Bamkala the Brave

She was cooking food in the evening at the kitchen using a kerosene stove while her three-month-old baby wailed in a cot nearby. Suddenly she heard her neighbour's mobile phone ring and rushed to the neighbour's room. Bamkala heard her husband say, in a loving voice, "Kanchu! I think I will have to stay here for one more week as the doctor has not come yet." She put down the phone saying only, "Ok". It had already been two weeks since he had gone to Mumbai. The money earned in five years of marriage was slowly being drained in his treatment.

We listened in rapt attention as the tall, dark, slender woman with big, round eyes narrated this tale. We had the chance to meet Bamkala Khadka at her home in Dang nearly a month ago during our trip to the Mid-Western region. At first glance, nobody could tell that she had been infected with HIV. Looking at her sweet smile, her voice full of vigour and her courage which could render any sorrow into happiness, I sort of felt that nobody could be more beautiful than Bamkala didi.

It was only later that I realised that many sorrows were hiding behind her smiles. But her confidence that could defy all her grief was hidden from nobody. Bamkala then confided her story, sad and poignant, at her one-storey white mud house where I and my journalist friends Nitu Ghale and Arjun Poudel sat around her crammed kitchen, listening to her in rapt attention.

A 19-year-old Bamkala was preparing to get enrolled in the ninth grade after passing her eighth grade examinations in 2059 Bikram Samwat (2002 AD). She grew up under the tutelage of her only brother. Her father had passed away when she was still a child. Though her brother had registered her name for the ninth grade at a nearby school, her mother and her brother also secretly wished that Bamkala's bridegroom would be from a rich and prosperous family. They were in a hurry to get her married away soon.

A wrinkle settled on her forehead as she continued her story. "It was probably the 17th of the month of Baisakh. My brother-in-law broached the topic of marriage at home. A chhetri caste boy, working as a cook at a hotel in Mumbai, doesn't drink alcohol, earns comfortably around 6,000 Indian rupees a month, with plenty of extra bonus. Kanchi will stay as a queen if she gets married to this man."

When a respectable male member from the family, that too a brother-in-law, spoke highly of the marriage proposal, it soon became a decision. Bamkala's consent, however, was never sought. Her bother, too, left for abroad suggesting that she get married and live a happy life.

Pouring water from an aluminium utensil, she continued her story with a sombre face. "I still remember that day. Perhaps, the destiny was preparing to write my fate that I was going to be infected with HIV on that day of Baisakh 17, 2059." Ten days later, 19-year-old Bamkala got married to a 34-year-old man amidst an extravagant marriage ceremony.

Bamkala, though, was sad and unhappy. Her dream of passing the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exams had to be aborted. Her relatives and family members would coax her saying, "So what if you cannot touch the iron door of SLC, your husband will make many golden doors for you."

Bamkala herself thought, "Even if I am poor with no education, life would still be happy if we — husband and wife — became rich by earning money." Bamkala managed to come up with a suitable thought that convinced her about the marriage. Soon afterwards she went to Mumbai with her husband. Her husband used to give her his entire salary. Upon his advice, she returned to their home in Dang after two years.

After that, her husband came home once every month, bringing her gold ornaments every time. He made it a point to accumulate large quantities of gold for Bamkala. It was around the fourth year into their marriage when they had a baby boy.

Until then, her husband had looked fine. But soon afterwards, he started getting ill. He would suffer from diarrhoea continuously but never recover. Slowly, his Mumbai stay started to become sparse. After six months, frequency of hospital visits increased. Every time the illness became severe, he used to visit hospital alone. Bamkala would later ask him while in bed, "So, what illness is it husband?"

"Nothing has been found until now. Doctors have said that they would now have to do a thorough check up, from head to toes," he would say.

Bamkala used to wonder what machine it was that could conduct tests on an entire person from head to toe. Her husband used to answer, with a sheepish smile plastered across his face, "That will happen in Mumbai Hospital Kanchu, you will have to manage 80, 90 thousand Indian rupees, ok."

