As a child Maya Devi Maharaya always looked up to her parents, but they left her. She married thrice, believing each of her husbands would take good care of her. But they all abandoned her too. Now in her fifties, she relies on God. Will He stand by her or leave her like everyone else in her life? She´s not sure.
Maya, who never went to school, is an ordinary woman who suffered an extraordinary series of "unfortunate events", in her own words.
Born to a Karki family, Maya’s mother passed away when she was just seven, a year after she married a 12-year-old Chhetri boy from her village in the far-western Kalikot district in Nepal. A year later, the teenage husband took another wife and later tried to strangle her.
Maya had had enough and so went back to her father´s home. A year or so later her father died, leaving her, along with her two brothers and two sisters, orphans. "In the span of two years, we lost everything precious to us. Our parents died. Our cattle (goats and buffalos) died. We only had a small house left," she says oddly, in a typical far-western accent.
After her father´s death, Maya’s relatives suggested she go and live with her husband, who still had a second wife. His family was well-to-do in the village, and she was told she could live a comfortable life there. She didn´t oblige, and instead decided to begin the struggle to start taking care of her siblings.
But each died one after the other. One day, Maya made the conscious decision to leave her village as she no longer had any reason to stay back.
She left for Bardiya at 16 to live a life of her own, but soon realized living a solitary life in an alien place was not an easy task, "especially if you are a woman."
"All the people try to take advantage of you in their own ways, own terms," she says.
As she learned to dodge the complexities of life and its tribulations, an Adhikari boy man walked into her life. The two eloped and soon had a baby boy. After some time, they managed to buy a small piece of land, with their Rs 11,000 savings.
"We didn´t have anything fancy but a modest place to live in. We were living a comfortable life," she says. That was when she felt all "the evil spirits" that had been bothering her all her life were gone for good. But she was wrong. Ill fortune struck again. Her husband of 14 years died.
The "evil spirit" had not left her. It was just taking a break. She realized this fully when the land, which she and her husband had bought was confiscated by "people with ill intentions."
"As I was not legally married to my second husband, they says I couldn´t lay claim to the land. Period. I had to let it be," she says, calling her the most unlucky woman without any cherished memories in her life.
Bikash Karki
It was then Maya found out herself a squatter.
As she was learning the tricks of living a vagabond life, another man came into her life. This time it was her brother-in-law. "After my cousin´s death, he was all alone with one son and was looking for a partner to live with," she says. One day he proposed and Maya accepted. The couple later had a daughter and son. But four years later, her third husband also died.
"You know, I have bad karma. I was born with one," a very superstitious Maya says. "My family knew about it too. But since I was a female child, they didn´t think it was necessary to hold a religious ceremony to prevent it from haunting me." If her family, according to Maya, had made a "human structure of cow dung", and performed the religious rites to rid her of bad karma and evil, "I probably would have lived a less torturous life."
After the death of her third husband, Maya moved to Kathmandu. In the first six months, she spent her days begging along with her son, and her daughter who was suffering from polio. "We collected 22,000 rupees," she says. "People advised me to set up a flower shop in front of Bhadrakali temple."
She followed their advice, and for the past 16 years, the temple, in the heart of the capital, has been the bread and butter for this self-described "extremely unlucky woman."
Her daily routine nowadays is to wake up at 4am, come to temple, sell flowers the whole day, chat with other flower sellers, and then leave around 8pm.
“I definitely want to do something better. I don’t know what, but some other thing. But this profession is also not bad either,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes.
Bikash Karki
Nowadays, Maya earns around Rs 500 on weekends or days there is an influx of devotees. “On other days I earn around 150 rupees. That´s enough to pay the rent and other utility bills," she says.
But her fingers are always crossed for improved fortune. "The past haunts me and I don´t have a secure future. One unexpected illness can wreck my life. That´s why I don´t have peace of mind," Maya, a bronchitis patient who looks older than her age, says.
But she has faith in God. "He´s our savior," she says, showing a pendant with a picture of a not-so-old man. "I don’t know his name, but he´s Maharaja. I don´t think he´ll betray me."
Unreported Lives is a weekly column for stories of ordinary people and their daily lives which often go unnoticed. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.
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