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The ubiquitous raksi, a high percentage alcohol, which goes under the clandestine name of gurkha-rum, is prepared from rice, millet and barley. Raksi is not served in a small schnaps-glass but in a 0,4 liter glass. Liquor is taboo in the case of orthodox Brahmins and Chettris. The high-caste Brahmins go even so far as not to eat meals which have the following ingredients: onions, garlic, mushrooms and tomatoes. Some Brahmins and Chettris might even refuse to eat with Europeans because of their ideas of pollution and food-taste. There might be a face-saving move: by eating only fruit with them.
On the other hand, there are Nepalis who won't sit down and share their food with others, because they're only used to eating self-cooked food. Some Benaras-trained Brahmins even go to extremes and wear a loin-cloth called the dhoti when eating a meal with rice. Even the eating-direction is important for some. In Nepal you must be careful not to eat facing the Himalayas to the north. The sight might be grandiose but it’s not regarded as auspicious. And don't sit looking to the south either. Either east or west is the most auspicious way to sit while eating lunch or dinner in Nepal. The Nepalese eat facing to the south only while conducting funeral ceremonies.
An eating-habit worth emulating from the Nepalese is the ban on speech during meals. Nepalese observe silence while eating. I noticed that speaking during meals was a normal thing to do in Europe. According to the rules of etiquette, the only time the Europeans don’t speak is when their mouths are full of food. That’s why you hear German parents saying to their children, “Man spricht nicht bei vollem Mund.” The topics during the meals were mostly about one's diseases: kidney trouble, bowel problems, appendicitis, gall stones and how big they were, even about the prostata-glands and pus-filled boils. I thought it was a nightmare, and not a luncheon. But that's the way people are. They have to tell others about their problems irrespective of the place and occasion, despite the fact that such things are not encouraged in Knigge, the German book of etiquette.
Once I asked a Japanese lady named Shikibu Sawa, who’d come to Freiburg to learn German at the Goethe Institute and knew a common girl friend named Franziska Dold, whether they also spoke during meals in Japan and she said, ‘Oh, no. My father would hit me if I did.’
In Nepal, before we start eating, we purify ourselves ritually by washing our hands and then sitting down on the floor near the kitchen and making an offering of the different food to our Hindu, Buddhist or animist Gods, Goddesses, Rimpoches, Bodhisattvas, spirits and ancestors.
There's no point in asking a Nepalese: "How do you say 'cheers' in Nepali?"
The urbanised Nepalese may say: "Cheers! Prost! Kampai! Nastrovije!" but the Nepalese from the village will tilt his head to the left and say,"Pyunu hos!",which means 'please drink!'
Since a good many Nepalese have gone abroad for further studies and have returned to work for the development of the country, they have organised themselves into alumni clubs and the German-returned club members hold an annual get-together through the courtesy of the Carl Duisburg Society, Goethe Institute and the German Embassy in Kathmandu. On these occasions you get to hear Nepalese conversing in German with the most amazing dialects, depending on whether they got their degrees from: Bavaria, Baden-Württemburg or Hessen. The same phenomenon is to be observed among the England-returned and Russia-trained scholars.
The best way to get along with a Nepalese is to treat him or her as your equal and with respect, no matter how poor or rich he or she may be, because we Nepalese have an eloquent speech and care a lot about not losing face in front of strangers. Think about that when you meet a Nepalese and you've won a trusty and loyal friend for your lifetime. And never pat a Nepalese on his back or shoulders, because that is where one’s personal God resides, and he or she might get offended and react with ‘deuta cha, chunu hudaina!’ Oh, please don’t touch me there, there’s my God on my shoulder.
To win a friend in these consume-oriented days of egoism, with the rat-race going on, people jostling each other with their elbows, can be enriching. To return to Nepal and meet old friends with whom you have shared your holiday-experience can be rewarding to some. To recognize and be recognized, despite a long absence in the dizzy heights of the Himalayas, be it under the Lhotse and Nuptse or below the Annapurna and Machapuchhare can do you good. Good, honest, sincere people who respect each other are welcome everywhere they go.
Claudia had once been to Bombay to attend her pen-friend Zinnat's muslim marriage, and had often pumped me full with questions about life in India, Hindu customs, religion and especially about the many Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. She was perpetually interested in knowing which God was associated with which Goddess, and what their riding animals were.
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