Opinion | A story of struggle

I was born in the backyard of our mud-house, at one o’clock in the night while my mother hung on to the wooden beams supporting the thatched roof. She had already borne the labor pain for two days and had stepped out in the dark, unable to bear it anymore. My father wasn’t home. And they were both 19. 

When they heard the sound of a baby crying, my grandparents came out, lit an oil lamp and came to look for the baby and the mother. They lifted me up and were happy to find that I was a boy. They rejoiced.

My mother told the story of her life in a TEDx talk in Kathmandu last week. She is 58 now, and I am 39. I listened to the journey she has been through, told very matter-of-factly, without any filters. Sitting there in the audience in that hall along with more than hundred other people, and watching her share the story of her life, was deeply moving.

Fifty years ago, at a remote village in Syangja district in western Nepal, when my mother started going to school, people weren’t happy. “They used to say if you educate girls, they will get spoiled— they will elope. But my father didn’t listen to them and sent me to school,” she said. “Our relatives kept trying to stop me from getting educated. They weren’t happy that a girl was being educated. When I turned 13, I stopped going to school. Staying home and helping my mother made everyone happy, it made my mother happy as well.”

She was married at 17, and I was born when my parents were 19. Women in the house, especially the daughters-in-law, had to work really hard. My mother would wake up any time before 3.30 am, and finish the Dhiki Jato work before dawn. And during the daylight hours, they had to work in the fields or fetch firewood from the jungles. Obviously, I was neglected.

“When my son was 18 months, he was only 6 kg in weight,” my mother’s story continued. “We took him to a Jhakri [shaman] for treatment. One day, on our way back from the jhakri, he started vomiting badly and almost stopped breathing. I nearly fainted. My husband said to me that if he is ours, he will survive. If God hasn’t sent him to be ours, we can’t do anything about it.”

Also read: Opinion | Alternative politics: Is there still hope?

I was saved, not from the interventions of God, but because someone in the family took me to the Mission Hospital in Tansen, Palpa. The doctor understood that I was severely malnourished and advised my parents to feed me eggs and bananas. And I survived.

My mother raised three children, with the support of my father’s job in the Indian Army.

But over the years, I have seen my mother make a place for herself in social leadership, the organic way. In a social set-up dominated by men, she teamed up with some of them to start a cooperative in the village that helps women farmers financially. And three years ago, we came up with the idea of ‘Himali: Made by Mothers’–to create employment for women in the villages.

“All my life, I have struggled without education and without a job. I haven’t rested even for a single day, but as a housewife and farmer, I haven’t earned money. I have faced many such moments when I felt I wish I had an earning of my own.” She said, “I know that I would have raised my children in a better way if I could myself earn. Through Himali, we want to give that power and freedom to mothers in the villages, like me.”

The story of my mother’s struggle is not uncommon. Poverty and lack of education is the setting. The struggles that most women faced in our part of the world were severe. Just surviving a child birth was a miracle.

Watching my 58-year-old mother who had to drop out of the school in grade three 45 years ago confidently walk on to the stage and talk to a hall-full of audience was an immensely moving experience. The audience were in tears.

Back from the event, in the village where she still lives a rigorous farming life, she has moved on already, apparently unaware of the contrast I see in the opportunities that she lost because of where she was born. The place of birth of an individual shouldn’t decide the fate of a life so much. 

I can’t get this feeling out of my mind. It is not just. And we must rebel, in our own ways.