Like every years the Nepali celebrities worshiped goddess Laxmi, the goddess of wealth on the third day of Tihar.
Laxmi Puja of actress Neeta Dhungana:
The main attraction of the celebration is preparing beautiful rangoli and cooking good foods. Rangoli is the art imported from India. It is similar to our own Mandala art. Nepali celebrities make good rangoli and share them in their social media. I have collected some photos of the actresses showing their talent.
Some actresses made sel roti, a special delicacy of Tihar festival. The sweet bread made out of rice flour is quite popular in the festival. Here is a video report about how actresses learn the skill to make the bread:
Nepali actress Namrata Shrestha has started a challenge for the Tihar – to cook sel roti and create breast cancer awareness. In her social media posts, she had shared a video telling others to upload the videos of themselves making selroti in Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Namrata writes, breast cancer being the most commonly diagnosed cancer amongst women and regular check ups help in fighting it better. She has also shared the contact information of Nepal Cancer Hospital for donations.
The videos that are catchy and interesting will be awarded some exciting prizes at the end of October. If you are uploading your videos please share it with the hashtag #Selrotichallenge. Read more in Namrata’s own share of video and details: Continue reading
In Laxmi Puja, ‘Prem Geet’ actress Pooja Sharma cooked Sel Roti, the traditional rice-bread cooked in special occasions like Dashain and Tihar. Cooking Sel Roti is not easy job. Based on the photos Pooja shared, she had cooked pretty good sel roti. Using the photo one of the prank groups of Facebook wrote something like – “if she could cook a perfect sel roti, she is good enough to marry.”
In response, Pooja wrote, “Please don’t use our pictures in wrong way or for wrong purpose.” Somebody shared the picture in question:
Watch a video report of Pooja Sharma’s Tihar and the photos of Pooja making sel roti. On Bhai Tika day, Pooja went to an orphanage, Rakshya Nepal, and had some fun time with the kids who would otherwise be on their own on the second biggest festival in Nepal.
Like previous years, I am sharing the photos of the Nepali celebrities celebrating Bhai Tika. Tihar being the second biggest festival in Nepal, it is celebrated by almost everybody. The festival involves worshiping dog, crow, cow, bull and siblings. I had written about the 5 Days of Tihar festival in a previous post.
Festival seasons are the most preferred time of the release of Nepali movies in theatre. Because of the popularity of online release, these days, the film producers have also started releasing movies online on festival season. On this Tihar, five new movies were released online and I have shared them in separate posts. It is very interesting that each of the movie has uniqueness to look out for.
The movie ‘Nai Nabhannu La 4’ was a superhit movie like it’s previous sequels. The movie is worth a watch.
A short film ‘Bhai Tika’ is exclusive online. The movie features Miss Nepal 2012, Shristi Shrestha in leading role. The short and simple movie is about Bhai Tika. It is worth a watch for everybody who has a brother or a sister. Continue reading
This post was originally written and posted on Oct 31, 2008. I am making an update on the post by adding details how Nepali celebrities celebrate the festival. I have also added a video introduction of the festival. I have included the details of the celebration of three US-return artists of Nepali movie industry:
Actress Jal Shah is in Nepal for Dashain and Tihar this year with her 8-years-old daughter Kalas. She is planning to cook ‘sel’ the sweet bread popular during tihar. Last year, Jal had offered tika to actor Dilip Rayamajhi.
Actor Ramesh Upreti is not celebrating this year because of the death of his grandfather. Although there won’t be Tika and won’t be much fun at home, he will meet and celebrate with his friends.
Ashishma Nakarmi doesn’t have brothers. So, she hasn’t celebrated bhai-tika yet. She enjoys the festival with her friends and family.
UPDATE 1 : Photos of Bhai Tika of Rajesh Hamal, Dilip Rayamajhi, Jal Shah, Namrata Shrestha, Nisha Sunar are added.
The second biggest festival in Nepal after Dashain, Tihar has been wrapped up on Friday November 13. The last day of Tihar – Bhai Tika is celebrated by brothers and sisters to show their love and dedication to each other. On the occasion, despite of economic blockade from India, people have followed the tradition. Update
The beauty of Bhai Tika is that people make new brothers and sisters during the festival. For example, Takme Budha (Wilson Bikram Rai) and Ashma DC and Sanyukta Puri, Jal Shah and Bikrant Basnet, Nisha Sunar and Suman Budha Magar, Naresh Bhattarai and Sapana Chamling Rai became new brothers/sisters this year.
Singer, journalist and actress Komal Oli made this year’s Bhai Tika memorable by presenting 2-litres petrol to each of her brothers. At the time of petrol-crisis in Nepal, that would certainly made the happiest brothers.
