Shanti mandala | Canvas | wavemag.com.np

On the first day of every Nepali month, in the midst of the blur of vehicles that whiz by, people gather at the Maitighar Mandala with flickering candles pledging himsa birodh shanti athot. In revered silence, they pay respect to the people who have lost their lives in the conflict. The fragility of peace is reflected in the flames that cupped hands protect from the slightest breeze.

When Bipin Chitrakar and Keshav Sthapit, then mayor, came up with the idea of making a mandala at Maitighar, they did it only to spruce up Kathmandu for the 11th SAARC Summit. They approached Batsa Gopal Vaidya to design the mandala and young artists slogged all night to complete it. They never thought that their creativity would create a space for people to pledge for peace in difficult times like thes. Now, as they look back, they feel there could have been no greater reward.

"I have seen people silently praying there. Though we are frustrated by the conflict, it feels good to know that we have created a place to show solidarity," says Vaidya. The mandala depicts human life cycle and Vaidya relates this to peace. "Peace," he says, "is an inherent part of the design because when a person is good, the world is good."

Many young artists from Lalit Kala Fine Arts Campus and Sirjana College of Fine Arts spent nights at the site painting the mandala. Keshav Sthapit would come at brief intervals to watch the progress. "How we worked I can't imagine, we had paint, plaster and cement splattered all over us," remembers Bikrant Man Shrestha of Living Eden Art Foundation. "We worked through nights that were cold and freezing," says Vaidya, "Ifyou stood, you could not sit. If you sat, you could not stand. It was gruelling."

Sometimes, their eyes would grow confused and many of the right colours were put in the wrong places. Of course these colours have faded today and the blue tiled moat around the mandala is dry and dirty. The water from the three dhunge dhara at one end of the Shanti mandala island, as it is now known, is supposed to flow into the moat. Initial plans had included a building of a tower and planting of shrubs but they still remain incomplete.

The mandala
The Shanti mandala in Maitighar is a series of circles. The outer-most has 32 vajras, the one next to it has 16 lotus petals and the inner has 32 garlands. On the blue background, eight large lotus petals surround symbols of the ashtamatrika. The centre has three circles of different colours—black, orange, and blue. These colours symbolise man's characteristics, too much of one would result in an imbalanced temperament. Black stands for krodh (anger), orange for maya (love) and blue for karuna (compassion). At the four corners of the mandala are symbols of the ashtamangal.

The next Saanjh batti karyakram is on 18 October at 6.30 PM.