Acting the goat

Well, it’s dashain time here in Nepal. (For those of you interested, I’ve saved you a google and included a link to some info about this festival down there on the right). One of the major traditions is that every household sacrifices a goat during dashain, and you may recall that a couple of months ago, being the generous fellow that I am, and half-cut on whiskey and raksee, I promised to provide this year’s goat. A noble gesture – like most of my drunken whims, I might add – intended to spare the Lamichhanes from having to give up one of the three goats they own. Unfortunately, I know as much about goat-buying as I do about brain surgery, so I was wondering how I was going to keep this particular promise. Knowing me, I was likely to return from the market with some magic beans. Or a dog painted like a goat. Fortunately, Ramesh and Nedra came to my rescue and accompanied me to the goat market.

The temporary goat market on Exhibition Road.

Exhibition Road is located near the old bus park in central Kathmandu and becomes the ad-hoc goat market every year at dashain. The road is about half a km long and was lined with thousands of goats of every hue and thronged with shoppers. The goat sellers ranged from farmers with one or two animals to traders tending large herds. Traffic continued to pass through and cops were in attendance to try to keep livestock, merchants and buyers off the road, or at least away from the middle of the road. It was general chaos; the footpaths were strewn with grass and dung and the whole street stank of goats. (As I write that I realise it may not ring a bell with many of you. If not, take my word for it – goats smell bad. Not as bad as chickens, mind you, but pretty bad. ‘Noisome’ would be a good word for it. Chickens are just fowl [sorry]).

Ramesh and Nedra both proceeded to cast an expert eye over the animals and began to poke, prod and heft a few, exchanging questions and comments with merchants and fellow-shoppers. Not wanting to be left out, I prodded a few flanks and even hefted a couple of animals, nodding or frowning to myself and exchanging knowing looks with Ramesh. I drew the line at cupping a he-goat’s testicles, however. (I never quite understood the rationale for that one. Who cares if the goat has a hernia? It’s being sacrificed and eaten, not trying out for the national tae kwon do team). We spoke to a few different sellers, gauging what would be a fair price and after a protracted negotiation we settled on one particular goat and I made the purchase for 5,600 Rs. Sorted. Well, not quite. We still had to get him home. In the end it was decided that Ramesh + 60kg Nedra + 30kg goat on a 125cc motorcycle made more sense than Ramesh + 90kg Vaughan + 30kg goat, and I gallantly chose to accompany Nedra’s wife, Gonga, home on the micro-bus.

Ramesh gives a prospective purchase the squeeze test.

The lucky goat.

If you think the goat looks uncomfortable, I can assure you my trip home in a mini-van with 30 other people wasn’t much better. Someone was sitting on my feet.

Gonga is a very traditional Nepali woman and does not speak any English. She is a very good cook (I feel I have now partaken of enough Nepali food to be able to make a claim like that) and she performs the majority of the work in the kitchen at Nandumaya. Gonga and I don’t converse much but she seems to regard me with an air of bemused tolerance. She also seems to enjoy slipping chiles into my meals whenever she can. Normally I can spot them and dig them out, but occasionally one slips through and as I turn red, clutch my throat and start groping for water I am sure to hear Gonga chuckling away to herself.

She is, as I said, a very traditional woman and after our half-hour micro journey I barely managed to wrestle the bag she was carrying away from her for the 2 km walk home. Considering the loads I have seen her carry with a head strap, this was a purely token gesture anyway, but nothing could prevent her from deferentially walking directly behind me the whole way home. I found it quite unnerving to be silently shadowed by a diminutive Asian woman. I toyed with the idea of being a smart-arse and heading off across a field, to see if she would follow me, but cultural sensitivity prevailed.

The goat I invited to be guest of honour at our dashain feast. I named him Stew.

Concomitant with my offer to supply the goat was an offer to perform the role of executioner. At the time it was made, this sincere offer was accepted with a degree of humour, but as Stew’s appointed hour drew closer and it was apparent that I was still keen to perform the sacrifice, I got the distinct impression that people were getting a little uncomfortable. Now, I wanted to kill the goat simply because it was something new, and as the person responsible for supplying Stew I felt some measure of responsibility for helping him meet his fate. I am happy enough to eat meat, I should be willing to kill the animal, right? Put your money where your big, carnivorous mouth is, and all that. Besides, I had never sacrificed an animal to appease a god before. But the last thing I would want to do is offend anybody’s religious sensibilities – if it was culturally unnacceptable for me, a non-hindu, to perform the rite then I would never do it. The problem was that Nepali people are generally so damned polite and eager to please that I was worried they would let me do it anyway. I genuinely couldn’t tell whether there was some religious reason that I shouldn’t do it, or whether people were just worried I would stuff it up, or felt as though I had to do it.