Comedy actress Palpasa Dangol, popularly known as Chamsuri has urine infection and was rushed to emergency room in Teaching Hospital right before Bhai Tika. As she had to be treated in the hospital, her brothers visited Dangol in hospital bed to take Bhai Tika. Palpasa has told that that was one of the most memorable Bhai Tika in her life.
Deapawali is the festival of lights and color. Nepali artists celebrate the festival with a lot of jest and enthusiasm. Laxmi, the goddess of wealth is worshipped along with money and wealth. Oil lights and electric lights are lighted in and around the house.
In a new trend, colorful rangoli are drawn with depiction of Laxmi’s feet on rice flour to guide the goddess of wealth into the house. Here are some photos of the Deepawali celebration in the homes of some of the Nepali film artists.
Rekha Thapa
Actress Rekha Thapa took tika and blessing from her mother and worshipped Laxmi on Laxmi Puja.
Today is Bhai Tika, the main day of Tihar. On this day, brothers and sister offer tika and gifts to each others and wish longevity of the lives of each other. We have collected information about how some of the actors and actresses in Nepali movie industry celebrate Bhai Tika.
All three sisters of actor Rajesh Hamal live in the US. As he is currently in the US, Rajesh will celebrate Bhai Tika with his sisters after a long time. In previous years, Rajesh Hamal used to celebrate Bhai Tika with Maina Suchikar (Maina has recently died).
Actress Namrata Shrestha has two elder brothers and she celebrates Bhai Tika with them. For gifts, Namrata offers sweets and other undisclosed gifts to her brothers on the day.
We wish a very happy Tihar to all our readers and hope Laxmi will bring a lot of fortunes to everybody on Laxmipuja.
We wrote an introduction to Tihar previously. Today is Laxmi Puja, festival of light and worshiping of goddess Laxmi. For those who want to print the images of Laxmi, we posted some Goddess Laxmi posters too.
Tihar is the second biggest festival in Nepal and is celebrated for 5 days starting by worshiping a bird (c
row) followed by worshiping dog and cow. The fifth day is the special day in which sisters offer tika to their brothers and vice versa.
Deusi and Bhailo tradition is somewhat similar to Halloween festival in western world (without the ghost and pumpkin part). We had collected some Deusi and Bhailo songs in this previous post.
Nepali superstar Rajesh Hamal is going to the USA to participate in various cultural programs on the occasions of the biggest festival in Nepal, Dashain. The Qatar Airways takes off in the evening today. He was invited by United Nepal to participate in Dashain Cultural program.
Apart from participating in cultural programs, he will celebrate Dashain and Tihar there and return back after Tihar. In previous years he used to celebrate Tihar with his foster sister, Maina Suchikar in
Khagendra Nava Jiwan Kendra. After the death of Maina, Hamal decided to celebrate Tihar with his own sisters living in the US.
(UPDATE) Blogger Mohammad Tajim has suggested that the image is not that of Deepawali. Although the images is being circulated as that of being Deepawali, one can argue that they don’t celebrate Deepawali in Pakistan (at least, not to that extent). Tajim commented:
This apparently is not am image shot on Diwali. This image is overlapping with three other images shot iin interval of last 2 decade.. the blue color lights were present from 1992 to 1998 and are not present now whereas green lights represent area which became inhabited after 2002 and yellow light are the consistent light from 1992 to 2011…
Amazing image of Deepawali, the festival of lights ! Anyways, with the amount of lights during Deepawali, we can expect a colorful scenery as seen in the image, during Depawali.
The following image taken from the skies, shows the evening o
f Deepawali in which India (and, to some extent in Nepal) is flooded with light.
Image credits NASA. Refer to this link to request high resolution image (via Mohammad Tajim).
Deepawali in one of the houses in Kathmandu (photo credits – Prakash Shah)
Depawali lights on Kathmandu street (photo credits .
Rekha Thapa made headlines when she danced with Maoist chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) during a protest rally in Kathmandu. She also acting in a movie named Jaljala featured as a maoist combatant.
Now, in the occasion of Tihar, her nearness to the party was evident when she took tika from YCL in-charge Chandra Bahadur Thapa (Sagar).
Rekha however wanted people to believe that the relationship is at the personal level and has nothing to do with her political or professional relationship. This year, her real brother Nawaraj Thapa didn’t come to Kathmandu from Biratnagar. Previous years she used to offer tika to hair designer Lokesh Thapa but this year, he was also not available for tika. So she had made a new brother – Sagar for bhaitika.
Laxmi is one of the most sought after Hindu Goddess. As everybody is running for money and properties they worship the goddess of money, Laxmi, the most. In the auspicious occasion of Laxmi Puja, I am posting some posters of Laxmi for printing and worshiping in the occasion. Laxmi Puja is also called Deepawali, or Diwali, or Gai Puja. (Click on the photo to get the bigger poster)
