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I groaned, threw up my hands and said, "It's like a never ending quiz on who's who, with whom and on what, of the Buddhist and Hindu pantheon circuit." Claudia, on the other hand, was determined to write down the entire list of Gods and Goddesses and had her list always handy in the kitchen, below the cupboard with the hot spices.
"Isn't Krishna with Parvati? And who's Laxmi? What does Krishna ride on? A cow? But I thought the holy cow belonged to Shiva. Does Ganesh also have an animal he can ride on? What, a rat?" she'd say terrified.
"Well as long as they don't ride on spiders. I'm scared of spiders. You know, I have arachnophobia," she said.
"By the way, I know that Kumari is the Living Goddess in Kathmandu but who is Kumar?" she asked." And what does he ride on?"
"Kumar is the elephant-headed God Ganesh's brother and he uses a peacock," I replied.
All these questions somehow reminded me of the fictive American journalist in the novel "The Mountain Is Young" who stepped out of the aeroplane in Tribhuvan airport and asked , ‘Who's Shiva? Who’s Vishnu?’ The fact is that most Nepalese bear the names of Gods and Goddesses of the Hindu and Buddhist pantheon, and a teacher might be confronted with a class full of Gods and Goddesses, and there might be a God or Goddess serving you in your flight to Kathmandu and back. In Kathmandu the police even arrest a God.
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About the Author: Satis Shroff is a writer & poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction). He writes regularly for www.Americanchronicle.com and its twenty-one affiliated newspapers in the USA. He has studied Zoology & Botany in Nepal, Medicine & Social Sciences in Germany, and Creative Writing in Freiburg & Manchester.
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