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KATHMANDU, July 13: After finding that I had scored distinction marks in SLC, I rushed to tell my mother the good news. She was cooking in the kitchen.
"So you passed," was all she said. She then embraced me and started weeping. Those were rare tears of joy that have trickled down our cheeks in our arduous lives. We celebrated the news by weeping till deep into the night.
Mother was happy that I had passed the exams. She didn´t understand the meaning of distinction grades. Were she able to understand it, her happiness would have known no bounds, for she has struggled hard to pay for my education. Only I know of her hard, unpleasant, and solitary struggle.
Bhawana Tamang in her rented room.Bijay Gajmer
I hate recalling my past. I fear my past. A mere flashback sends shivers down my spine.
Mother is from Dablyang village in Sindhupalchowk. She does odd jobs in Kathmandu - dishwashing, laundry, cleaning up houses. What else can the uneducated do? These days, she makes between Rs 50 and Rs 100 a day.
I am told my father is from Charikot, Dolakha. I have never been there. I don´t even know whether we have a house there.
We now live in a rented room near Bahundhara in Jorpati. The room is narrow, dark and cold. That room is home to me, my mother, and my younger sisters Mamata and Shanti. There is a cot in the room. At night, some sleep on that cot and others manage on the floor.
My school, Samata Shiksha Niketan, is a 10-minute walk from the room. I studied there from the second grade. That wouldn´t have been possible without the help of sir Uttam Sanjel, or the school. Where would I have been now without them?
Before getting enrolled in the school, I was studying in another school in Mahankal.
But then someone probably told my father that daughters shouldn´t receive schooling. He suddenly barred me from going to the school and sent me to a house to work as help. I worked there for a year. Then my mother took me to Samata Niketan.
My mother bore three daughters and no son. This was perhaps the reason for my father´s fits of temper. There was a quarrel everyday at home. Father never cared whether there was enough food at home. He always came home heavily drunk. A quarrel would start as soon as he stepped in. When mother shouted, father would get furious. When father yelled, mother would lose her cool. Father would beat mother up. The three of us would huddle together, scared.
Sometimes, father would pick us up and slam us on the floor saying he would kill all of us. Shanti, the youngest, always rush towards mother, scared. After the quarrels, mother would caress us, weeping. We wept too, while father slept like a log.
One night, mother returned exhausted by the day´s work. Sisters rushed to her expecting food.
Indeed, mother had brought chapatis from the house where she washed clothes. Hungry as we were, we ate the chapatis with delight. But the delight was short-lived. Father came at night, drunk as always. And what we had feared happened.
Father accused mother of ´going places´. I was telling mother to keep her cool. But who could control father. He started beating her. Our course books were thrown on the floor. Mother was wailing, sisters were sobbing. I tried to stop father, but he slapped me and I crashed against the wall.
That wasn´t enough. Father brandished a khukuri knife threatening to kill mother. I was quivering with fear. Fearing for our own lives, we ran on to the street. We spent that night weeping under the open sky.
That was our only response - weeping. What else could we do? Amid the sobs, mother would console me, "Chhori, you must study and become a thulo manchhe (successful person). All of you must escape this fate."
By the time I reached the seventh grade, the situation at home had started affecting my studies. That´s why I and Mamata started living in the school hostel. But that didn´t help drive out my worries. I was always worried about mother and Shanti. I worried whether they managed to have a meal. I worried how my father was treating them.
One night, I heard mother call my name from behind the hostel building. We unlocked the hostel gate without informing anyone. Mother had come with Shanti. Father had beaten her up and chased them away.
It was midnight. We hid mother and Shanti in the hostel room where they spent the night with us. Had the teachers found out about this, they wouldn´t have been pleased.
But from grade eight, I have been living with mother. I couldn´t live in a hostel while she fought for life everyday!
But then, living with father was proving impossible. There were quarrels and fights everyday. We eventually left him. After we left, he remarried.
But the days after leaving him were difficult. We had no money to buy food and no shelter. With me were textbooks that I needed to conquer. Eventually, we found a room. It was an empty room. We had nothing to cover the floor to lie down on. We didn´t have kitchenware to cook. Mother used to bring food wrapped in plastic from places she worked. We slept on a straw mat.
A Tibetan family for whom mother worked took pity on her and started giving her things they no longer needed. We used to be overjoyed when mother brought old clothes, kitchenware and cot. Slowly, the empty room got furnished. Eventually, we started sleeping on a carpet instead of on a straw mat.
By the time I reached the tenth grade, mother was working every day. She had lost a lot of weight. Seeing the state she was in, I tried to assist her more. I helped her wash dishes, clothes and do other chores in the houses of her employers.
There were days when I worked until midnight.
But the work was telling on my studies. I lost rank in the pre-SLC exam. That worried me. Mother told me to stop assisting her and to focus on studies. But there was another problem. Our landlord was upset that I was using too much electricity by lighting the room to study at night. I explained to him that the "big exam" was nearing. He understood.
I studied hard, sometimes until the roosters crowed. I was often gripped by fear that father might come back. I evaded notice when I encountered him a few times in public places.
Studying with a half-empty stomach is hard. My body often grew lethargic in lack of proper nutrition. I even felt nauseated at times. But there was no use complaining. I attended classes regularly, tight-lipped about my physical condition. During my SLC preparation, I understood how badly an empty stomach can hurt.
I had studied hard. But I had never expected 88.75 percent marks. Looking back, I think I could have done better had my preparations been smoother, and hassles-free. But the results I got would not have been possible without my mother´s hard toil.
There are many challenges awaiting me. I have dreams and responsibilities. I have dreams of becoming a pediatrician and bringing happiness in my mother´s life. I have the responsibility of supporting the education of my younger sisters, and rescuing my family from the dark room and an equally dark life.
I stand amid these dreams and responsibilities. I haven´t yet seen a path that could lead me to the realization of these drams and the fulfillment of these responsibilities. And I don´t know how to tread on such path if there is any.
I don´t know many things. But I know I can earn some money by taking up a teaching job in some school. But that will only provide small and temporary relief to my family. I believe the poor should complete studies even with a meal a day so as to be able to later afford four meals a day.
"Chhori, you must study and become a thulo manchhe (successful person). All of you must escape this fate."
This statement made by my mother during one of our innumerable nights of horror continues to inspire me. It inspires me to pursue further studies.
(As told to Bhawasagar Ghimire of Nagarik daily.) | |
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