At that time she was 26. Her husband was 40. It had already been couple of years since the husband had left his job in the Mumbai hotel. He used to be troubled by fever quite regularly and would disappear to Mumbai every time the illness gripped him. He used to stay there at the hotel and then return home once the money got finished. "Doctor could not be available for the check up"- would always be the readymade answer Bamkala would get every time she asked about the Mumbai stay. He used to finish around 15-16,000 rupees each time at the hotel and then return back.

"I sold all of my jewellery — bangles, wedding necklace, rings — for my husband's treatment. Whatever he earned, everything got finished in his treatment. When he went, he did not even leave a single penny for me. Then I realised how wrong I was to think that I could be happy and live a prosperous life just by depending on a man," Bamkala said as she let out a loud sigh, "That, after all, turned out to be an illusion."

Her husband never told her about the HIV. She found out that he was infected with HIV only on Baisakh 2, 2067 when her husband, along with the same brother-in-law who earlier broached up the marriage proposal, went for check up at Rupediya of Nepalgunj. Then she realised why he used to go to Mumbai alone carrying money. Later, she came to know that when their marriage had taken place, her husband had been a HIV patient for 11 years. Her trust towards him vanished completely that day.

It was only then that Bamkala feared that she too might have contracted the virus from her husband. With the one-year-old daughter and the four-year-old son, she went to the Family Planning Association to get their bloods tested. The reports revealed that both she and her son had HIV, but the girl had been spared.

Four days later, her husband died. Bamkala shared everything with her neighbours, who for the most part remained supportive.

"My daughter was just one year old then. With no earning, job, property or a husband, I wondered how I could even survive."

She doesn't quite remember how many days or even months she went without food. His face, she said, hung around her eyes in the following days as she lost hope and felt desperate when people kept staring at her on the streets. "Everybody, I am sure, must have thought of me as a weak and helpless woman because my husband died of HIV/AIDS. And that used to trouble me."

Bamkala now wonders whether she would have contracted HIV if her family had not pressured her for marriage 11 years ago. She probably wouldn't have gotten married with the man had she been allowed to continue her study in the ninth grade. She probably would have studied more or gotten married to an educated man from the city, not having to face the consequences of a mistake she did not herself commit.

It is possible that anybody can get infected with HIV, but after reading Bamkala didi's tale, I have figured that nobody should take a risk with faith. It has become a necessity in today's world to get one's blood tested before marriage.

Bamkala remembers reading about HIV/AIDS during her childhood. She grew up hearing that people don't survive once they get HIV. The only fear then was about the possibility of shortened life. She, however, did not lose hope by reminding herself that everyone has to die one day, one way or the other.

But there was no income in the house. Eventually Bamkala picked up a job at the Community Care Centre in Dang which works for people infected with HIV. She now spends her entire time talking with HIV patients, for which she gets Rs 3,000 a month. She has no other source of income. But she has not lost her hope. She aims to provide confidence to as many HIV patients as possible. Anybody can guess how difficult it must be for Bamkala to manage her basic livelihood. She feels like crying when she sees girls of her age, young and highly educated, going to work. It is not HIV that has cheated her, she feels, but her family's lack of education.

"It is not my fate, but the lack of education has been unfortunate on my part. I would have been capable if I had received education. I could have gone a long way with better education," she says, contemplating, "Though there are lots of programmes for HIV infected people, being an uneducated woman, I can't perform bigger tasks."

"Didi, HIV infected people need to eat a lot of nutritious food. How do you manage? Is the diet enough?" I asked.

"Yes, we need to eat as much as we can afford. How could I, who has to earn and eat, afford to eat such nutritious food? Now my only aim is to help the HIV infected people so that they can live an easier life. My children's love is my diet," she said, gazing at her daughter, ruffling her unkempt hair.

Her small daughter doesn't know about her father's death. She often asks Bamkala, "Where has our father gone?" She tries to soothe her little child saying that her father has gone to the Almighty's place. Her daughter studies in UKG at a village school. "Right now, I am educating her even if I have to go without food. I would be grateful if somebody would finance her education."

"Never get married banking on your parents, and also never harbour a dream to live on your husband's support," she told me by way of a farewell; a message taken out of her own life.

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Nisha Rai is a Nepalese journalist.