Nepal’s most popular Buddhist nun is a globe-trotting pop star

KATHMANDU — There is one Buddhist nun everyone in Nepal knows by name — but it is not because she is a religious icon and a United Nations International Children’s Fund (Unicef) goodwill ambassador, neither is it for her work running a girl’s school and a hospital for kidney patients.

Ani Choying Drolma is actually famous for being one of the country’s biggest pop stars. With more than 12 albums of melodious Nepali tunes and Tibetan hymns that highlight themes of peace and harmony, the songstress in saffron robes has won hearts across the Himalayan nation and abroad.

“I am totally against the conservative, conventional idea of a Buddhist nun,” the 45-year-old said. Some people “think a Buddhist nun should be someone who does not come out in the media so much, who is isolated ... always in a monastery, always shy. But I don’t believe in that”.

Neither do her fans, who greet her with a roar of applause whenever she walks out on stage, and fall silent as she closes her eyes to sing.

“Every time I get frustrated with life or get angry, I just listen to Ani’s music and I calm down,” said one fan, Sunil Tuladhar. “She is my music goddess.”

But with a career deviating sharply from what conservatives in Nepal believe to be the proper path of a Buddhist, she has attracted criticism as well.

One Buddhist monk at the famed Swayambhu Shrine questioned how she could reconcile the simple life of a religious ascetic with the fame and wealth she has amassed over her two-decade musical career.

“How can a nun be making money by selling her voice, living a luxurious life and yet claim she is a nun?” Surya Shakya asked.

Despite her fame, Ms Drolma looks every bit the typical Nepalese Buddhist nun, with her hair shaved short and an ever-present smile. She travels the world giving concerts in countries such as the United States, Brazil, China and India. Popular composer Nhyoo Bajracharya, who has worked with Ms Drolma, describes her music as a fusion of traditional Tibetan and Nepali styles. “They are religious songs, slow rock with flavours of blues and jazz combined,” he said.

But Ms Drolma believes her singing goes beyond delivering a catchy tune. Her 2004 hit Phoolko Aankhama, which means Eyes of the Flower in the Nepali language, features lyrics that touch on religious teachings: “May my heart always be pure/May my words be always words of wisdom/May the sole of my feet never kill an insect.”

Her singing offers listeners a way to practise meditation and “is about invoking a spiritual quality”, she said in a recent interview. “That is what I rejoice in.”

She refused to say how much money she has earned from album sales and concerts, but said that she donates much of it to education charities through her Nun’s Welfare Foundation, and runs a kidney hospital.

Regardless, compared with most Nepalese living in this impoverished mountain nation, Ms Drolma lives like a rock star — with a luxury car and a new home in an upscale neighbourhood of the capital of Kathmandu.

“It is a very conservative point of view thinking that a nun should be poor and wearing rags. That’s a wrong attitude,” she said. “My concerts make very good money, my CD sales make very good money, and I think that helps me to afford such (a) comfortable life.”

Ms Drolma said she was 13 when her mother allowed her to join the Nagi Gompa nunnery to escape an abusive father. She also dreaded getting married, as she would likely have been forced to do so as it was the custom in Nepal at the time.

“I had the impression that getting married was the worst thing to do in life,” she said.

At the nunnery, just north of Kathmandu, she learned to chant Buddhist scriptures.

But while most recited the lines quickly, she stood out — chanting melodiously and drawing the other nuns’ admiration.

In 1994, American musician Steve Tibbetts visited the nunnery and, impressed with her voice, recorded her singing. He returned after learning of interest from US record companies, and recorded Ms Drolma’s first album, Cho, released in 1997.

The album royalties and performance fees that came after left Ms Drolma a bit stunned. Most Nepalese have humble lives, with a quarter of the country’s 28 million people living in poverty and heavily reliant on subsistence farming and remittances from family members working abroad.

“The question was: What do I do with the money?” she said. “I realised that this money can help me fulfil my dream, so that is how I started the school.”

She set up an educational foundation and opened the Arya Tara school, on a mountainside south of Kathmandu. The boarding school offers about 80 girls, aged about five to 18, free lessons in Buddhist scripture as well as maths, science and computer skills. The foundation also covers the cost of sending the girls to college.

The students, similarly clad in saffron robes, giggle and smile when talking about Ms Drolma.

“Ani is more than my mother. My mother gave me birth, but Ani raised me, gave me education, took care of me and is the only reason that I have reached this far,” said 17-year-old Dolma Lhamu, who is now enrolled in college.

Ms Drolma is similarly adored at the kidney hospital she runs in Kathmandu, where hundreds of patients receive free dialysis treatment twice a week.

She said it is her work at the hospital and school that keep her singing and accepting invitations to perform. For the critics who question her globe-trotting lifestyle or high income, she has little patience.

“People in society will have different opinions,” she said.

“I try my best to see how I can improve my attitude towards life, toward people and towards the world, and to find ways to make the best use of my life.

“I am famous today, but tomorrow people will not know me. It fades away. That is the reality,” she said. AP