Clowns in a funeral procession

Most of the people walking Matya are walking for somebody who died in the past year. And in among them, all day, are figures in ridiculous costumes doing bits — mugging, mocking, playing to whoever will look.

This is not a lapse of taste. It is the same instinct that governs Gai Jatra the day before, where a morning of grief turns into an afternoon of satire: grief is real, it must be walked and it must be seen, but a life spent inside it is not a life. The clowns are the mechanism for coming out the other side, and they are placed in the line on purpose.

What a visitor should understand

If you are photographing the day, this is the thing most likely to be misread. A picture of a comic character next to a woman in mourning white is not an irony the festival failed to notice — it is the festival's argument, made in one frame. The Newar valley has two festivals in a row that say the same thing in different registers, and Matya is the quieter of the two.