KATHMANDU, NEPAL – A kilometer away from Chakrapath, one of the busiest intersections in bustling Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, 7 a.m. is rush hour – not for vehicles in the streets, but for people at Laxmi Bohara’s home in the neighborhood.
Bohara is a “maata,” a woman believed to have spiritual powers. Bohara’s house has become a healing center where people come with a plethora of problems, from headaches to marriage problems.
Photographs of different Hindu gods and goddesses adorn the room, along with other materials used to cure the sick. While people wait their turns, Bohara sits with grains of rice in her hand, which she uses to tell people of their problems and solutions.
At first glance, Bohara, 42, resembles a typical Nepali housewife. She is skinny, dressed in a traditional red blouse and draped in a sari. She says that people line up outside her gate because they believe she has divine powers.
One of these people, Bhawani Sapkota, says Bohara has worked miracles on her daughter.
“It had been a few days [that] my child [hadn’t] eaten properly,” Sapkota says as she cuddles her 22-month-old daughter. “She also has [a] fever. I took her to Kanti Children’s Hospital, but she wasn’t cured. I came here three days ago, and after maata looked at her, she is fine. I’ve come here for a follow-up today.”
While some people walk away with smiles, others say that the maata is not accurate with her predictions. Bohara admits that sometimes when people come with ill intentions or during a period of mourning, her powers might not work.
“When I’m working, God gives me the vision,” she says. “Only 5 percent out of 100 percent doesn’t match.”
Bohara says she had a slight realization of her powers when she was a child. Growing up, she used to devote herself to her religion and she says she used to shiver and tremble when strangers gave her food for her guidance. She says that she also got the chills once when a menstruating woman touched her since Nepali society considers menstrual women impure.
“When I tremble, I go into this unconscious, trance state and I don’t feel anything,” says Bohara, who was married at 16.
Even after marriage, Bohara says she used to feel uncomfortable physically. She says she didn’t dare to tell her husband or in-laws until the trembling became more frequent. Her husband, Ashish Bohara, says he immediately took her to the hospital.
“We did all sort[s] of tests, including an ultrasound, but the doctor couldn’t detect any problem,” he says.
He says his wife was visiting a temple with other women one day when the trembling engulfed her. At the doorstep of the temple of the Hindu god Shiva, she fainted.
“And as the other women prayed [to the] god to cure her illness, she started mumbling, ‘I have divine power. I am not like other women, I’m a maata,’” he says.
He says they realized she had a gift, not an illness.
“My wife had some divine powers,” he says. “How would the doctor have cured [her]?”
While Bohara was never “cured,” she now cures many. She says about 15 people visit her daily.
“Saturdays and Tuesdays are the busiest,” she says. “I don’t even get time for lunch.”
Apart from her divine powers, Bohara says she doesn’t have any other skills. She studied up to only the eighth grade in school.
As a part of her daily ritual, Bohara says she has to lead a “pure lifestyle.” She refrains from meat, poultry, onions and garlic and only eats food that is prepared at home. She says that she has also refrained from any sexual relations with her husband since she started the practice seven years ago.
“I really have some special power vested by God,” she says. “That’s why people’s wishes are fulfilled and they get cured.”
But Bohara’s not the only Nepali woman who says that she has divine powers.
There are hundreds of maatas in Nepal who say they have divine powers. From ordinary citizens to former kings, many consult them to heal physical and emotional ailments or to ask for advice. But others, like trained psychologists, say maatas are frauds who cheat people out of their money. While many maatas rely on the practice for their income, they maintain that they practice “with a clean heart.”
Women in Nepal who are believed to have spiritual and divine powers to help others and be able to tell the past, present and future are called maatas. Men with these powers are branded as “gurus” or “dhaamis.” They say that they are bestowed with these powers – typically characterized by shivering and trembling – at birth and some even while still in the womb. All they usually need are rice grains and three minutes of silence to analyze people’s problems and offer a solution.
Official statistics on the number of maatas aren’t available. But Shambhu Khadka, a social worker and a guru, or teacher, of maatas, estimates that there are about 700 maatas in Kathmandu.
“In every village, there could be at least one or two maatas,” he says. “In Nepal, the tradition still exists that when someone is trembling, the first stop is at a maata or dhaami’s place.”
Hari Gautam, a part-time dhaami who works full-time for the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, a political party here, says maatas have a long history in Nepal.
“This is something that has existed since ages and is a traditional ritual,” he says.
But recently, interest in maatas’ services has been on the rise.
