The other day, I was looking through my archived
videos of Nepal, trying to decide what to delete to create space in my backup
hard drive. I found this interview of
Binod, a resident of Saptari district, a man who ran mad after his love
affair with an upper caste girl came to an abrupt and violent end. I came upon
him by sheer luck. While making Untouchable
Love, I was visiting their home to interview his younger brother, Manoj, whose
affair with Parbati, an upper caste girl, had led to a war in their village
when I learned that that Binod too had been involved in an inter caste affair. I
thought I had struck gold. Two dalit (untouchable) brothers fall in love with
upper caste girls, causing a lot of trouble in the village, hmm, the kind of
stuff every storyteller would jump at.
In their village, like everywhere else in Nepal, the
different castes live together. The apartheid-like system that kept ‘untouchables’
in the outskirts of society no longer exists. Children from all castes mingle
freely, attend the same school, play with in the same balls, grow up together –
the only thing that still exists is that they cannot enter each other’s houses,
or eat from the same plate, or drink the same water. Or fall
in love with each other.
The way the two brothers fell in love was very
similar. Both upper caste girls were their neighbors. They went to school
together and were in the same classes. Binod, being older, was first to become romantically
involved with (I do not remember him mentioning her name, so I will call her) Sita.
As it is with love affairs in rural Nepal, the issue of marriage came in very
early in the relationship. In that country, you do not date for fun, and Binod
was so serious about his girl that he went to her parents to ask for her hand
in marriage.
A very foolish thing, but very brave. Of course he
knew about the taboos in the society. He knew that being a Mandal (or Khanga as
they are sometimes called) it was unthinkable for him to marry a girl with the
name of Raut. Still, their respective families were amiable to each other. He
thought he could talk to her parents, they seemed like a nice lot, more liberal
in comparison to other Rauts. So he dressed in his Sunday best and paid them a
visit. Her father gave him a big smile and told him he will think about it. However,
hardly had Binod left their compound than the old man pounced on Sita, and beat
her up thoroughly. She was imprisoned in a room for several days and tortured
until she denounced her love. Then they arranged for her to marry another man,
an upper caste old widower whose teeth were black and rotten from eating paan, whose saliva was now permanently a
bloody red from eating paan. This was
the only way her parents thought they could restore the family honor.
 |
| Binod and one of his brother's children. |
Binod was devastated. He ran mad. Totally bonkers. I
do not know exactly what he did that proved how mad he was, but all the wires
in his head were broken. He ended up in a mental hospital in India. He spent
there several months. Whatever treatment he got seemed to work very well. He
came back to Nepal a sane man. The first thing he did was burn up all the
photographs of Sita, along with all the love letters she sent him. It was the
only way he could fully recover his sanity. To help him fully recover, his
parents arranged for him to marry another girl.
He despises his wife. He kept referring to her as ‘uneducated’
and ‘foolish’. I could discern that deep inside he still moaned for his lost
love. He apparently is still in a fragile state, although eight years have
passed. When his parents heard him talking about Sita, they became afraid. And
very angry with me. They thought memories of Sita would make him run mad again.
They ordered to stop talking about her, and threatened to throw us out of their
home if we insisted on asking him about her. I was sad to let it go, but I had
to agree to their demands. We spent three days with them family, and I never
saw Binod again. They must have sent him away to live somewhere else, to make
sure he did not talk about Sita again. His younger brother Manoj told me the
rest of the story.
 |
| Binod's wife in front of their home. |
 |
| Parbati prepares to apply sindoor on her forehead. It is part of the daily make up for a married woman. |
 |
| Binod and Manoj's mother with sindoor prominent on her head a proud symbol of her marital status. |
 |
| Now sisters. Binod's wife in green, from an arranged marriage. Parbati on the left, from a love marriage. |
About one year after Binod’s affair ended in
tragedy, Manoj fell in love with another Raut girl, called Parbati. Manoj was
wiser. He kept his affair a total secret. Only a few friends knew about it. When
they decided to get married, they did not bother telling their parents. They
told no one. They simply sneaked away to a temple in Rajbiraj town, with a
couple of friends as witnesses. He applied sindoor on her head and bingo, they were husband and wife. Sindoor is that red thing that you see in the parting of hair just
above the forehead. It symbolizes virginity. I was told that you can rape a
girl by simply applying that thing on her forehead. Well, it is like the ring
in Western weddings. Once a boy applies it on a girl, it means he has
deflowered her, and owns her forever. No priests needed, no fancy ceremony.
Simply rub the stuff on her forehead and you are married. But they had to take
a photo to prove that he had put sindoor
on her, that they were now married.
After the wedding, they could not go back to their
homes. They went to live with Manoj’s uncle’s in a neighboring district. They
thought they were safe. I won’t tell you their story because I already did in the
documentary, Untouchable Love. They
are the lead characters. All I’ll say is after their elopement, war broke out
in the village. Ethnic cleansing. The upper caste people were fed up of the
untouchables snatching away their girls, and so they decided to chase all the dalits
from the village. It was violent and bloody.
Good old Nepal, with so many stories. I cannot
believe I lived there for only two years, because I came back with enough
stories to last a life time. Strangely, though I’ve lived in Uganda all my life
and I often fail to find what to write about. I should soon again travel again
to someplace to collect more stories.
--
--
--
You
May Also Like: