Efforts underway to perform it 27 days from next year

By Aashish Mishra
Lalitpur, Nov. 19: It’s well into the night. But Rajeev Tamrakar is not asleep. Neither is his wife Radha, nor their eight-year-old granddaughter Krishma. They are at Mangal Bazaar, seated on blue plastic chairs. Like scores of other Patanites, they are eagerly waiting in front of the beautifully decorated Kartik Dabali for the climax of the Kartik Naach – the Narsingha Avatar.

A soft melody starts to play, creeping up the ears of the audience. The people gathered, as if by instinct, moved their gaze from the Dabali to the golden window on the second floor of the Patan Museum. Anticipation fills the air, chatter begins to grow, the music starts to get louder and suddenly the window, kept closed most of the year, is flung open.

All eyes are now on the stage where Narsingha, the man-lion incarnation of Lord Vishnu, emerges to vanquish the demon Hiranyakashyapu. The audience cheers. The dance plays out and with its end, the Kartik Naach too comes to an end for the year.

“I am glad that we have been able to maintain this tradition through thick and thin,” 89-year-old Tamrakar said. “The Naach has seen some difficult times. There were times when we thought it would die out. Last year, it was shortened to just two days due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But I am happy that it has been held, regardless of the form, every year.”
This year, the Kartik Naach was held for eight days from November 10 to 17.

However, happy as he is, Tamrakar cannot bring himself to feel truly content. He remembers the Naach being 27 days long. “Until 1949, the Kartik Naach, true to its name, was held all through the month of Kartik, only taking a break for the festival of Tihar. But now, we are happy if it’s more than a week long.”

Kartik Naach was started as a five-day dance-drama by King Siddhi Narsingha Malla in 1640 on the advice of his teachers Hari Bansa Upadhyaya and Bishwonath Upadhyaya. Legend has it that he started the recital for the welfare of his people. In 1666, Malla’s son Srinivas Malla added the Batha Pyakha (Folk Dance) and made the Naach 12 days long. Narsingha Malla’s grandson Yoganarendra Malla again added the Ushaharan and Madhavan Leela and set the 27-day format of the Naach which, according to Tamrakar, prevailed till 1949.

But the Naach started to wane from 1950. The post-Rana government reduced state support for Kartik Naach, resulting in a lack of money and resources. That is why, according to Patan locals, from 1950 to 1980, only the Baraha and Narsingha dances were performed.
In 1981, the Kartik Naach Management Committee was founded to revive the Naach which succeeded in re-introducing a few components and making it eight days long. In 2014, this committee restyled itself as the Kartik Naach Preservation Committee and made the Naach 12 days long. This year, it was staged for eight consecutive nights.

This variation in length is because of the varying amount of budget available to the Naach, Kiran Chitrakar, chairman of the Kartik Naach Preservation Committee, told The Rising Nepal. “The Naach has never had sufficient budget but in years when the money is especially tight, the committee has been forced to shorten it, while in other years when the funds are there, it has been able to elongate it.”

The Preservation Committee does not have an income source of its own and gets no assistance from the Guthi Sansthan, the government body responsible for overseeing the country’s religious sites and rituals. It organises the Kartik Naach solely from public donations and aid from various organisations which are not always enough to cover the costs of the recital.
“We have to train the dancers, provide them allowances, maintain the masks, costumes, jewellery and musical instruments and conduct pujas, all of which cost money, that we seldom have,” Chitrakar informed.

This year, it cost the Committee Rs. 1.35 million to stage the Naach for eight days. However, this year, it had a helping hand in the form of a revolving fund set up by the Lalitpur Metropolitan City. The City established the fund last year with an amount of Rs. 5 million and plans to deposit another Rs. 5 million to it this year.

“The support this fund has provided cannot be understated,” Chitrakar said, adding that the Committee now feels it can hold the Naach for its full 27 days from next year. “We have been approaching the authorities and stakeholders for a number of years for this and hope that we will be able to stage the dance in its original, unabridged form, from 2022. But let’s see how things go.”
Chitrakar informed that the Committee would need around Rs. 5 million to perform the Naach for 27 days.