It was a languorous winter Saturday morning in Kathmandu. Reluctant to leave a cosy bed and determined to take advantage of the holiday, I was tenaciously snuggling the soft blanket over my head when my mobile beeped. Irked, I unfurled my arm from the blanket, felt for the mobile on the window sill beside my bed and dragged it inside. The screen flashed the only phone number from Tipling. 

“Hello…hello... Father…?”  I recognised Lal’s shouting voice. Lal was my Tamang language teacher when I was in Tipling. His voice cracked and croaked in bits and pieces. “Prem…dying… she wants to see you. Come soon…” The phone line went dead and my repeated hellos did not bring it back to life.

My foggy mind started to clear. Prem was dying. How could that be?

I spoke with her only last week. Should I go to see her? My mind vacillated. I had other commitments for the weekend. But Prem had a very special place in my heart. I had to go to the village.

It took me four hours by a micro bus from Kathmandu to arrive in Dadhing Besi where the black-topped road ended. There I grabbed a quick lunch and immediately boarded a jeep that brought me through a steep and bumpy mountain path to Tharkha Phedi. There was no road beyond this point. Under normal circumstances, it was a two day walk from here to Tipling.

I started without delay and unencumbered by baggage soon settled into a fast rhythm. As I approached Jharlang, my destination for the night, the last rays of the west bound sun disappeared. The winter chill bit into my face. The shepherds had tethered their sheep under tarpaulin tents. One or two stray bulls still grazed on the brown fields. Thick white smoke oozed out of the cracks in the wooden roofs of the stone houses. Then night fell with a suddenness that startled me. I still had another hour of walking to do.

When I arrived at the inn, the innkeeper had retired. I knew him from my earlier sojourns to the place. He graciously invited me in. I was exhausted but sleep evaded me.

My mind wandered to Tipling and the life there…

Tipling was an enchanting place to behold. Directly north of Kathmandu, it nestled at an altitude of 7,000 feet. The village itself had the shape of a cupped hand with the eastern end creating a natural abyss. Below it the nascent Ankhu River danced down. Above it, rising to majestic heights, the Ganesh Himal range glistened lustrously. The immaculate fresh air, the effervescent clean water and the lush verdant forests with rhododendrons in full bloom gave one an experience of paradise.

But it was an extremely hostile terrain to live in. Besides the inaccessibility, there was nothing to eat there. Potato, the only crop that grew in such a harsh climate, was the staple food. With no newspapers, mobiles and television, contact with outside world was completely cut off. The only satellite phone in the village worked according to the whim and fancy of the weather. The village was in a time warp. It was as if you entered a world of primitive instincts and sensations…I drifted off to sleep.

Long before the break of dawn, I said good bye to the innkeeper. By 10 I was at the Ankhu River. From there it was an hour of steep climb to Tipling. On my first trip to Tipling two years ago, I had baptised this climb as ‘the green mile’, after two days of walk my legs had crawled here. The high altitude had made me pant for oxygen. The dizzying height had given me a lightness of mind causing me to want to sit and sleep after every step.

It was on this trail that I first met Prem. Half way up the green mile, unable to go further I was sitting on a chuatara—a resting place made of stones—when I saw a little girl with a heavy bundle of grass climbing up the same trail. Even though the load seemed a mountain on her back, she carried it effortlessly. Lifting the cloth tied around her waist to knee length, she rested her bundle on a raised stone platform near to where I was sitting, took off her head scarf and sponged her face. Then she went over to a natural sprout on the side of the hill from where cold water trickled. There she quenched her thirst and splashed some on her face.

“Namaste,” I said. She smiled and peered down the pass below. There was a single file of girls snaking up the narrow path carrying similar bundles. Prem showed no interest in talking to me. My teaching career had taught me a valuable lesson. Language is the window to a soul. I decided to try the little Tamang that I had picked up on the way.

“Khen chachuva?” I asked her. (Have you eaten?) It is an odd question to ask someone coming back to her home from work in the evening. But that is the Tamang way of asking, how are you?

This time she smiled and said, “Khen achaa.” (I have not eaten.)

I was happy to break the ice and talking in Nepali I introduced myself to her. When I told her that I was the new English teacher in the school and I was going to teach class 10 students, she looked very sad. She told me that she was not going to school anymore. I asked her why? She did not give me an answer.

By then the other girls had caught up with us. Chirpy and sprightly, their apple cheeks blushed red from the effort of carrying the load. They paid little attention to me and walked on. Hauling her heap on her back, Prem followed them.

