After being persuaded to harvest marijuana in order to make money, the struggling woman was caught in a taxi the first time she was asked to transport the cannabis.[break]
“I was in jail for two years. It would’ve been four but my family paid Rs 20,000. So I was released earlier,” she says and adds, “I didn’t want to leave prison but my family reminded me of my children’s suffering.
“Prison was probably the least I’ve ever had to struggle in my life,” she says as she speaks of her artist husband who isn’t able to generate any income from his profession. “I’ve been working since I was 10, and even from the prison, I was supporting my family by sending money.”
To her, two years in prison passed by in the blink of an eye.
“I always kept myself busy,” she says “That’s probably why two years didn’t feel like anything.”
But that isn’t to say Shova didn’t have her share of pains.
“After I was arrested, for the first three days, I didn’t have a drop of water, I didn’t eat, I didn’t cry… I didn’t know what happened,” she says, unable to express in words her state of shock.
“My husband took care of the two older boys but I had my daughter in with me at first,” she says, lamenting not having all her children, now age six to 12, with her. “But I attended all the trainings the jail offered.” It was in her two years in confinement that Shova improved her fourth grade education and even learnt handkerchief embroidery.
“Some women spent all of their time crying, others lost it and went crazy. But to me, it doesn’t matter if you’re in or out. If you’re going to do something, you can do it anywhere.” She is contently able to claim, “My time in prison wasn’t wasted.”
But not all women are able to take life in stride.
“I wasted my time,” admits a shy Sanchi Maya Tamang as she scratches an invisible spot on her hand. After taking the life of the man she was forced to marry when she was 14, her five years and four months overlapped with Shova’s sentence at the Central Jail of Sundhara in Kathmandu.
“I spent all my days thinking about my children.” Of her five offspring, age six to16, she’s only seen her eldest son once since she was incarcerated.
Seated on the ground, nervous and unsure, she’s unable to maintain eye contact and looks in the opposite direction when she says, “My husband’s brother took four of my children and they weren’t allowed to visit me.”
Sanchi’s youngest was four months old when she was convicted and briefly lived in prison with her. “We were given Rs 1,350 a month to spend on food and an additional Rs 300 a month for children,” she says. “At first, she would always cry, she was born sick, but then other women told me to go to the Christians, and after praying, my daughter was healed. It’s amazing.”
Four years ago, Sanchi accepted the Christian faith. Though her daughter was healed, at 11 months, Pushpa Basnet took Sanchi’s daughter into her care and founded Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) and ECDC’s Butterfly Home which caters to children who have parents behind bars. Sanchi is currently assisting at ECDC’s daycare center at Sundhara and has taken residence with Pushpa.
Even after being out of prison for a year, Sanchi hasn’t been in touch with her children. “He [her husband’s brother] won’t give them back to me,” she struggles to say but braves a weak smile and continues, “Anyway, how can I take care for them now?”
Unlike Sanchi, Shova is taking her life into her own hands.
“I can’t say I’m doing any one thing right now, I’ll do whatever I can,” she says with confidence. With a tinge of pride, she lists the various means of employment she has undertaken in the last two and a half years since she was released.
“I worked in houses, I sewed. No job is too big or too small.” If anything, she credits her sewing skills to the trainings offered in prison.
“Life there wasn’t terrible for me,” Shova says. “We were in rooms, sometimes nine or 10 to a room. Others had 16 or 17. We had our cots which was our space.”
Though timid, Sanchi nods in remembrance. “Everything you had, you had to fit in that space. The only problem was water. We had to fight for it. There was never enough.”
But beyond that, the imprisoned women seem to have lived mostly in harmony.
“Of course, some women were more difficult. You know how women can be,” Shova says and Sanchi reflects on how women would sit together and talk about their families, their case and share stories.
This confiding in each other transcends the boundaries of jail and continues today.
“I’m closer to the women from jail than I am to my childhood friends,” says Shova. “Maybe it’s because these women suffered with me and I shared experiences with them, and there’s some kind of understanding.”
Regardless of whether they had familial support like Shova had or remain almost entirely alone like Sanchi, and despite the difficulties in supporting themselves, being with or without their children, and of course, combating social stigmas, these women have accepted their past and crimes and now boldly look to the future. As Shova says, “There are no good or bad people. The only thing is if you’ve made a mistake. You should learn from that and not repeat it.”
Related story
Night clubs and dance bars in Kathmandu becoming crime hubs
-1200x560-1779450784.webp)
