Festivals and Celebrations

The unit opens with four festivals celebrated in Nepal. Here is what each picture shows, and something you could say about it.

Picture	The festival	Something to say
People laughing, their faces and clothes covered in bright powder	Holi, the festival of colors, on the full moon of Fagun	People throw colored powder and water at each other; it welcomes spring and celebrates the victory of good over evil.
Men embracing outside a great mosque with domes and minarets	Eid, which ends Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting	After a month of fasting from dawn to sunset, families pray together, hug, share sweet dishes and give to the poor.
A very tall chariot topped with green branches, pulled by a crowd	Rato Machhindranath Jatra in Lalitpur	The god of rain is pulled through the streets of Patan in a towering chariot before the monsoon, praying for good rain and harvest.
A three-roofed chariot in a crowded square of old brick buildings	Biska (Bisket) Jatra in Bhaktapur	Bhairav’s chariot is pulled to and fro in a tug-of-war between the two halves of the town, around the Nepali New Year.

Before you read

What kind of text it is

The text is a first-person travel story: a visitor (her name, Margherita, is under the text) tells what happened to her at a festival in Italy. Three things give it life, and you can use them in your own writing:

• It is told in the present tense, as if it were happening now (“I am hit in the chest”), so you feel you are there.
• It mixes action (oranges flying, carts charging) with facts about the festival (the red hat, the teams).
• It lets the people speak for themselves: Silvia and Massi say in their own words why they love it.

The story, part by part

1. Hit!

The story starts in the middle of the action. The writer sees a flash of orange, an orange hits her in the chest, the breath goes out of her, and she slips and falls, bottom first, into a pile of squashed fruit. Her first thought is whether her red hat is still on. It is.

2. Why the red hat matters

She explains. During the carnival, notices are stuck up all over Ivrea, a town in northern Italy, telling everyone, and visitors above all, to wear a red hat. Anyone without one may be treated as a fair target for “gentle and moderate” orange-throwing. (The polite words are a joke: nothing about it is gentle.)

The hat is the berretto frigio, a soft, sock-shaped red cap sold on every corner. It is the symbol of the carnival and of freedom: in ancient Rome a cap like it was worn by slaves who had been set free, and in the Middle Ages by poor farmers who rose up against the lords who owned their land.

3. Blood?

She gets up and is hit again, on the forehead. Her head jerks back, she wipes her face and sees red. She is sure she will need stitches; maybe she is concussed! Then she remembers: blood oranges, a kind of orange with deep red flesh and juice. It isn’t blood at all. The joke is on her, and on the reader.

4. The battle

Shaking from the fright and then the relief, she moves to the back of the square. She explains that this is the first of three days of battles, so everyone is fresh and excited after waiting a whole year.

• Nine teams of aranceri (orange-throwers) on foot, in team uniforms, throw oranges hard at the people riding in horse-drawn carts.
• The riders wear padded costumes and leather helmets that look like something from a science-fiction show (Doctor Who is a British TV series).
• After an hour the square is a thick, sweet-and-sour smelling mud of orange pulp and horse dung.
• The throwers on foot run to the crates of oranges stacked at the sides, fill their bags and baggy shirts, and charge at each cart as it comes.
• The horses stop for a few minutes while oranges burst all over, then the cart moves on and the throwers chase it, hurling their last oranges.
• They wear no protection. Juice runs down their faces; some have broken noses or hold an aching cheek, arm or rib. But they hold their heads high and shout their team’s war cries.

5. Silvia: “it’s good for you”

Silvia, holding half an orange on her swollen right eye like an ice pack, says this is the moment she waits for all year, and she will be happy to have a black eye tomorrow. Sipping a hot spiced wine, she explains why: for her, the carnival is good for the mind. For three days she can let out all the frustration that has built up during the year, and afterwards she feels fresh. Accidents happen, she admits, but she says the writer should try it.

6. Massi: “forget the nets”

The writer admits she is curious. But she is wearing a hat, and the public are not supposed to throw, though some hat-wearers still throw an orange now and then. To prevent trouble, volunteers tell the public to stay behind protective nets.

Massi, a thrower of the Morte team (morte means “death” in Italian, which is why a huge skull is on his uniform), laughs at the nets: to live the carnival, you have to be in the middle of the battle. The writer asks if he isn’t afraid of getting hurt. He says that next to the thrill you get, a black eye is a small price to pay. Then, as a cart comes, he invites her to throw away her hat and join him.

She is tempted, but she declines. The story ends there: the writer stays a watcher, and leaves the reader to decide whether Massi is brave or mad.