As I watched the girls walk up

with Prem bringing up the rear, I was infused with an enthusiasm which was ineffable. They carried their burden easily and joyfully. Why couldn’t I be like them? It was an awakening. I knew interiorly that I had a mission there.

Later that day, I saw Prem again. It so happened that I was invited to her home for dinner by her father. Prem had a brother and a sister. All of us huddled around a small fire in the single room hut. The dancing flames of the fire created a shadow play of chewing faces and moving hands. It was fascinating to watch the lissome fingers of Prem peeling away the boiled potatoes with amazing dexterity. Again I asked her why she was not attending school. She refused to answer.

The next day was the first day of the new academic year. I was appalled at the conditions of the school. It consisted of a long single story building made of corrugated stones. The grey Chinese tin roofs were perforated with many holes that let light, sun, rain and snow into the classrooms. The only furniture in the classrooms was a couple of long planks of wood suspended on logs on both ends, in no order or shape. White boards were hung from threadbare ropes that creaked with every gush of wind. Only five students turned up for class that day.

In an effort to bring as many children as possible to school, I started visiting the houses in the village that week. In one of my visits, I entered the house of Lal Dai who later became my constant companion. He told me why Prem did not go to school anymore.

There is a strange culture in the village. When the girls reach puberty, they do not sleep in their parents’ homes at night. Three or four girls of the same age come together and sleep in one of their houses while parents are away in goths (cattle folds high up in the mountains). Boys do the same in their group. When the whole village is asleep, the boys sneak into the girls’ chamber and have sex with them, sometimes with consent but most of the time forcefully. It goes on until a girl finds herself pregnant. She then names one of the boys she likes—since there are several of them she will not know who impregnated her—as the father of the child. Their friends help the boy and girl to elope from the village. They spend three days in a far away goth and on the fourth day return to the village. Now they are formally considered as husband and wife.

Prem was impregnated at the age of fourteen. The boy whom she named refused to take responsibility. He would not elope with her. Prem’s parents offered a pitcher of distilled raksi (liquor) to the boy’s parents, begging them to accept her as their daughter-in-law. His parents did not relent. Prem left school and started working in the field with her parents. She had a miscarriage and lost the baby and her future.

I persuaded Prem to come to school to start life anew. I convinced her that at the age of fifteen, life had not ended for her and that she had a mission in the village to protect the younger ones from this terrible and abusive culture. After much persistent persuasion, she returned to school. At the end of my two years, she was the school captain of the girls. She earned the first rank in class nine and was looking forward to starting class ten when I was transferred from the village school to Kathmandu.

…

I trudged to the top of the green mile. The sight of the village quickened my pace. An eerie silence hovered over the place. Clusters of people huddled together and spoke in hushed voices. “Father khaji…father khaji…,” (father has come…father has come…) whispered some. Lal was waiting for me at his house. Resting my knapsack I asked him where Prem was. “She is at the health post,” he replied with a stubborn sadness. It was another thirty minutes walk up the village.

I ran up there in ten minutes. Lal came along. On the way he told me what happened to Prem.  Prem was sleeping at her friend’s house. Prem’s younger sister and two other girls were with her. At around midnight, three boys forced open the door of the house and entered their room. Prem protested. One of the boys attacked her with his khukuri knife. The other girls yelled and screamed. The boys fled. Prem had several deep slashes on her forearms and shoulders and one fatal gash on the left side of her head.

As I arrived at the health post, I saw Prem’s brother and father standing outside of the only sick room. A large crowd had gathered on the lawn. I dashed into the room. Prem was draped in a black blanket—only her face smeared and oozing with blood was visible.

Prem must have sensed my presence. She opened her eyes. I saw a glint of recognition. A weak smile appeared on her lips. Her eyes motioned me to go nearer. I knelt down and put my head close to hers. With the greatest struggle she whispered, “Father, you taught me to be a good girl...you told me that my life had a purpose…you told me I could make a difference…see father…I saved my sisters… I am good, no, father?”

Tears trickled down from my eyes. “God, save this brave girl,” I cried.

Prem shut her eyes but was still breathing. There was still time. I sprinted down to the village. The phone was miraculously working. I called my friend who owned a helicopter company. He agreed to make the trip to Tipling free of charge. The helicopter landed in half an hour. I watched her take off with her parents into the clear sky leaving only a thin white smoke behind.

Jose is chief of the Creative Writing Department at St Xavier’s College