World

Goddess Wanted

March 8, 2001 / 3:42 PM EST / AP

Goddess needed: palatial accommodations, round-the-clock personal service, public adoration guaranteed, school and homework optional. Must be 5 years old or under and willing to serve until puberty.

It sounds like Nepal's dream job. So why aren't the applicants beating down the doors? Just ask former goddess Rashmila Shakya.

It was great while it lasted, she'll tell you. But it all came crashing down eight years ago when she reached puberty and was tossed out of the palace, woefully unequipped to cope with the real world.

In light of her experience, and that of others before her, fewer parents are eager for their daughters to be goddesses. They'd rather the girls got an education and a well-paid job.

"With society turning more commercial and modernized, people are losing their touch with religion and tradition, and most parents want their daughters to take up careers as engineers or doctors," said Tej Ratna Tamrakar, who heads the department that looks after Durbar Square in Katmandu and its palaces and temples.

The goddess is called a kumari, Nepalese for virgin, and is revered by both Hindus and Buddhists, who believe she has blessed the king and 22 million people of this Himalayan nation with peace and prosperity.

But once a kumari menstruates she becomes a mortal and is shown the door.

In the old days, life as a goddess was viewed as a route to a better life. But Nepal now has a constitution that guarantees equal rights to women, and more women are getting educated and competing for jobs once held exclusively by men.

Meanwhile, the modern world has been encroaching relentlessly ever since the kingdom was discovered by hippie travelers and Himalayan trekkers in the 1960s. Nowadays, Internet cafes are sprouting next door to the goddess' temple.

Shakya, the former goddess, is now 20 and has been struggling for eight years to adapt to normal life.

"As the living goddess I was carried everywhere and did not need to walk or go out to the market. I played and everyone listened to me," she said.

"Now my whole world has changed."

She lives with her family in a small mud and brick house on a narrow alley - quite a comedown from the palace and its dozens of attendants ministering to her every whim.

Shakya the goddess had a personal tutor for an hour a day, but he, mere mortal, would never dare order her to study. So her schooling fell behind and at age 12 she had to enter second grade.

"It has been the biggest handicap. We had to teach her everything from alphabets to activities of a normal life, like conversing," said Pramila Shakya, her older sister.

Now that she has caught up, she is in college majoring in physics and wants to go to the United States to study architecture. But her family doubts it has the financing.

Being a kumari isn't good for one's marriage prospects either. Nepalese folklore holds that men who marry an ex-goddess will die young, and most of the eight livng ex-goddesses are unmarried.

A living goddess must come from a specific Buddhist clan - the Shakyas. She can have only a few selected playmates. She sees the outside world a few times a year when she is wheeled through the capital on a chariot pulled by devotees.

The goddess must always wear red, tie her hair in a topknot and have a third eye painted on her forehead.

The kumari candidate must endure difficult tests, including spending a night among the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes. She must also have perfect skin, hair, eyes and teeth.

Officials and priests will spend April and May - the first month of the Nepalese calendar year - searching for the new goddess. They hope to introduce her to the public around October, in time for Desain, the biggest Nepalese festival.

To sweeten the pot, the Nepalese government is offering the next incumbent, as well as all previous ones, a pension worth about $40 a month. That's barely the minimum wage, but more generous than the annual gold coin previous goddesses got from the king.