Words from the story

Words linked here open in English Vocabulary, where you can see an example and practice them in the word game. The meanings are the ones the words have in this story.

Word	Meaning here
flash	a sudden, very short sight of something
mush	a soft, wet, squashed mass
plastered (on the walls)	stuck up all over
symbol	a thing that stands for an idea (the red hat stands for freedom)
riot	to fight in the streets against people in power
feudal lord	in the Middle Ages, a lord who owned the land poor farmers worked on
jerk	to move with one sudden, sharp movement
concussion	a brain injury from a blow to the head, which can make you lose consciousness for a short time
succession	one thing quickly after another (“a quick succession of shock and relief”)
retreat	to move back, away from danger
hurl	to throw hard
opponent	the person or side you fight or play against
clad (in)	dressed (in)
sludge	thick, soft mud or a mud-like mixture
pulp	the soft part inside fruits and vegetables
crate	a large box for carrying fruit or bottles
bombard	to attack again and again with many things
clutch	to hold tightly
sip	to drink in very small mouthfuls
mulled (wine)	heated with sugar and spices
gigantic	very large
tempted	wanting to do something, though you know you perhaps shouldn’t
decline	to say no to an offer, politely

A. Match the words with their meanings

B. True or false?

C. Answer the questions

D. A strange festival

A syllable is a beat of a word, with one vowel sound at its heart: ex-plode has two, cel-e-bra-tion four. In a word of two or more syllables, one is stressed: said a little louder, longer and higher than the others. Clap the beats as you say each word, and the stressed one is the one you clap hardest.

Word	Syllables	Stressed syllable	Said as
retreat	two	second	re-TREAT
concussion	three	second	con-CUS-sion
opponent	three	second	op-PO-nent
succession	three	second	suc-CES-sion
explode	two	second	ex-PLODE
celebration	four	third	cel-e-BRA-tion
consciousness	three	first	CON-scious-ness
liberty	three	first	LIB-er-ty

The rules of word stress are in Word stress, at the end of the unit.

A. A question and its report

In the story, the writer asks Massi, “Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt?” Reported, it becomes:

The reporter asked Massi if he was not afraid of getting hurt.

Four things changed: the reporting verb is asked; if joins the question on; the words go back into statement order (he was, not was he), with the person and tense changed as in any reported speech; and there is no question mark. Grammar I explains each step.

B. Questions about Chandi Naach

In a picture that comes with this task, a girl asks an older man about Chandi Naach, the dance of the Kirat people (Rai, Limbu, Yakkha and Sunuwar) at the Ubhauli and Udhauli festivals, when people dance in a circle to the beat of the dhol and jhyamta, copying the movements of farming, birds and animals.

Unit 1 reported statements. Questions follow the same rules for person, tense, and time and place words, with three more changes.

1. A reporting verb for asking

Use asked, wanted to know, inquired or wondered, never said.

• asked takes the listener straight after it, or none: She asked me if… / She asked if…
• wanted to know and wondered take no listener straight after them: He wanted to know if… (or wanted to know from me if…)
• inquired takes of before the listener: Usha inquired of Anju how long…

2. If or whether for a yes/no question; the question word for the rest

A yes/no question (it starts with a helping verb: Are, Is, Do, Did, Have, Can, Will…) is joined with if or whether:

• “Are you working tonight?” → Agaman asked Timothy if he was working that night.

A wh-question (what, where, when, why, who, which, how, how long, how many…) keeps its question word as the joiner:

• “Where will you stay tonight?” → I asked him where he would stay that night.

3. Statement order, no do/does/did, no question mark

A reported question is not a question any more: it is a statement about a question. So:

• The subject comes before the verb: “Is this the road…?” → … if this was the road…
• Do, does and did disappear, and the main verb takes the tense: “What did you have?” → … what I had had. “Do you live in Patan?” → … if I lived in Patan.
• The sentence ends with a full stop.

The changes, in one table

Direct question	Reported question (after asked)
“Are you hungry?”	She asked me if I was hungry.
“Do you like momo?”	He asked me if I liked momo.
“Did you see the jatra?”	She asked me whether I had seen the jatra.
“Have you been to Paris?”	He asked me if I had been to Paris.
“Can you swim?”	She asked me if I could swim.
“Where do you live?”	He asked me where I lived.
“Why did you go out last night?”	She asked me why I had gone out the night before.
“What are you going to do this weekend?”	He asked me what I was going to do that weekend.
“Who broke the window?”	She asked who had broken the window.

The last one is different: when who or what is the subject of the question, the question is already in statement order, so only the tense moves back.

