Nepal’s Former Child Goddess, Now 20, Catches Up With Life After Retiring at 13

Sunina Shakya is catching up on the schooling she missed when she was a goddess.

Once she lived in an elaborately carved wooden house in Nepal’s royal palace compound. Now the shy and slender 20-year-old lives with her family in a fourth-floor tenement flat in Katmandu.

Retired by tradition at age 13, Sunina--who had to skip school when she was a child goddess--is finishing high school and wants to be a doctor.

She first began to understand she was special at about the age of 6, Sunina said recently.

She had been chosen over several other candidates at the age of 4 as the new “Kumari Bahal,” virgin goddess and spiritual consort to the king of Nepal.

According to legend, the kings once consulted with the divine Kumari on matters of state, but one day about 200 years ago a king lusted after her during a game of dice.

The affronted goddess refused to be seen again in this world, but promised to return reincarnated as the daughter of someone in the Sakya clan of goldsmiths and silversmiths.

Sunina had met the qualifications for a reincarnated Kumari. Her horoscope was in harmony with that of Nepal’s King Birendra, she came from the Sakya clan, had perfect teeth and had never shed blood nor broken any bones.

Finally, she passed the last test.

The child candidates were all put in a darkened room and subjected to fearsome noises. Sunina said she does not remember much about the ordeal but she apparently was the calmest child--which meant she was the reincarnated goddess.

She was never allowed to leave her rooms on the third floor of the Kumari house, which has magnificent carvings of gods on the walls and painted lion statues at the entrance, except on certain festivals.

“I was very happy in the Kumari house,” she said. “I don’t know why. Maybe because it was the gods’ place.”

Young men carried her in a sumptuously decorated palanquin through the streets of Katmandu on festival days. Children were allowed to come up and play with her. Men came to worship, sometimes leaving gifts or money.

“I didn’t have to do anything. Just sit, and people used to pray,” she said.

On festival days she wore a red gown draped with heavy jewelry and a gold and silver inlaid headdress shaped like a peacock.

Nepal, though officially Hindu, has been strongly influenced by Buddhism and its esoteric offshoot, Tantrism, which emphasizes eroticism and direct experience over meditation. Religion seems to infuse all aspects of life.

The king, regarded by some Nepalese Hindus as an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, pays homage to the living goddess during Indrajatra, one of Nepal’s most spectacular religious festivals.

Sunina recalls nervously anointing him on that day with a mixture of powders, flower petals and rice that Nepal’s Hindus rub onto the forehead to symbolize the divine presence.

At the age of 13 and the onset of puberty, Sunina retired as child goddess, as her predecessors had since the mid-18th Century, when the tradition of reincarnated virgin goddesses began.

“I felt free . . . and confused,” Sunina said. “People were walking so fast and it was so crowded. It was very difficult at first.”

She got a pet dog. The living goddess is not allowed near animals and Sunina said she used to yearn for a pet when she saw children playing with cats or dogs.

“Sometimes, I go back and visit the new Kumari and at the festivals usually all the old Kumaris have a get-together with the new one,” Sunina said.

Kumaris by tradition were supposed to remain virgins for the rest of their lives, though in modern times many of them married. “I don’t want to get married,” Sunina said. “Maybe one day. . . .

“People believe it is bad luck to marry a former Kumari,” the interpreter explained in a whispered aside. “The husbands often die a year or two after the marriage.”