Like Bohara, Ganga Rai, 45, says she is also a maata. Hailing from a remote part of the hilly district of Panchthar in eastern Nepal, Rai says she is illiterate and doesn’t know anything about modern-day technology, like mobile phones and computers. But she says she knows a lot about predicting others’ futures, drawing crowds to her house to consult her on issues ranging from cattle problems to appetite losses to relationship woes to missing people.
“So far all of their problems have been solved,” Rai says. “They believe in me, and it works. That’s why they come to me.”
Like Bohara, Rai says she has also trembled and mumbled since childhood. When she left her house for social events, like dinners, she says she felt uncomfortable. For this reason, she says she prefers to be alone and declined to get married.
“The Kirant goddess Yuma is inside me,” she says, referring to the religion of the Kirant people, a Nepali ethnic group. “That’s what gives me the trembling feeling.”
As Hindus are devoted to goddesses like Laxmi, Parvati and Kali, the Kirant community shows its devotion to Yuma.
Rai says that she refrained from any food or drink and trembled for days. Finally, her family took her to a dhaami in the village. When the dhaami told her family about her divine power, they were relieved and left her to practice with him.
“God tells me from inside to do something or not,” says Rai, who has been practicing as a maata since age 16.
Eventually people learned about their divine powers and began to consult her.
Similar to Bohara and Rai, Ishwori Lama, 45, says she is also a maata. Lama, from Bhaktapur, a district neighboring Kathmandu, sports a boyish haircut and salwar kurta, a traditional dress.
Unlike the other maatas, her room doesn’t have any photographs of gods and goddesses. She says she isn’t inclined toward worshipping them or meditating.
As she trembles, a trail of sweat trickles down her forehead while some 20 men and women sit in her room. She reasons with a group of people who are ready to migrate but have been denied visas. She says people also consult her about a range of problems – from work to health to robberies.
“I had the powers since I was in the womb,” she says, as her trembling stops. “I have special powers, and my predictions are fulfilled.”
She says her parents, who died when she was young, didn’t know she was a maata. When she was a teenager, like Bohara and Rai, she also started trembling. She says she is in contact with her divine powers only when she is trembling. Otherwise, she says she doesn’t remember her maata experiences.
“I‘m just like you when I’m not in contact with maata,” she says in her normal state.
If she eats something that is not pure or if a menstruating woman visits her, she says the trembling starts. She says she knows when someone is lying or comes to her with ill intentions.
“I can also tell if a child in the womb is a son or daughter, if anyone has had [an] abortion or [if] they have some infection in the uterus,” Lama says. “By their looks, we can tell if we can treat them. If not, we suggest them to visit a doctor.”
Khadka, who also helps to verify if people like Bohara, Rai and Lama have special powers, says that all women do not tremble like this.
“I try to teach people some special mantra, which sets them free from trembling,” he says. “But people in that state of trembling already have powers. So they don’t need to be taught any further.”
As Khadka acts like a guru to maatas, the maatas also say they have their own followers. Bohara has five followers, Rai has 20 and Lama has 50 followers who she says call her “guru maata” or “head maata” since she has been practicing for 15 years. While Khadka says he has produced more than 20 maatas, Lama says she has produced many maatas, too.
Although maatas have been around for years, Nepalis have only recently begun to conduct concrete studies on this subject.
But Ram Bahadur Chettri, a sociology professor, says that it’s difficult to track and analyze who follows what and goes in which direction.
“This is a personal and psychological choice that people make,” he says of maata followers. “The opinions are endless with regard to this issue. Whatever people find happiness and peace in, they should follow that path.”
Chettri says that people from all sectors of Nepal regardless of their education level have been inclined toward the maatas’ services. He says that this is “just a trend that people follow” without weighing its pros and cons.
But Bohara says that there are no pros and cons for the services the maatas provide. She says there’s just “that spark” that makes them realize that they have powers.
“After we get the power, we predict about others, but we don’t know ourselves how we spoke or what we said,” she says.
But Lama says that because she has been practicing for 15 years, she can have the powers whenever she wants.
Chudaraj Uprety, another professor, says that visiting the maatas is not a new phenomenon in Nepal.
“Everyone from a commoner to a politician visits them,” he says. “Some go publicly; others go secretly.”
Reports show that even former King Gyanendra, former prime ministers such as Sher Bahadur Deuba and Lokendra Bahadur Chand and other high-ranking government officials were actively engaged in visiting maatas and others with divine powers. Just days before Nepal was declared a republic in 2008, the former king apparently visited a local maata, Pushpa Rai Thakuri, in Budhanilkantha, in the northwestern part of the capital, to save his throne. The Nepali media reported that he gave her 13 ropanies, 71,188 square feet, of land for her guidance.
