Skip to main content

Gai Jatra



Gai Jatra, or "Cow Carnival," is a festival that takes place in
Kathmandu every monsoon. The story goes like this: A queen loses her beloved child and falls into a depression. Her husband takes the help of a holy man, who promises her that if she can get a sesame seed from the home where there's never been a death, the child can be brought back to life. The procession goes through all the homes where there's been a death that year. The queen finally comes out of her grief when she realizes death is inevitable.



Gai Jatra is also characterized by satire of governments and people in high places.



 Sushma Joshi took these photos in 2010. These photos show a very small slice of what was going on in Kathmandu on that day. Enjoy!

Popular posts from this blog

Supportive Men: the documentary

In Nepal, men and women are involved in various ways to shift norms and relationships toward gender equality. This documentary focuses on one community in Kapilvastu, Southern Nepal, to show how men and couples are changing the way they interact with one another to bring about social change, and also how men are supporting women’s movement for empowerment and gender equality.   _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Mr. Dube is a young man in his late twenties who lives in Kapilvastu, Nepal. He has taken part in a gender equality training given by a local NGO, in partnership with an INGO. He is married and has two sons. In his small community, Mr. Dube has become an inspirational figure who has managed to change the behavior of not just the younger men, but also the older men of his community, who now cook, help with housework and childcare, and support  their spouses in a way that was unthinkable...
Read more

WATER shown in eco-feminism week in Trinity College, Dublin

Isabel Jorgensen invited me to screen WATER at the eco-feminism week (Nov 13-17, 2017) at Trinity College, Dublin. She said she'd seen me present at Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and thought the film fitted perfectly with the theme of the week. I was already back in Nepal after a summer in Oxford, so I suggested that she present it instead. Isabel said the documentary would be screened at the Museum Building Library, and that "it was by far the most beautiful building and room on campus!" So I googled it up, and indeed, here is the beautiful building .  It was inspired by the Byzantine architecture of Venice. Here is her email after the event, after I asked her how it went: Amazing, thanks! Here are some pictures from the event, it went smoothly and there was a lot of good discussion. I gave a 30 minute intro to climate justice and environmental issues and women’s roles in their resolution, we had the a screening an...
Read more

Hubert Bals Fund grant

I received a seed grant from the Hubert Bals Fund to write a fiction film script in 1997.  The grant gave me support and inspiration when I needed it the most. I found  this list of HBF grantees  on the web, and am honored to be part of this global film community.
Read more