A. Report the questions, from the beginnings given

B. Report the questions

How to write an essay

An essay is a piece of writing on one topic, set out in paragraphs. In the SEE, the free writing task may be an essay (about 200 words, 8 marks). Plan before you write:

1. Title: short and clear (“Bisket Jatra: Bhaktapur Welcomes the New Year”).
2. Introduction: what the festival is, when and where it is held, and how long it lasts.
3. Body: one paragraph for each point the task names (history; people and activities; importance; drawbacks). Begin each paragraph with a sentence that says what it is about.
4. Conclusion: your own view, and a hope or a suggestion.

Use the present simple for what happens every year (people pull, the pole is raised) and the past for history (the kings started, the prince killed).

What kind of text it is

The text is an informative article in short sections, one for each country, under a heading. Each section answers the same questions: when the festival is, why it began, and what people eat and do. That makes it easy to scan for one fact (Exercise B asks you to).

The article, country by country

Introduction

Festivals are not only for fun: they show a people’s heritage, culture and traditions. Many countries hold a festival to give thanks for the harvest, with plenty of food and time with family and friends. Thanksgiving may seem purely American, but other countries keep the same tradition in their own ways.

1. Thanksgiving, United States

• When: the fourth Thursday of November; a national holiday.
• Why: it commemorates (remembers with a celebration) the feast the Pilgrims, English settlers, held after their first harvest in 1621. About 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims attended. It was celebrated intermittently (on and off) after that.
• What: a family dinner is at the center of it: Americans eat more on Thanksgiving Day than on any other day of the year, even Christmas. Roast turkey is a must, about 45 million of them every year, with mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet corn and autumn vegetables, all foods first grown in the Americas.
• Parades, from a small town’s marching band to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, which is called the world’s largest, with floats and giant balloons of cartoon characters and shows.

2. Chuseok, South Korea

• Also called Hangawi, or the Harvest Moon Festival; one of Korea’s most popular holidays.
• When: the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar (the full moon in September or early October).
• Why: to celebrate the autumn harvest and honor one’s ancestors. Koreans travel back to their family’s hometown, as many Nepalis go home for Dashain.
• What: the day begins with a ceremony offering food and wine to the ancestors, then a meal of fish and newly harvested vegetables and grains. The special food is songpyeon, a crescent-shaped rice cake steamed on a bed of pine needles. Later, families visit their relatives’ graves. There are gifts and games: tug-of-war, archery and ssireum, Korean wrestling; dancing, music, and hanbok, the traditional clothes.

3. Dia de Ação de Graças, Brazil

• A fairly new festival, celebrated with gusto (great enjoyment).
• How it began: a former president of Brazil, Eurico Gaspar Dutra, was so taken with Thanksgiving when he visited the United States that he started it at home in 1949.
• What: it begins with a church service (a mass) to give thanks for a rich harvest; then a lively carnival, and revelers head to the beach. Roast turkey is still the main dish, with a few exotic twists: cranberries don’t grow in Brazil, so the sauce for the bird is made from jabuticaba, the “Brazilian grape”.

4. Thanksgiving, Liberia

• A lively, spicy celebration, started in the 19th century by freed slaves from America who settled in Liberia, in West Africa. It gives thanks for freedom, celebrating the good things in life while remembering a painful past.
• What: after church, families eat roast chicken, green bean casserole and mashed cassava, all well spiced, then dance and sing into the evening.

5. Crop Over, Barbados

• Barbados’s biggest party, lasting 12 weeks, from May to August, ending in a huge final parade, the Grand Kadooment.
• Why: it began as a celebration of the end of the sugar cane harvest, from the 1780s, when Barbados was one of the world’s largest producers of sugar.
• What: carnivals fill the season, and calypso bands and dancers compete in ever bigger, more colorful (flamboyant) shows.

6. Homowo, Ghana

• Homowo means “to hoot (jeer) at hunger”. It celebrates the end of a long famine long ago.
• What: a feast, of course: palm nut soup with fish and kpokpoi, a dish of steamed, unleavened corn dough mixed with palm oil.
• When: from May, when millet is sown, through August and September. Before the feast, drumming and singing are banned, so that the crops can grow in peace. It ends with a night of singing, dancing and wild (frantic) drumming, defying hunger.

7. Mehregan, Iran

• An ancient festival, at least from the 4th century BC, held on the 196th day of the Iranian year (in early October).
• Why: a good harvest, and Mehr (Mithra), the old Persian divinity of friendship, promises and light.
• What: new clothes, community blessings, and a feast on a table decorated with marjoram (a sweet herb): sherbet drinks, rich dinners, and in some villages a sheep roasted slowly all day. People line their eyes with kohl for good luck and throw marjoram, lotus and sugar plum seeds over each other.

