I love the beauty of the Nepalese culture but feel I cannot respect many aspects of it anymore, mainly our religious views. Someone once asked a friend of mine after they saw his religious views on facebook had changed to atheist, when he had become one. My friend's answer " Since I could think on my own." My thought - damn thats a good answer and since then I too have chosen to think more on my own rather than absorbing blindly and fearing something for nothing. More than anything I have started to see the wrongs in our culture. Today’s topic is the kumari.

While I fear the backlash that this might bring towards me, I will boldly go out and say this. I do not like the idea of the Kumari. Its wonderful to think about the this concept of a living god and that she exists in our country, I feel we definitely have nothing to be proud of regarding this matter. I went there once, to the Kumari house. I was very young myself and can only remember fragments of it. I remember the architecture, the jewelry, the color red. This little girl “blessed” me and then hopped towards some elderly people (probably parents). I still can’t really make sense of what was it I am supposed to feel to this day. She is like any other human being and to think of her as some avatar of another god has become simply nonsense to me. The chosen girl is simply a little girl who has no say to what is going on and is taken away from a childhood she so deserves. The little girl works the role for so many years and is simply put aside with nothing. Well not nothing, she is put aside with limitations again like not being able to marry being one. My views could have been different if the respect and love she was given as a child would be continued in a humanly manner, but alas. Use and throw, thats what this role is. Would you choose such a life?

I believe in humanity and what I see in this is whole concept of the Kumari is inhumane and that is one of the aspects of the Nepali culture I cannot respect anymore.