Yes, it was a simple life with few expenses. But before I get too nostalgic, I should make it clear: boys were on top; equal opportunities lay in the future. There was a strict quota on the number of girls admitted. For every five places allocated to boys, there was only one for girls. We women were grateful to be tolerated, and our professional ambitions were, in the main, more modest than the boys’.
Going through Khagendra Lamichhane’s story, set in a university – the latest in the Katha Mitho Sarangiko series – I couldn’t help but reflect at the contrasts and similarities between my experiences as a student and what it’s to be a student in Nepal today. There’s the same sexism, with boys feeling superior and eve-teasing the girls, but there are no restrictive quotas on female students. Shila arrives on campus with her father’s blessing and support; her male teacher appreciates her contributions to her class, and she’s awarded a scholarship. Her ambition is to be a journalist.
Into this campus drama, Khagendra adds romance and new technology to the dramatic mix. In the current materialistic age we live in, the boys are the alpha consumers. Mobile phones and bikes aren’t just useful methods of transport, they are symbols of status and virility. In Shila’s and Arpan’s story Multi Nokias and Pulsars are the high-tech accessories to passion, heartbreak and revenge.
Shila (played by Durga Biswokarma) trying to get Arpan (played by Shirish Thapa) to delete her photo. Shila’s first week as a student is soured by boys harassing her. Arpan and Saroj take on the mantle of avenging heroes and gather a gang of fellow bikers, who roar up the street to deliver the eve-teasers a sound beating. Having put pay to the hooligans, Saroj and Arpan come head to head in competition over Shila, vying to give her lifts on their bikes. Arpan wins, and takes Shila back and forth from the campus to her hostel on his new bike. Saroj retreats, bitterly resentful.
Then it’s Arpan’s mobile phone which drives the plot further. First, the chemistry grows between him and Shila. They kiss, but this simple display of affection and mutual attraction takes on a different light when Arpan captures it on his mobile phone. Shila begs him to delete it. He laughs: “What’s the big deal? I love looking at it when I’m alone at night.” Shila’s love for Arpan blurs her moral boundaries. She feels helpless. She half forgives him, and Arpan takes advantage and videos her struggling in his embrace. Shila plunges into deep depression and avoids his company. Arpan underestimates the damage he has done with his playful “theft” of their intimate moments. He resents her withdrawal and cannot see what he has done is wrong.
And all men kill the thing they love….,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with sword!
And so concludes Oscar Wilde in his The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The lines have some resonance in Nepal where intimacy outside marriage can end in tragedy all too easily. In our story, Arpan is “the coward” and almost kills the one he loves with a mobile phone.
Shila is close to suicide because he won’t delete the photo and video. Accepting that he has caused Shila immense pain is part of Arpan’s journey of self-discovery and maturity. For Shila, the story is about managing new freedoms that come with being a female student far away from home and free from parental control. Despite the need for greater equality between the sexes, we have to face the fact that managing new freedom and opportunity is harder for girls than boys. They may be competing in the same space – whether it’s school, university or the office – but the rules by which they are judged are skewed heavily in favor of boys.
We, in the drama unit of the BBC World Service Trust, like a happy ending. Nobody dies in our story; nobody goes to gaol, although both outcomes were considered in the early stages of developing the story. In the end, Arpan’s love is transformed from a careless obsession into something deeper and more enduring. By the end of the tale, it’s him who is ashamed, not Shila, but not before a twist in the tale. Just as he decides to delete the compromising record of their passion, he realizes he’s lost his mobile. It’s fallen in the hands of his jealous friend Saroj. And yes, folks, you are going to have to listen to the drama to find out what happens next.
This is a story that tries to capture the intense obsession young boys have with technology and how that can impact on their relationships. But it also touches on the debate about the misuse of the female image in a digital age. For a man, the image of a kiss may be titillating and empowering, but for a young woman in Nepal, it’s a step away from pornographic images of sexual perversity which are within reach of anyone prepared to pay 100 rupees in a Kathmandu Internet café to surf the Net. It’s all about boundaries. The question is: Can women define those boundaries for themselves and enforce them effectively against sexual predators?
You can hear Shila’s Tale in the drama series “Katha Mitho Sarangiko” on the BBC World Service Trust’s website bbcnepalidrama.com, and on your radio in Kathmandu Valley on BBC 103 FM every Friday evening at 8:15 pm, with highlights the following day at the same time.
Post note: In my last year at university, I can claim to have made a small technological advance when I acquired an old Remington typewriter; fellow students and teachers alike were impressed by my neatly typed essays. Armed with my Remington and a B.A., I had the opportunities my mother never had to do great things – and to make mistakes. I did both.
The writer is the Drama Editor at BBC World Service Trust Nepal.
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