Festival: Levels of Community

When we arrived at Khandbari, the Newari Jatra has coincidentally been placed.  The festival usually has played at around in the early August, to which many of the local people, not only Newar but also Sherpa, Gurung, Rai, Tamang, and so on would gather to see and enjoy together.

Jatra.  Note the crowd, in its "crowdness"

Note the two bikes crossing the scene

Two different plays conducted at once.  Consider the "levels" of community

1. Although it was accidental that the festival occurred at the same day with Bazar which gathered once in a week, such a huge crowd was itself rarely seen in the town.  Most of the people, to my eyes, not only gathered to see the festival, but also concerned the other people themselves, the "crowdness", and in particular some of them would be their cousins, friends, neighbors, and so on.  In other words, if you want to define the festival

in their own view, such a communitas mode of the festival (in Victor Turner's term) should only pose a part of the entire phenomenon.  How can it be possible that the two bikes crossing the scene at the second video clip.  How can the two "qualitatively" different behaviors exist at the same time, same phenomenon.  In Turner's as well as other theorists' conceptions of the duality of the world (mundane vs. exceptional) may not be enough to explain the seemingly awkward coexistance.

2. Closer look at the third clip.  Such a transcendental mode of festival would not likely be clearly distinguished from the "normal" life.  Or, our normal life might always include a certain possibility of festivalness.