The Chir Pole

The Announcement

Holi in Kathmandu does not begin on Holi day. It begins when the pole goes up at Basantapur, in Kathmandu Durbar Square, about a week beforehand — a bamboo pole of some thirty feet, raised in the courtyards of the old palace complex and built in three tiers that are commonly read as heaven, earth and the underworld. Strictly, the chir is the ceremonial tuft of coloured cloth fixed at the top, though in ordinary speech the whole pole takes the name. Once it is standing, the festival is formally open, and the colour-throwing that had been sporadic becomes general. For people in the city the raising of the chir is the practical signal: from now on, expect to be hit.

The Cloth Strips

The strips of coloured cloth knotted along it are the element everyone recognises. They are commonly explained as representing the garments the god Krishna is said to have taken from the gopis while they bathed — one of the stories attaching Holi to Krishna's play — and the pole as the tree he climbed with them. That is one explanation among several attached to a practice older than any of them, and the Kathmandu chir also functions plainly as a civic marker: the object that tells a city its festival is running.

Chir Haran

The pole does not simply come down. It is taken to Tundikhel and burned on the night of Holi, and that burning — Chir Haran — is joined to the bonfire of Holika Dahan. The festival is bracketed by the pole: raised to open it, burnt to close it. Responsibility for carrying out the burning rests with a community organisation rather than with the city, and it has passed between such groups within living memory.

Seeing It

The chir stands at Basantapur for the whole week, so it is easy to see at any point without planning around a single hour — which makes it one of the few parts of Holi a visitor can watch calmly and dry. The raising and the burning are the crowded moments. During the days between, the square around it is a good place to gauge how far the colour-throwing has escalated before committing to a walk through Thamel.