ShradhaGiriblogs

The first time I saw a picture of vagina was when I was in grade three. The vaginas would always show up in our bathroom walls. Drawn with coal, often the pubic hair sprouting in every direction. I went to an all-girls boarding school and the only males we had in our school were cooks and bera dais. There was also this son of a housekeeper in charge and an unknown lunatic who would flash his nuts from the back of our dormitory which was situated right below the pine trees, occasionally. Of course, we never saw his face or the fact that he was never caught didn’t surprise me even back then. These were the kind of things I believe weren’t considered dangerous. I was too young to think about the perpetrator. I had never thought about those vaginas scrawling for almost three decades and suddenly I now realize that those drawings were in many ways the first kind of sexual assault for me or for my friends. I and my friends would stare at the scrawling quickly and never talk about it l...

‘I am older now’ is my go to mantra for everything wrong that happens in my life which I don’t bother to right it. Someone stupid said one fine day age is just a number and then people started falling for it. Age is a number plus its infinite principal. Last night I was asking my husband if he remembered when my upper arm joints had started hurting regularly. And he casually mentioned it must have been two years ago. With age, some parts of my body that I didn’t even know existed have started hurting a little more from all the wrong sides. I suffer from fibromyalgia. I also used to suffer from plantar fasciitis. The names of these diseases deeply bother my husband – not sure about the pain.   Last week was my birthday. A colleague sent a horoscope link and one of the lines read ‘cancer signs are so moody that even they don’t know when our mood changed’. Nothing to be proud here. I have also heard myself saying ‘15 years too late for social media’ and yet I hang around it lik...

Growing up in poverty sucks period. There isn’t any shade of hidden reliefs.   Last week I was in Gorkha and there I met an expecting couple; the wife is 19 and the husband is 21. This is the way here and in many villages of Nepal, opportunities get slimmer and slimmer as they age. Past 16 and all they can think of is earning descent. But that isn’t possible either. There are no jobs in the villages. Many people argue that if these youths were channeled to work the reconstruction jobs here at home which is happening at a snail’s pace they wouldn’t have to leave. But the fact is the government’s priority doesn’t lie in creating jobs. The youths will leave because their friends and cousins have tasted the freedom to earn much more and the exposure it brings along – none of the labor jobs in Nepal will suffice. The world is moving at a faster pace than we can imagine. The youths already dream of going abroad when their friends and relatives bring new flat screen TV and smar...

This year has been a lot about #metoo movement. Last month the women in US marched together in many states to raise underlying issues – issues that we have normalized. The unity of our gender calling for equal measures is a distant dream here in Nepal where we have yet to speak against sexual violence of all forms and equal pay for women. And then on the other side of the world we hear about this brave 17 yo Ahed snubbing #wtf to the Israeli soldiers resisting against years of injustice. Ahed in many ways reinstates that women are the stronger gender designed to withheld with infinite patience every injustice thrown at her. No, she isn’t the kind of empowered feminists from Hollywood the west decides to gallantly define what women’s courage looks like. Ahed is fighting for justice against oppression – for every person who have witnessed violence and bullying all their lives. I would have liked the women of Hollywood to bestow the same compassion and empathy they showered for Ma...