asked for patronage, is now affluent enough to be building a new house nearer Thimi, which makes one wonder if not many years from now Nikosera and Thimi will join to become a staunchly middle-class town of enterprising potters and mask-makers.

Undoubtedly, Thimi’s greatest contribution to recent Nepal has been the terracotta elephant for growing plants in. They are unfailingly attractive, particularly in Nepalese gardens, where they bloom extravagantly with narcissi and irises and cactii. I deeply sympathise with visitors who imagine these elephants standing in their own gardens, because the Thimi elephant is as fragile as it is desirable and few have yet survived air travel, customs, immigrations, and plain curiosity. One of my most cherished memories of Kathmandu is a small plump lady carrying a large plump Thimi elephant into a decidedly reluctant plane.