The Very Strange Life Of Nepal's Child Goddess

NPR - May 28, 2015

Julie McCarthy

Last month's earthquake brought much of Kathmandu's historic Durbar Square, a World Heritage Site, tumbling to the ground. Nepal's showcase temples and palaces were reduced to ruins. But save for a few cracks, the home of the city's Living Goddess remained intact.
Largely unknown to the outside world, Nepal's centuries-old institution of the child deity, the Kumari Devi, is deeply embedded in the culture of Kathmandu Valley. Young, beautiful and decorous, even a glimpse of her is believed to bring good fortune.
The current Kumari of Kathmandu, age 9, is the best known of several girls who are worshipped in Nepal, and is revered by many though she lives an isolated and secretive existence inside the house and is rarely seen.
At her home, caretaker Gautam Shakya says the building's square shape stabilized it in the recent tremors. Yet nothing so mundane was involved, insists Udhav Man Karmacharya, one of the main priests attending the Kumari.

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