As Mishal got closer to 14 or 15 years old, her relatives pressured her to marry, and after a few years, Mishal ran away to Kathmandu. Once in Kathmandu, Mishal reconnected with Steve LeClerq, a former American Peace Corps volunteer who had been very close with her father in Taplejung, when she was a small girl. He agreed to pay her college fees when Mishal joined the IEC School of Art and Fashion. But Steve's support wasn't enough to cover all of her expenses, so she sought work on her own. "When you first go look for a job, they say, 'Okay, I'll think about it'," Mishal explains. "But then they ask for your number and they call you and say, 'Let's go to Nagarkot, to spend the night,' or 'Let's go to Pokhara.' And if you say no, then you can't get the job." With each job she applied for, her prospective bosses offered the same propositions, and Mishal began to feel guiltier about not being able to support herself. One evening, about three years ago, Mishal was exasperated after a fight with her landlord over the rent, and she started to seriously think about what she would have to sacrifice to find a job. "I thought about that, but I couldn't sell myself," Mishal says. "I'd be just like a prostitute. And I can't live like a prostitute, because my heart won't let me. All night I thought about that, and all of a sudden that morning, it happened. I didn't even know what I was doing." As the dawn sky was beginning to break, and a hint of red splashed across the sky, Mishal left her house and walked to five or six different pharmacies. At each shop, she bought as much D-Cold, a cough medicine, as the pharmacist would give her, though a few of them wouldn't sell her any at all. Then she walked to a friend's house with 40 D-Cold tablets in her hand. "And I didn't even know what I was doing. I ate them all in one gulp and fell asleep," Mishal remembers. "They took me to the hospital. And after four or five days, I opened my eyes."
Once in Kathmandu, Mishal Moktan reconnected with Steve LeClerq, a former American Peace Corps volunteer who had been very close with her father in Taplejung, when she was a small girl who agreed to pay her college fees when Mishal joined the IEC School of Art and Fashion
Bans Justai Ling-Ringa
A young woman’s struggle to come to terms with life in Kathmandu and her body.
by TEXT AND PICTURES BY LIZ LANCE
FROM ISSUE # 161 (May 2009)
With a height of just over five feet, and weighing in at barely 41 kg, 23-year-old Mishal Moktan looks like she could be picked up and blown away by the next gust of spring wind sweeping down into the Valley. But inside that tiny, thin frame is a spirit of persistence and ambition, that belies her tumultuous past and hints at a more successful future.
"If I need to buy bangles, I can't find any that fit, because my hands are really small," Mishal says. "Because I'm so small and thin, they call me murali."
But Mishal wasn't always a 41-kg murali. She grew up in Taplejung in eastern Nepal, and estimates her weight before she came to Kathmandu was closer to 60 or 65 kg. Her mother, an alcoholic, left her family when she was studying in class 2, and from then on, she was passed back and forth between different relatives' homes in Taplejung, Dhankuta and Dharan. Mishal wasn't able to go out on her own and was made to do a lot of work, which she says is why she was so fat then.
"When I lived in the village, I had to do a lot of work, so I ate a lot and my body became bigger," she explains. "I had to carry big, heavy loads, and go to the jungle to cut grass and carry firewood. I was very, very fat."
As Mishal got closer to 14 or 15 years old, her relatives pressured her to marry, and after a few years, Mishal ran away to Kathmandu. Once in Kathmandu, Mishal reconnected with Steve LeClerq, a former American Peace Corps volunteer who had been very close with her father in Taplejung, when she was a small girl. He agreed to pay her college fees when Mishal joined the IEC School of Art and Fashion. But Steve's support wasn't enough to cover all of her expenses, so she sought work on her own.
"When you first go look for a job, they say, 'Okay, I'll think about it'," Mishal explains. "But then they ask for your number and they call you and say, 'Let's go to Nagarkot, to spend the night,' or 'Let's go to Pokhara.' And if you say no, then you can't get the job."
