My family had a very special Mother’s Day this year because we had our grandmother with us. Early in the morning, after exchanging tika, gifts and blessings, we were ready for some snaps. I didn’t want to ruin the photograph with my morning look, so I was behind the camera clicking pictures. Mummy was on hajuraama’s right and baba was seated to the left. To this, she objected and asked them to exchange positions. I was still sleepy-eyed and not at all concerned about the tiny conflict happening there. I was asking them to do things quickly so that I could go to sleep again. Baba was getting late for his work, so he too was in a hurry. But hajuraama wanted to click pictures in the correct way—that is, with her son to her right and her daughter-in-law to her left. My father claimed that these are the small reasons why daughter-in-laws are always supressed under the shadow of their husband. The mothers think their sons superior to their daughter-in-laws, so they want to keep them on the side of their stronger hand, the right hand, and the daughter-in-laws are always supposed to be on the left side. We won’t exchange our positions, because mummy is no less than baba, he said looking at me. I felt so proud. Hajuraama seemed convinced, but she was still reluctant, she was worried of what people would say if they noticed the positions were wrong, which they surely will. Her point was valid. “The people” were always there to comment. But, the positions were not exchanged and the pictures were taken. When baba was about to leave, I asked him whether his reason behind the seating position was truth or hearsay. He said he was not sure but I felt his reasoning was not a bad one.

Afterwards, I googled it and learned that the reason my father had given was not true. There was a really interesting reason behind the gendered seating position. Long ago, the right arm was considered as the sword arm of fighting men. Brides were kidnapped and stolen frequently, so in order to protect their bride, they would hold her with their left hand and fight off the attackers with the right hand. I really loved the reason, but in the present context, it is meaningless. No kidnapper is coming to kidnap your bride in the mandap among hundreds of people. But still, we strictly follow this rule because we have no reason to question it. Most people ignore the reason behind everyday rules believing simply that a rule, as long as it does not inconvenience them too much, must be followed. We never question the traditions we follow on an everyday basis because we generally don’t feel it is necessary to do so. Until a year ago, I didn’t know that we tied a doora on a cow’s tail every Laxmi Pooja so that it would help us cross the Baitarni River safely. There are reasons behind everything if we should look for them—the symbolism of red tika in Dashain and the multicoloured saptarangi tika in Tihar, the significance of Rishi Panchami and Naag Panchami, the stories behind the jatras we celebrate and many more. Every minute detail is deliberate and adheres to a larger framework but the problem is we tend to be ignorant of them. I know that most of these reasons are not very relevant in the present context and some of them are not even good. After all some traditions are discriminatory on the basis of gender, caste, etc. But in order to uproot these biases, we must first know about them and their context. Ignorance should not be an option, because if we ignore the reasoning behind customs, there is no chance that the customs will be followed by the upcoming generations. In this case, a degree of change might also be necessary for continuity but to change things we must first know them.

Nepal is very rich in cultural heritage. Our country is full of diverse customs and traditions that cannot be surmised by a few sentences on the answer sheets of social studies’ papers. Why don’t we make small efforts to know about our history and traditions? After all, the youth are the ones who will decide what is going to happen to our country. Our country is known for its cultural wealth, so we need to be responsible about that for the sake of future generations. Simply ignoring traditions because we do not agree with some of the ideas behind them will not do any good. Instead we should learn the framework behind customs and then propose viable changes. If we do not we will lose the wealth of traditions we currently possess. We need to be aware of our belongings and make sure we keep them safe.

Khadka is a 2 student at St Xavier’s College