Sarala administers tikka to the household, for blessings and luck.

All tikka-ed up for the sacrifice. Wearing a tikka out is a bit like taking a packed lunch to school – it shows somebody cares about you – and is a very nice way to start the day.

Eventually it became clear that they were worried I would not make a clean kill. It is very important that the goat is killed with one blow from a big knife, preferably severing the head. If not, then another goat has to be killed the next day with a single blow, and so on. If a clean kill was not made the goddess would be angry and it would not augur well for the festival. Now, I am personally about as superstitious as a pot-plant and I would happily smash mirrors or provoke the wrath of any god you’d care to name, but I definitely didn’t want to commit a cultural faux pas or stuff up anybody’s dashain festival, just on a whim of mine. That would be both culturally insensitive and plain, old-fashioned rude. But as far as I could see it just wasn’t that hard. Big knife + big chop = headless goat = happy goddess, right? What’s so hard about that?? I began to wonder if I was overlooking something. They wouldn’t give the bloody goat a head-start, would they? Running Man styles? I wouldn’t be blindfolded and spun around before being let loose with the knife, in a gory version of blind-man’s bluff, would I?  But no: it was merely the importance of doing it right. It wasn’t hard, it was important. It didn’t help my confidence that people kept asking me whether I had done this before and constantly emphasising that it had to be done with one blow. I almost chickened out on the last morning, when Sarala told me, yet again, that the goddess would be angry if the goat was not killed in one chop and she felt it would be better for me to leave it to someone else. A horror story from several years ago was relayed to me wherein the poor bastard doing the chopping had to hack four times to get the job done (I should say poor goat, rather). The pressure was getting to me and I almost abdicated the responsibility to a neighbour who had a few kills under his belt. But no, bugger it. I back myself to do the job. I told Ramesh as much, and repeated that as long as it was ok with the goddess Durga and the family, I wanted to contribute, take the responsibility and perform the kill. He said ok, and I got handed the blade.

Now, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous – I was definitely feeling the pressure. The goat was blessed with a bit of water and a few invocations to Kali and then held between two men. I got given the nod and told to “look for an opening”. Righto. I stepped forward, spared a thought for Durga and putting my faith firmly in physics, swung away. Of course, I was so keen to get it right that I swung hard enough to decapitate an elephant; the blade came down, the head came off, the small crowd cheered.

Stew with the kids. I wouldn’t get too attached, guys…

Ramesh sharpens the blade.

Me with my blood tikka and a spooky severed head. That’s a look of relief, by the way. (On me, not the goat. He just looks surprised).

What people had neglected to mention was what was to happen after the kill. When I saw the head bouncing on the ground I thought the job was done, but suddenly, amid the cheers and cries of “lovely!” there was a bustle of activity. A bowl was placed beneath the carcass in an attempt to catch the gushing blood and I was directed to pick up a jug of water. I did so then looked stupidly at Ramesh. “What is this for?”  ”You give to goat”. Sure enough, the guy who had been holding the goat now offered me the severed head. “For goat to drink”. I bit down on my reply of  ”I don’t think he’s thirsty”, and poured the water into the goat’s mouth. To my horrified fascination – and this bit will freak you out – the decapitated head actually began to drink the water, complete with lips and tongue moving and swallowing. Now that’s an image that will stay with me for a while. Bloody hell, what’s next? I half expected to be offered a still-beating heart and expected to take a bite. But no. The job was done and I was congratulated with a goat’s-blood tikka and assurances the goddess was satisfied and I had helped secure an auspicious festival for us all. “Happy dashain!”

The finished product. I’ve spared you the shots of shaving, gutting and dressing Stew. (I also have a rather explicit video of the actual chop, if anybody wants to see it). It goes without saying that nothing is wasted – I always knew that my Big Ben pies contained bits of oesophagus and the like, but it’s a different story when you chop it up yourself and put it in the pot.

Denis gets stuck in. It’s amazing how easy it is to get caught up in the excitement of eating so much meat, which only happens here at dashain. Even for me, who has eaten more meat than all these kids put together, it felt like a treat. We had three meals of meat that day, more than in the month I spent at Pokhara.

Postscript

In case anybody was wondering, of the kids only the two eldest boys, and none of the women, were present during the kill. Even Ramesh hid around a corner until the blow was struck. (Thanks for the vote of confidence). They really take this angry god stuff seriously. Rabin (12) later told me he had complete faith in me, and relayed my exploits to the other kids. I got called ‘goat-killer’ by them, with a sly pride, for the rest of the day.

Postpostscript.

I will be opening a home-kill business when I get back. Enquiries to 0800 GOAT KILLER.