Dorjee Khando
It is said that God doesn’t discriminate among its creations. Each and everyone of us have an equal right to live in this world. However, the social norms and the political boundaries make discriminations based on sex, culture, religion, citizen and many more. And, I was one of the victims of this discrimination.
My birth was a lie. My family wanted a boy child but I was born as a girl. The first child she conceived was also a girl. My mother then had to suffer from the uncommitted crime of conceiving a baby girl. She was forced out of the house with her two children in the streets of Mugu district.
In search of help, my mother wandered places and stumbled upon the house of an old lady-Bhoteni. The old lady offered my mother to work with her and taught my mother to make local alcohol. Soon, my mother and the lady initiated a small hotel business.
With the business running, everything seemed to fall in place. My mother was doing well, and we were happy. People say once you make money, everybody follows you and they tend to value you. Same was with my mother, as she started earning my father came back. He was able to convince my mother to return back and thus we were back home.
We were back at home, everything was same. My father was back with his demand for a boy, which soon turned to disappointment as my mother had borne another girl. Back with torture again, my mother was seriously injured. The torture got real bad for which we had to go to Nepalgunj for the treatment.
She then returned home as a different person; full of motivation and a courage to fight back. She started a small business with her skills she learnt while her stay with the old lady. She fought for our right to go to school, and I along with my sisters started to go to school. Later, my elder sister was sent to Nepalgunj to pursue her higher education.
People started to making comments on my sister being in a town alone and suggested that my family should get her married. But, my mother remained intact and encouraged us to study more and prove to the society wrong.
Later, my father had gotten weak and my elder sister started supporting our family with the money she earned. Looking at her earn, my father changed his attitude once again, he started supporting us more and gave all the credit to my mother for making us capable of standing on our own feet. The neighbors too stopped making comment on my mother and my sister. We then set off to Kathmandu to make our career.
But, the discrimination still exists in our society. People give birth to more children with a hope of having a boy. Females are tortured to such an extent that some of them lose hope of living and commit suicide. Some are burned alive while some are put into false allegations and thrown out of house. But, people are unaware that a male sperm decides the sex of a child and has nothing to do with females’ capacity of conceiving.
But, until and unless anyone of us take a step for change, the scenario will still remain the same. So, let’s stand together and raise our voice for change.
–Seema Bhandari
