The joke’s on you

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…

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