I vividly remember my Health and Physical Education teacher arguing with us to talk about puberty and sex freely with our peers and parents. [break]
To talk to friends about sex and the curiosity that arises with it is a lot easier but not with our parents.
Recently, my mother found a condom inside my pocket while doing the laundry. She flashed the condom to me and asked for an explanation. While I was collecting my thoughts on how to persuade my mom, her first words were “mero chhora bigriyo” as tears rolled down her face.
In despair, I tried consoling my mom and out of nowhere she started cursing herself for not having me raised properly. Later that night, my father had a similar reaction, “mero chhora bigriyo.”
I tried my level best to convince them and I made references to the learning in my health classes but there was no change in the level of my parents’ awareness.
I had conducted several awareness campaigns and had successfully raised awareness on several issues but sadly I was not able to convince my own parents who are literate, educated and are respected in their fields but they did not even try to comprehend with me to understand that carrying condom is not a bad thing and it does not simply imply that just by carrying it, I was a bad person.
When I shared my story with my friends, I found out that they had gone through the same experiences. One friend was thrashed by his father when he found that he had a girlfriend who was not from the same caste.
Our parents are educated, have experienced life more than us but still fail to understand our situations. We are forced to get education which has little or no practical value in our life at all.
Even when we have the chance to learn, we are condemned by our own society. I was just curious and wanted to know how a condom looked like and when I tried explaining that and discuss freely about sex with my parents, all I got was a big tight slap. Being a teenager in a Nepali society is not really easy.
Our parents have high expectations of us but we share different dreams. Juggling between the traditional values and modernized thinking, I think my generation is sandwiched in between.
Is it the social upbringing or the ignorance of my parents that I had to face such a harsh time for a simple thing? Whatever the reason, the social drift won’t succeed until our educated population becomes aware and stop complaining on petty issues such as inter-caste marriage and the use of condom.
The writer is an A-Level student at Chelsea International Academy in Kathmandu.
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