Fall from Grace

Vishwanath Giri, a sadhu, occupied a small room off the main shrine at the Dattatrey temple in Bhaktapur for several years. Men from the neighbourhood came to sit, talk and smoke tobacco and hemp. Giri sat on a mat, shirtless, a rough cotton shawl around his slumped shoulders. A single log smouldered as the neighbourhood men passed time .with their resident holy man. Outside, children played hopscotch, men trudged by with sacks of grain hanging balanced from poles.

He was born into an Upadhaya family from Siphal in Kathmandu. He was a truck driver until an accident left him lame; he then became a mechanic. Girl talked softly, but without sadness, about how he became a sadhu. "My wife and my only child both died, and I was alone, with nothing," he said, "So I left the everyday world and started wandering." Giri went to Benaras to study with a guru, Mohan Basant Giri, who taught him mantras and yoga. He had been a sanyasin for ten years and was now 61 years old. He was preparing for the most significant date for sadhus in Nepal: Shivaratri. "It is the last of three holy nights," he said. "Kalratri, at Dasain, Maharatri, at Tihar, and now Shivaratri, to honour the birth of Shiva. I will sit all night by this fire, chanting mantras and covering myself in ash. In the morning, go to to Pashupatinath and bathe in the river there, and then sit with the other sadhus.