All my life I believed that my parents unlike any
other Nepali parents believed on the importance of education. But the
illusion melted as I finished the school. Past two years were absolute torture and just
thinking of many more coming makes me dizzy.
No judging this is my theory – when you grow up
watching people doing something which technically is not right, you tell
yourself that you’d be different. You grow up fancying that you are better than
others around you, but in reality you long to do the same thing but won’t admit.
My parents are just like that.
In Nepal most of the girls get married by the age
of eighteen. The idea of girls being a burden in father’s
shoulders is prevalent hence marrying them off AS SOON AS POSSIBLE is
considered advantageous. We don’t call dowry as dowry we call it gift. The price of
the gift measures the love. If somebody refuses to come to the wedding
gossips run down the hierarchy of relatives that so and so person didn’t attend
the wedding because of his inability to give a gift. Torment is inexorable.
My bad, I start rambling as soon as the topic is
raised. Coming back to my parents. All my life I
believed that my parents could never go wrong. It was I who was wrong. Realization
came when I turned eighteen.
Last year my cousin got married. My mother would
come up to me with longing in her eyes. She deliberately took rounds around me, thinking I
didn’t notice but I did, loudly wondering that if I would marry a man holding a
lot of land in Nepal itself. This kept on for around six months, or in other
words it took nearly six moths for her to recover from that marriage. Papa too
sometimes indicated towards his desire to see me married, though neither in
many words nor clearly.
You see my condition is not an easy one or easily
comprehensible. Since my father came to India young and started
earning for his family, he wants me to do the same, although he won’t admit all
this.
For some time now I’ve noticed a subtle change in his way of speaking to me or
about me with others. Even my extended family is suggesting me to take
up a job just after my graduation. Their advise for me is that just like other
children around me I don’t need a lot of education, that it is easy for a
graduate to get a job. Only it is not as easy as they say. No one is sitting
out there, waiting for me with a job. This is not damn 1989 this is 2018, the struggle
is greater. But understanding is irreplaceable.
I believe that all this is somehow related to me
being a girl. Yes all this is happening ‘cause I am a girl, and
in that matter firstborn. Boys are encouraged in almost all their decisions
but when it comes there is always some reluctance shown. Why?? A
cousin of mine, a boy, is refusing to study even after constant begging
form his parents. His father works as domestic help, mother is unresponsive or
rather blind with her love for her children. He decided to open a butcher shop,
and no soul questions him on his face but gossip behind his back. Both of us
belong to the same family, are of around same age, he doesn’t care but I do.
Expectations are not in peace with reality. There are a
few smarties out there who plan to live on pieces of their parent, and I, like
an idiot, want study more and empower myself. To all others the inflow money is more important
than independence. Is money everything? I think, no.
Sometimes in peaceful lap of night’s silence I
wonder that maybe one day will come when I won’t be seeking consent of every
other person, that there will be a morning when I will not double check my
decisions, that my heart will be in peace. What all I can do for now is hope…