Uprety says that Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also know as Prachanda, a former Maoist chairman, also visited a maata in Sunsari, a district in eastern Nepal, to get rid of his bad luck.
“People tend to get tangled and engaged with people who proclaim that they have spiritual and divine powers,” he says.
But Nepalis say that interest in maatas’ services has been on the rise.
Anuja Basnet, from Solukhumbu, a district in eastern Nepal, says her visit to a maata was a miracle. With physical problems such as fainting, trembling, loss of appetite and burning feelings, she says she thought she suffered from a mental disorder. But she says her visits to the mental hospital didn’t help so a neighbor referred her to a maata.
Basnet says that after three days of visiting the maata, she was free of her problems. She says her husband used to torment her, but after she visited the maata, he stopped tormenting her and also stopped drinking and smoking.
“I was in a verge of life and death, and maata gave me a new life,” she says.
Sunita Shrestha, from Koteshwor, an area of Kathmandu, says a maata predicted that her husband was cheating on her and would bring home another wife. In no time, Shrestha discovered that her husband had a second wife and also a child that he had been hiding from her.
“At first I didn’t believe, but it seems as the maatas do see something,” Shrestha says.
Guru Swami Chandresh, a spiritual leader and founder and principal of the Budhanilkhantha Ashram School, a boarding school, says that although there have been claims that people’s beliefs in divine and spiritual powers have been declining, it’s not true.
“There are no grounds on which not to believe in these powers,” he says. “Though it might seem as superstitious these days, before the development of the medical world, people relied on it.”
But although supporters say that their visits to the spiritual healers have given them new life, non-believers say that maatas and dhaamis don’t have divine powers and rather cheat people out of their money.
Psychiatrists in Nepal say that maatas don’t treat any illnesses physically, but that they rather only support and encourage their patients psychologically.
Dr. Manisha Chapagain, a psychiatrist and an assistant professor, says that to call oneself a maata itself is a psychological problem. She says that many of these women are self-victimized and it is due to their suppressed feelings that they tremble and mumble, leading them to a state of half-consciousness.
“Sometimes the things you say while [you’re] not conscious have [a] probability of being true, and that’s what people tend to believe and worship them as maata,” Chapagain says. “It is due to mental instability that there is trembling, and they mumble in unconsciousness. This is a minor mental illness, especially seen in women.”
Mod Nath Parishit, a scholar in Sanskrit literature and ayurveda, a traditional medicine system, says that to believe in maatas, meditation, gods and goddesses is a “weakness that humans have since the early ages.” He says that imaginary elements like these can’t do justice to humans, who have been the product of ignorance, exploitation and selfishness.
“It is very ignorant of people to go to someone who has no idea about human body and diseases,” he says. “And to believe that they would cure the illness is just stupid and a disillusion.”
Parishit says that there is a strong connection between the mind and body, which maatas exploit. He says that when the body is in its ill state, it is through psychological means that people can be made happy.
“The maatas are just doing this, and people are falling for it,” he says.
Gautam, the part-time dhaami, admits that the mind is a powerful factor.
“I think there’s also a psychological catch in people who believe in this and they start feeling better,” Gautam says. “It’s the positive thinking and their belief that makes the process work.”
Chandresh says there are unseen spiritual powers in the universe. According to Buddhism, there are different ways of attaining these powers, but the powers diminish when people use them as a means of income. Chandresh says some maatas have been misusing their powers for money.
“If you see, mostly greedy and sinners are involved in such things,” he says, “If you see, genuinely intelligent people are hardly seen involved in these matters.”
For many of the maatas, their divine power is also their source of income. While Lama and Rai use it as their sole income, Bohara also raises cattle and her husband works as a carpenter.
Lama says she earns about 1,000 rupees, $14 USD, a day among other gifts, such as a mobile phone she displays from a follower. But Laxmi, Rai and Lama agree that money isn’t the priority. The say they don’t demand money, but rather accept what followers give and even treat them for free if they don’t have money to offer.
“I’ve been working with a clean heart,” Lama says. “I accept what people give me.”
Khakda, who trains maatas, says that people are grateful to receive treatment from maatas for a range of issues at a much cheaper cost than going to a doctor. He says maatas’ intentions – to help people – are pure.
“To practice this profession, you don’t need any academics,” he says. “All you need is a clean heart.”
