A typical day in the village started with my parents doing their chores and hunting, my siblings: three girls who worked in the fields and six boys who went to school. Our days would start pretty early; we would be in the field by nine in the morning to six in the evening. Sowing seeds, harvesting crops, playing in the rivers and watching the birds was really recreational. We did not care much about school or anything beyond in life.

My grandmother was a conservative person and dictated most of the household.She thought education ruined a woman’s life since it gave us independence and liberty. It was incorrect for women to get educated as it motivated us to make unethical and culturally incorrect choices, hence she decided that we stay home. My grandmother sent my aunts to school and they were literate but it did our family no good. My parents bought land and needed people to till and work the land so all his girls; me & my female siblings; were put to work in the farms instead of being sent to school. They thought that operating the land would provide a better future for us, more than getting an education would.

I remember that day very clearly; there were some strangers at my place, probably purchasing something from the shop my father owned. There was a man who I could partly see; he was behind a tarp sheet. He seemed like a healthy, tall person. After he left my father said to me, “I know you will keep my words and value my honor. It is time we get you married. Do not let us down.” It was then that I realized that the man I had partly seen was the guy I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

“I will never be able to write my story, and even if someone else did it for me, I will not be able to read it”

I did not know what was happening but I did not get angry or mad. I was nervous. I tried not thinking about it as much as I could until that one day when I was in the fields with my sisters. It was just another day and we were headed home.

“Your soon to be in-laws were here today. This will be your new family” father said as we were walking indoors. The feeling was exciting this time; I was the eldest out of all my siblings and still single. Most girls in my village were usually sent off by 15 or 16 years of age. I was the luckiest; my parents got me married once I turned 22. I knew that from now everything was going to be different, my friends and guardians, my home, the environment and my family.

After our wedding I went with him to his village and stayed there a few months but our life together started in Kathmandu. I feel lucky to have him in my life and a daughter that I call my family today. Marriage for a woman is different than for a man, the fact that we are not educated and self- sufficient that makes us the weaker sex.

My husband is a good man and it has already been ten years. He takes good care of me. When I look around I feel I am in a better place and very content but there are those days when I feel like a parasite, not capable of reading or writing or take a bus with confidence when I hate life and regret being born as an illiterate rural woman.

Although I have not been to a school, I saw how it makes the men in my family more confident and wise. Education is extremely important to know how to read, to learn, to know what the world is like. It is important because it is the most effective way to become economically and socially independent.
This ‘modern world’ does not have much space for people like me who are not literate. I send my daughter to school and tell her my story so that she lives her own life and not a life like her mother’s.

If I were to turn my life upside down for better, I would not even have to go too far. All I had to do was to be born as male in my family, if not educated I would at least be literate. I can express myself verbally and that is all. I know I can never express or write down my feeling, my story or even my name. One thing I will always feel dejected about is the fact that I will never write my story; I will always be the character someone else has imagined me to be.

I will never be remembered in the books and even if I am, I will not know since I cannot read.