Words from the article

Word	Meaning here
intermittently	on and off, not every time
commemorate	to remember an important event or person with a celebration
lunar (calendar)	going by the moon
typically	usually; as is normal for that kind
crescent	the curved shape of the new moon, wide in the middle and pointed at both ends
celebrant	a person who takes part in a celebration
gusto	great enjoyment
abundant	more than enough; plentiful
vibrant	full of life and energy
reveler (British reveller)	a person having fun in a noisy way, with others
exotic	from another country, and seeming exciting and unusual
cassava	a starchy root eaten like potatoes in Africa and South America
douse	to pour a lot of liquid (or spice) over
top off	to end something in a special way
culminate	to end in a high point
finale	the last and most exciting part of a show
pervade	to spread through all of something
calypso	a kind of lively Caribbean song
flamboyant	brightly colored and showy, so that people notice
famine	a time when a whole region has too little food
frantic	fast, wild and not well organized
defiance	standing up boldly against something

A. Find the words

B. Which country?

C. Answer the questions

D. Thanks for the harvest at home

The textbook’s listening task has five people talking about special days. CDC’s own recording is below: read the questions in B and C first, then listen, as many times as you need.

B and C. The textbook’s audio: answers

A. Choose the correct answers

B. From the report back to the questions

Here the work goes the other way. Nihar Chaudhary interviewed her Social Studies teacher, Mr. Sudeep Prasad Joshi, about Ihi, also called Bel Bibaha, a Newar ceremony, and wrote a report. What did he tell her?

• Ihi is a ceremony in which Newar girls before their teens, usually between five and nine, are married to Suvarna Kumar, a golden image standing for the god Vishnu.
• It is done so that the girl will grow up healthy and able to have children. It is also said to have begun as a protection against Sati: a girl married to Vishnu, who never dies, could never be called a widow.
• A bel (wood apple) fruit is given as the witness of the marriage, which is why it is called Bel Bibaha. The bel was chosen because it does not rot easily, and so it is thought of as divine.
• The ritual takes two days in a row, which tires the girls and their parents, and the participants may not eat certain foods, especially salty ones.

How to write a news story

A news story reports something that has just happened, for readers who want the facts fast. Its shape is an upside-down triangle: the most important facts first, the details after.

1. Headline: short, in the present tense or passive, no full stop (“Vitamin A Capsules Given to Children”).
2. Dateline: the place and date (Kathmandu, October 20).
3. Lead (the first paragraph): answers who, what, when, where (and why or how) in one or two sentences.
4. Body: more details in order of importance; who said or announced it (according to…, officials said…).
5. End: what happens next, or a quote.

Write it in the third person, in the past tense for what happened, and keep your own opinion out.

Stress is the extra force given to one syllable of a word (or one word of a sentence). English uses it to tell words apart: a PRES-ent (a gift) and to pre-SENT (to give). These rules help you guess where the stress falls in a word you have never heard; each has exceptions, so check a dictionary when you can.

Rule	Examples
1.A word of one syllable is stressed on that syllable, when said on its own.	do, pot, song, read
2.Most two-syllable nouns and adjectives stress the first syllable.	FA-ther, HAP-py, TA-ble, a PRES-ent
3.Most two-syllable verbs stress the second syllable.	cor-RECT, pre-SENT, be-LIEVE, ex-PLODE
4.Most three-syllable nouns and adjectives stress the first syllable, but not those ending in -eer, -ee or -ese, which stress the end.	POL-i-tics, GEN-er-al, EX-cel-lent; en-gi-NEER, Nep-a-LESE
5.Many three-syllable verbs stress the first syllable, but many others stress the second, especially those with a prefix.	OR-gan-ize, DEC-o-rate, SIG-ni-fy; re-MEM-ber, con-TIN-ue, de-TER-mine
6.Words ending in -cy, -ty, -phy, -gy stress the third syllable from the end.	de-MOC-ra-cy, un-CER-tain-ty, pho-TOG-ra-phy, bi-OL-o-gy
7.Compound nouns stress the first part.	HAIR-brush, CLASS-room, BREAK-fast, FOOT-ball
8.Words ending in -tion, -sion, -ic stress the syllable just before the ending.	cel-e-BRA-tion, con-CUS-sion, sci-en-TIF-ic

SEE-style practice on this unit. Try each one as in the exam, then open the answer.