Nepal Day Parade celebrates community
Shortly before the Nepal Day Parade got underway, Dikendra Maskey walked along the Civic Center Plaza, head down as he counted on his fingers the number of Nepalese who were living in the Bay Area when he arrived 30 years ago. There was one in Mountain View, one in Palo Alto (Maskey), five in San Francisco and two or three in Berkeley.
Then he looked up and estimated 2,000 or 3,000 people gathered on the plaza, dressed in triangular patterns of red and blue while carrying signs that read “Mindfulness for Joyful Life,” and “Nepal is the country of Buddha.”
“I feel so proud to be here,” said Maskey, 70, who now lives in Novato. “Every ethnic group in Nepal is unique, so we decided we should come together and support each other. That’s the idea behind the parade.”
Nepal Day marks the new year in the high-altitude Himalayan country, and on Sunday morning it was 68 degrees in Kathmandu, perfect parade weather. In San Francisco it was barely 50 with a cold wind, which made participants shiver in their silky festival robes. There was no crowd gathered on Market Street to witness the march but it did not matter to the Nepalese. The fact that they could muster enough people to march was the whole point of the parade.
“We Nepali are growing here,” said Hari Ojha, 32, of Santa Clara, lead organizer of the parade, citing a statistic that the Nepalese are the fastest growing Asian American subgroup in California, more than tripling in population since 2010. “We want to show the city our culture.”
That was on display at an afternoon festival on the Embarcadero, with a volleyball tournament. In order to get there, the Nepalese marched down Market Street after forming up at the Civic Center, a gathering that became its own festival. When the group got to the Embarcadero, the crowd swelled to nearly 4,000, organizers estimated.
“Just march and make friends,” is how Asmita Pokhrel, 20, a criminal justice student at Cal State East Bay described it. “I’m glad to see the Nepali community coming together and supporting each other.”
The parade, in its second year, is starting to take shape as a reunion of Sherpas, the ethnic group known for guiding people and carrying equipment on treks to attempt to summit on Everest. The California Sherpa Association had its own float on the back of a truck. Sherpas are an ethnic group, not an occupation. They share a last name, and there are 300 of them living in the Bay Area. “It’s an opportunity to see each other,” said Passang Sherpa, of Santa Rosa.
The parade was also an opportunity to see past clients. Dr. Erin Lally of Palo Alto, who summited Everest in 2011, came to the event in hopes that she would recognize some Sherpa faces from her trek. “You get really close,” she said, after administering a lengthy hug to one Sherpa. “You’re together for nine weeks.”
Lally came with their husband, Ross Johnson, and their two young daughters, Isabelle, 2, and Finley, 8 months. They were spectators. Lally was a participant, invited to ride on the truck reserved for summiters. Also on the truck was Phura Sherpa, who came down from Seattle and had a warm reunion with Lally, who practices under the name “Summit Eye Surgeons” in San Jose. She and Phura had not seen each other for 13 years.
The parade, organized by the California chapter of the Non-Resident Nepali Association, was scheduled to start at 11 a.m., but there was still no movement in that direction at 11:30. “Meandering” is how Lally described the Himalayan parade advance work. The route was not published in advance, and Lally, for one, had no idea where it was going until she reached the Ferry Building after two hours riding on the back of that truck with Isabelle.
But there was a lot of mindfulness. People walked around pressing their palms together over their chests and bowing, the traditional greeting called “namaste.” Eventually a dance troupe formed up to perform in the plaza, and at noon a heavily madeup Mili Maharjan of Santa Rosa, age 5, was lifted onto a throne in the back of a U Haul truck, in order to serve as Kumari Devi, a living goddess, at the front of the parade.
At that exact moment the clouds gave way to sunshine. Civic Center Plaza emptied out as everybody stepped onto Polk Street to fall into the parade line, behind a banner that read “Walking Together for a Better Nepal.” There were a few traditional drum units but no brass bands, no floral floats and none of the military precision normally associated with parades.
Among the marchers were Eduardo Martinez, mayor of Richmond, Carmen Montano, mayor of Milpitas, and Aaron Peskin, the president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and a mayoral candidate.
Peskin said he had been to Nepal 15 times on treks spanning 40 years. He greeted people with a “namaste” bow and spoke the native language to a parade official. Asked to translate, he said, “it means ‘there are very many Nepali here right now.’ ”