Laxmi (Celebrated By Sonu)
This was originally submitted by Sonu Adhikari for the Life As A Woman series. With her permission, we are featuring it here in the Celebrating Our Mothers series to honour her grandmother, Laxmi.
I belong to a family that is quite literally made by my grandmother. She has been my role model and inspiration.
She has shown me how a woman in her 20s with four children loses her husband untimely and still manages to create and sustain a little universe of her own. Had it not been her sacrifices and tireless efforts, I would not be here in the universe.
I am proud to tell the world that a girl is worshipped here in my place as 'Kumari', the living goddess. Yet, she is dethroned the moment she becomes a 'woman' i.e. when she first menstruates. This is the harsh reality of my society. I am Sonu Adhikari, an ordinary girl in Nepal, who is extremely proud and happy to be a woman, but there are few moments here and there when I wish I were a man.
She is 82 years old today. I just imagine the pain she endured those years in a remote and conservative village in Nepal. Had it been any of us 'modern' girls, we would have quit way back, but she persevered and never ever gave up. She keeps telling us “my eye no longer has a drop of tear to shed'.
This is my grandmother's story through me. I wanted the world to know that women were stronger and were empowering themselves way back in the time before it became a thing. Empowerment is not something people will graciously place in our hands; it is something we have to do for ourselves. Her name is Laxmi Adhikari. She is our family's superhero.