When a massive earthquake struck Nepal in April, Nepal’s longest-serving ‘living goddess’ was forced to do the unthinkable — walk the streets for the first time in her life, she told AFP in a rare interview. Still following the cloistered lifestyle she entered at the age of two, Dhana Kumari Bajracharya also opened up about her unusually long 30-year reign, suggesting the pain of her unceremonious dethroning in the 1980s was still raw. Before the 7.8 magnitude April 25 quake, Bajracharya had only ever appeared in public while being carried in an ornate wooden palanquin. The Himalayan nation’s living goddesses, known as Kumaris, live in seclusion and rarely speak in public, bound by customs that combine elements of Hinduism and Buddhism. But as the tremor hit, shaking the ground, reducing buildings to rubble and killing thousands, Bajracharya left

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