Bishnu Maya Deula, a 58-year-old living in Kathmandu, has been working as a cleaner at Bir Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals in Nepal, for the past 31 years. The job is in no way easy, she says. It has brought her both physical and emotional stress, but it also gives her a sense of peace, knowing she’s made some difference in people’s lives. She is now also quite well-adjusted to her responsibilities. Born in Chitwan, Deula moved to Kathmandu at the age of six. She never received formal education and says she was never interested in studies either. “I still don’t know how to read or write,” she says. She got married in her early 20s to an army recruit and started working as a cleaner at the Tribhuvan International Airport so that she could take care of her family’s expenses without having to rely on anyone. She worked there even during her pregnancies. “It was a struggle. I had to walk around a lot. I often had swollen feet,” she adds. She left the job once she gave birth, but she joined Bir Hospital before her daughter turned one. Deula was 27 when she became an employee at the hospital. It was a completely different experience for her. At first, she says, the job was traumatizing. But she had to do what it took to make ends meet. She recalls the harrowing first few months of working at the hospital. “Back then, hospitals were not as systematic as they are now, especially for cleaners,” she says. The biggest problem for her was having to clean up everything without any gloves or masks.

“I didn’t mind cleaning toilets and hospital floors but cleaning up after every patient was an ordeal. It took time for me to adjust,” she says. Hospitals, at that time, assigned a bucket to each patient, especially the ones who were bedridden. The bucket was for excretion. Having to wash all those buckets, that too with bare hands, she says, was the worst part of the job. It used to affect her even outside of her working hours.

“Sometimes I couldn’t eat for days because I would be consumed by the stench of the mess,” she says. Now, she doesn’t have to clean up after the patients as much as she did before. But still, there are some patients who  don’t have anyone to take care of them, in which case she steps in. “It definitely gets messy. I feel a little disgusted. But after all these years, I guess I’m used to it,” she says. But the job takes its toll. It can get overwhelming at times. She starts at seven in the morning and works continuously for eight hours, with one hour break for lunch. Although she is assigned to a particular ward, she needs to move with patients from one corner of the building to another, and run errands too when necessary. “Cleaning the ward takes around two hours. The rest of the time I’m always running from one building to another,” she says. It has gotten worse since Deula started having issues with her left knee. She is in constant pain, and she knows standing up for long hours is the last thing she should be doing. But she does it without complaint. “I like to see the positive side of it,” she says. Deula suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes and walking around has served as a workout. “Now, I take way less medications, and I feel a little healthier too,” she says. The job is emotionally challenging as well. “I empathize with the patients and I frequently break down when someone passes away,” she says. It’s especially heartbreaking when someone loses a parent, she says. Having lost her own, she says, it reminds her of the day she lost her mother. “I can understand their pain and I tear up everytime,” she says. It’s the same with parents losing their children. Having lost two children in the past, seeing parents cry over their loss reminds her of her own pain. “I still remember the day I held my children for the last time and when I lost them,” she says, “That pain will never go away and this job never lets me forget.” One of the most difficult times for her was working during the Covid-19 pandemic. The hospital was flooded with patients and a lot of people were dying on a daily basis. Since handling bodies for cremation was mostly done by the housekeeping, she had to spend hours preparing the dead. There was a risk of contamination and seeing so many people lose their life was psychologically disturbing. “I couldn’t help but think about my family. I was scared of taking the infection back home,” she says. Although she had done all of this in the past, Covid-19 was especially challenging because of the patient flow. I ask her if she has ever felt like quitting. She doesn’t hesitate before saying no. Although the job is difficult, there are good memories too. She says being one of the oldest employees, she has earned a lot of respect. “People here treat me well too,” she says, adding it’s heartwarming to see patients who have been admitted for a long time get better and go home. With only four years to retirement, Deula says she’s grateful to the hospital staff and administration for having taken care of her for so long and given her a source of livelihood when she needed it the most. Now, she’s looking forward to her retirement because she feels she has worked long enough. “I want to spend the rest of my time with my family, especially my grandchildren,” she says.