THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

ECS Magazine, January 26, 2018  Shivaratri, or the night of Shiva, in my mind, is always associated with the Pashupatinath Temple. The temple was set away from human settlement for a reason—in the midst of the forest, amongst the slightly dilapidated buildings and gently ruined structures of the past, the most perfect followers of Shiva, the sadhus, had an ideal sanctuary. Sadhus, ascetics who’d left behind the material world for more spiritual and transcendental concerns, seemed at home here, with the firewood they received gratis from the king, burning away the night in the flicker of bonfires and ash. They started to arrive a fortnight before Shivaratri, and they piled up amongst the muths and the small shrines, smoking their ganja in blissful torpor, joking with the tourists in their own languages (one Shivaratri I chatted with an elderly and jovial French speaking Baba), holding up rocks with their penises, and in general adding to the madcap ambience of the already othe...

A bibliography of the late Saubhagya Shah's academic writings have been compiled by Pratyoush Onta (with help from his Martin Chautari colleagues). Saubhagya Shah, a sociologist/anthropologist trained at Tribhuvan University, Nepal (MA in Sociology, 1991) and Harvard University, US (PhD in Anthropology, 2004) died suddenly on 16 December 2009 from a suspected heart attack. At the time of his death, he was a Reader in Sociology at Tribhuvan University (TU) and the Program Coordinator of TU’s Central Department of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies (CPDS). A moving tribute to Saubhagya has been penned by the writer Sushma Joshi (2017).  You can find that tribute online at Setopati: http://archive.setopati.net/blog/22684/