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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Photo Essay | Ninja nuns
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Photo Essay | Ninja nuns

The nuns at Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery in Nepal do more than pray: they practise kung fu, drive, and love 'Hannah Montana'

Nuns practising kung fu on the roof of the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery in Nepal. The Kathmandu valley can be seen in the backdrop. Photo: Shome BasuPremium
Nuns practising kung fu on the roof of the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery in Nepal. The Kathmandu valley can be seen in the backdrop. Photo: Shome Basu

Every day for 90 minutes, the nuns at the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery, just outside Kathmandu in Nepal, stand in orderly lines, practising the kung fu made famous by the Bruce Lee films of the 1970s. Their expression is intense; the image, unconventional.

“Usually Buddhist nuns are seen chanting prayers or cleaning and doing chores. However, over here, these nuns lead a life that is anything but conventional," says 38-year-old, Delhi-based photographer Shome Basu. In a series of black and white photographs, Basu has documented the lives of these Buddhist nuns of the 800-year-old Drukpa Buddhist sect. Daily, the 300-odd nuns who live here take a break from religious studies for an intense session of hand chops, punches, shrieks and soaring high kicks.

“Kathmandu is a very green area, and these nuns wear maroon robes while the background is dominated by the golden colour of the monastery. So many colours would have distracted from what I wanted to show—the life and simplicity of the nuns—and that’s why I chose to shoot in black and white," explains Basu.

The nunnery is home to nuns aged 9-52, from Nepal, India, Tibet and Bhutan. Kung fu was introduced here in 2008 by Gyalwang Drukpa, the current head of the Drukpa school, to bring the nuns on a par with monks and make them self-reliant.

Basu read about it in 2011 and contacted the nunnery. It took him two years to convince the authorities to allow him to stay and photograph the nuns and their daily lives. Initially he was allowed only to shoot the kung fu sessions. But then he got permission to photograph other aspects of the nuns’ lives.

“The nuns living here handle everything from accounts, cooking and cleaning to driving. Male participation is not allowed in any area, and also not needed. Kung fu is taken as a form of meditation, and almost all the nuns have a black belt," says Basu, who stayed at the nunnery for two months, July-August.

While the photographs range from wide to tightly cropped portraits, the subjects appear unaware of the camera, too busy with their daily chores, in almost all of them. “Although I use a 35mm lens which has a fixed focal length and requires me to go close to the subject, I chatted with the nuns so that they were comfortable in front of the camera," says Basu.

Some images also show the nuns singing and dancing. “Most of them are big fans of (the American musical comedy series) Hannah Montana," adds Basu. In another set of photographs taken at the Hemis Monastery nunnery in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir—a sort of retreat for the nuns, where they learn forms of traditional Tibetan martial arts—the sense of equality with monks is evident. The nuns can be seen participating in the sacred dragon dance, traditionally performed only by monks.

For Basu, staying at the nunnery was difficult but a great learning experience. “It was challenging to communicate with the nuns and to make them comfortable with the idea of a male being around," he says.

Basu, who is planning a book on the subject, hopes to exhibit these photographs later in the year.

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Published: 14 Feb 2014, 06:04 PM IST
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