“Once, while working with street children, I slept with them and stray dogs. It was at Indra Chowk,” says Pradhan, getting emotional about the condition of street children in Nepal.
It is, however, a matter of curiosity to know how this Child and Human Rights Activist spent his childhood and teenage years. So we asked Pradhan to tell us and our readers about all he had done in his young days.
Even though Pradhan is claimed to have been a good child and a good son, he reportedly raided his family fields and stole mangoes that belonged to his own grandfather. Scared of stealing, Gauri volunteered to stand guard while the raid took place.
“I was caught by none other than my grandfather, and I was kept tied and bound in the house as punishment for stealing from the family property,” he says.
In school, as Pradhan was one of the excellent students, he had to sit in the front row.
“So I had no chance to make mischief,” he says, laughing. But he was actively involved in students’ movement, and as a result, he was arrested and packed off to the Bhadra Gol Jail for 26 days. He was 18 years old then.
“While I was in prison, my parents came to visit me. To make a good impression on them, I ran around the premises of the Central Jail, and went to meet them sweating,” he says, laughing. “I told them that it was fun to be in jail, and the sweating was caused by playing volleyball.”
But jail was not home. So he even tried smoking and chewing tobacco because of the frustrations in custody. But once out, he never touched them.
Going to watch videos with his friends and bunking classes were another great experience for him. He even used to go to Bhaktapur from Kathmandu to watch videos.
“Once, while we were coming back from watching a video late at night, we realized that there was no transportation back to town,” he recalls. “After walking up to Sallaghari, we found a taxi and took it to Kathmandu. As there were 10 of us, three of us, including me, had to ride in the dickey of the taxi.”
Otherwise, in general, Pradhan spent his young years like any other teenager, having broken his hand once, filling the autographs of his friends, going through the ups and downs of his family, and trekking as well.
Related story
Gauri collaborates with Ralph Lauren
