Reconstruction by the Battis Paneju Sangh at Bungamati
February 3, 2017 (Revised)
Khokana Town, near Kathmandu, is an adventurist’s muse. A few winters back, I had the privilege of revisiting a paradise newly re-opened, a town newly re-visited. Yet, just another winter later, I made a journey to Khokana under visibly contrary circumstances. The Bungamati Temple, which was our focal pilgrimage point, now lay in rubbles. The Great Earthquake had not chosen just a few.
Until recently, the Temple — as a deistic principle and representation — had, subliminally, personified nature’s inchoate return. As I walked around the Temple, it shaped itself much in the way of new life, rebirth and remembrances of a historical past that Nepal can scarce forget.
Stacks of bricks, a foundation half lain and old doorways are the present. Stray dogs, drying clothes and the errant schoolboy on a bicycle emerged as signs of habitation. Local workers in parley with visiting post-structuralists also shone a ray a hope in the sunshine-drenched temple arena. Striking in their historical form and design integrity, the wooden doorways and windows portray Bungamati as it ought to remain — a primeval spiritual culture of untold post-modern resonance.
The chuna (lime) appeared ready. The brick-layer, however, was at a festival celebration in Manakamana Temple. Foundational principles, in any heritage paradigm, often express a structural and constructivist creed. While design drawings are plentiful and in plain sight, correctness and precision are attendant traumas, insurmountable through everything from geomorphological concerns to battle cries for liberation.
Bungamati Temple is transcendentally Nepali (and ‘NayaPali’). The Temple’s approaching reconstruction has been, thus far, ably shouldered by the Battis Paneju Sangh — a committee of priests in the nearby RatoMachhendra Nath Temple. For a country woven together by temples and belief coherence, we can hope, again, that ‘Naya Nepal’ will draw, insightfully, from the past and from the creedence which is the Battis Paneju. Approximately thirty two doors stand, dotted around the Temple, as testament and testimony. Reconstruction itself, then, is an auspicious entry into a new era □
