Kesang Tseten’s new film captures both the Rato Machhindranath festival and the  preparations  accompanying the grand event Issue 2, Nation Weekly Magazine, 2004 BY SUSHMA JOSHI The sight of a priest proudly displaying a tiny vest at the Rato Machhindranath festival has been etched into our national consciousness. “On the road with the Red God: Machhindranath” is a film recently made by Kesang Tseten. Tseten takes 110 hours of footage of various acts of human ingenuity and devotion to what seems like a lost cause—namely, the construction of an unwieldy 100 foot chariot that gets tangled up in the electric wires of Patan and tilts drunkenly as it is dragged and pushed and pulled by enthusiasts across flood-washed roads every 12 years, and where men get roaring drunk and get into fights all the way from Bungmati to Patan, and then repeat the process all the way back. Behind the vest rests a red god, known as the Rato Machhindranath. This is the divinity worthy of all that...