Nepali culture flourished as Coastal Carolina University students and faculty celebrated the festival of Bhai Tika, right here on campus.
The festival of Bhai Tika comes from Nepal, where familial love, specifically the love and bond between siblings, is celebrated.
During the five-day festival, siblings make flower garlands for each other out of the small, round flower known as the gomphrena plant. The Nepali native flower retains its vibrant shades of purple and pink for years after being picked.
CCU held its own Bhai Tika celebration on Oct. 22, one day before the actual festival. The event was led by Deepak Basyal, an associate math professor originally from Nepal.
Basyal celebrates the event with his family every year and explained how culturally significant the event has always been to him, as well as what it represents for others.
“Even if a brother and sister are not talking for a long time, this is the event where they come back together and their brother and sisterhood flourish. I’m fortunate to have all of my brothers and sisters. Since I could speak, I have been putting this flower around someone,” Basyal said.
Now sharing the tradition with his own children and the CCU community, he explained how emotional, exciting and special the experience has been.
“I think they will get to learn how these flowers are so important to our culture. Even though over here we just use them for an aesthetic purpose, it does have a cultural significance to different cultures. I would expect a student to learn that this is not just a flower; for us it is a very important and emotional connection of love,” Basyal said.
Basyal sat down with the small group of students and faculty who attended the event and showed them how to make the flower garlands. He also shared his own personal traditions, myths and stories surrounding Bhai Tika.
While crafting the garlands, students participated in face painting, where seven long Tika marks were placed onto their foreheads. Students were also exposed to traditional Nepali songs and chants.
RJ Ball, a senior majoring in sustainability and coastal resilience, participated and helped prepare flowers for the event.
“It’s been super cool to celebrate something that I don’t know. You’re not really expecting to do something like this on campus, but when something like this comes up and you get to do something for the people you care about, it feels awesome, meaningful, almost,” Ball said.
Attendees were not the only ones who learned something about Bhai Tika and Nepali culture. Joshua Whitney, the CCU horticultural manager, mentioned that if it wasn’t for Basyal stopping to talk to him about the Gomphrena plant, he would have never learned about Nepali culture and the festival.
“I didn’t know they [the Gomphrena flowers] had a culturally rich history. That opened my mind to doing events like this, Whitney said. “The cool thing was, I was talking to him about what other plants do we have that do the same thing? What I love is something that tells a story, and this is great, this is an awesome story.”
The cultural significance, along with the sustainability practices, excited students. Alex Davenport, a senior sustainability and coastal resilience major, helped with the event as well.
“It’s awesome. Not just because of the cultural significance of everything but also being able to reuse the flowers is great. I loved getting to work with all the flowers,” Davenport said.
While the Bhai Tika event was on the smaller side this year, Basyal and the Horticulture Department are hoping to expand the festivities in the future.
