Naradevi temple in Thamel

We came across a temple in a tiny square on a busy lane in Kathmandu’s Thamel are. “It can’t be just a neighbourhood shrine,” I said to The Family, “look at the elaborate lion guardians.” She looked and laughed, “Moustaches, like the lions of Odisha.” The temple was not crowded but it was busy. We couldn’t hang around the entrance gawking for too long. Later, when I looked it up in the map I found that it was a temple to Kali, the raging goddess of death and time, and an important one.

One story of the founding of the temple involves a king injured in a hunt, lost and delirious, who falls asleep under a tree, is visited by a goddess, revived and reassured, who then founds the temple at the very spot where he fell and woke again. Sometimes the king is of Patan, at other times of Bhaktapur, both enemies to Kathmandu, the outer limits of whose darbar stands a bowshot away. There’s a lesser told story of it being founded by the first king of Kathmandu. I peered into the inner chamber and noticed the staring eyes of Kali. There were three silver statues of the goddess inside the barred sanctum. Are the silver idols the reason why this temple is said to belong to Shwetakali? Notice the elaborate carving of the goddess above the inner door. Later I stepped back out to look at the equally elaborate carvings on the wooden supports which hold up the three roofs of the layered pagoda.

The tradition of the mother goddess Taleju was brought here in the 14th century by Maithili royalty fleeing a sack of their capital. The Mithila kingdom, today part of Bihar, had been founded after the defeat of the Bengali Sena dynasty in the 11th century. Later, when I was buying tickets in the darbar square, the lady in the booth talked to me in a singsong Hindi which I mistook for a Bihari accent. She corrected me, saying she was a Newari brahmin, which is why she still retained the royal accent. Hers is the community which traces its origin from Mithila and provides the link between the celebration of Shakti in Nepal and Bengal. I’d missed nawami in Kathmandu by less than a week, so I’ll have to come back another year to see the buffalo sacrifice at this temple. This form of worship has faded in Assam and Bengal in my lifetime, and it may not last in Nepal much longer.