By Our Correspondent
Charikot (Dolakha), Dec. 28: Bhimeshwore Municipality, a local body in Dolakha district, organised leaf plate and bowl (duna, tapari) stitching training to the women in the district to preserve the cultural tradition.
The local body was worried about the decreasing value of the traditional leaf plates in the society. Kamala Basnet, Deputy Mayor of the Municipality, said that the municipality organised training for the women to enhance its cultural values among younger generation.
"Leaf plates and bowls have cultural importance which is decreasing slowly among youngsters, we want to preserve our tradition through this training," she said.
The municipality preferred youths’ participation in the training in Piple. A two-day training concluded on Saturday. Hindu believers have a trend of using leaf plates and bowls in their ritual offerings across the country.
"Younger generation has less knowledge in such cultural things and we initiated for something better to make them aware of this aspect of our culture,” Mayor Basnet added.
Haribansa Chaulagain, chair of ward-4, said 30 women participated in the training that began from Friday. "Training not only aims at preserving culture but also for environmental protection," he added. Chaulagain also said that leaf plates could be replaced by plastic plates.
Anisha Siwakoti, a local resident of Charikot, shared her experience in the training and said her family used steel plates for their ritual offerings as they had no leaf stitching skills. "The training is useful for me and my friends because it saves unnecessary expenses of ritual offerings on one hand and it is easy for use on the other," she said.
The ways of stitching leaf plates is different according to the rituals. Goma Basyal, the trainer in the training, said that it
required pentagon shape. "Five to seven minutes time is enough to prepare one single leaf plate," she added.