With each job she applied for, her prospective bosses offered the same propositions, and Mishal began to feel guiltier about not being able to support herself. One evening, about three years ago, Mishal was exasperated after a fight with her landlord over the rent, and she started to seriously think about what she would have to sacrifice to find a job.
"I thought about that, but I couldn't sell myself," Mishal says. "I'd be just like a prostitute. And I can't live like a prostitute, because my heart won't let me. All night I thought about that, and all of a sudden that morning, it happened. I didn't even know what I was doing."
As the dawn sky was beginning to break, and a hint of red splashed across the sky, Mishal left her house and walked to five or six different pharmacies. At each shop, she bought as much D-Cold, a cough medicine, as the pharmacist would give her, though a few of them wouldn't sell her any at all. Then she walked to a friend's house with 40 D-Cold tablets in her hand.
"And I didn't even know what I was doing. I ate them all in one gulp and fell asleep," Mishal remembers. "They took me to the hospital. And after four or five days, I opened my eyes."
It is with a matter-of-fact voice that Mishal describes her suicide attempt and how her life has changed since then. She still lives alone, though with additional financial support from Steve. Despite that extra support, Mishal continued to suffer from general malaise and a lack of confidence, spending a lot of time alone in her room crying. The depression she went through was also manifested in her diet.
"I only ate Rara noodles, and after eating the noodles, I wouldn't need to cook anything else. I only ate rice once in two or three days and I got ulcers in my stomach. I studied a lot, so I wouldn't be hungry."
After eating that way for over a year, Mishal's weight dropped by 20 kg, and she became the murali that people describe her as now. Despite her contention that she never sought to lose weight, but instead became thin after her suicide attempt and unbalanced diet, Mishal is still picky about her food. She recites a long list of things she cannot eat, from milk tea to spicy, oily foods. When offered a beverage, more often than not she'll refuse soda and simply drink hot water or black tea. At the college tea break, while her friends are gobbling down momos, chowmein and pakodas, Mishal sips lightly from a glass of black tea, refusing bites offered to her.
She insists she is trying to gain weight again now and steps into Tip Top Sweets for a samosa, or eats a plate of momos from a vendor near Sundhara often contradicting her self-imposed list of banned foods. "Before, when I was very fat, I did want to become thin, but I never wanted to become incredibly thin," she says. "But now I know I really need to gain some weight."
But it's hard to distinguish what she really thinks from what she wants other people to believe that she thinks. Most women, though, would offer up that same contradiction – knowing they should be happy with their weight as it is, but wanting to lose weight anyway, even if they're not fat to begin with. Media across the world primarily offer up artificially perfected images of women. It is almost exclusively thin women who star in movies and on television and who are featured in the society pages of magazines with rich and handsome husbands. If women believe the media, then they could very well believe that only thin women can be happy and successful.
"In Kathmandu, 50 or 60 per cent of girls and women want to become thin," Mishal estimates. "In my experience, most of the people I meet all want to become thin because it's fashionable. They look at the bodies of models and actresses all of whom are thin and slender, and want the same."
So when Mishal says she wants to gain weight, it's hard to know if she means it. That said, Mishal's argument for gaining weight is strong. She thinks she has become very weak since she became thin and now characterises her efforts to gain weight as a move towards a healthier lifestyle by doing yoga and other exercises.
Sitting in her room one night during load shedding, Mishal spreads out a stack of photographs, many from before she lost weight. Looking at one photo after another by candlelight, Mishal points out the plump cheeks and curvier hips she used to have. "After losing all of this weight, I'm worried. Everyone tells me I'm too skinny and need to gain weight."
"Moreover, when you're slim, you catch a cold and cough faster. Before, when I was fat, I never got sick," Mishal says. "Now, the cold gets to me which makes it difficult. I think it's better for the body to be healthy than weak. It's good to be fat."
Beyond her weight, Mishal has a host of other complaints about her body, picking it apart piece by piece, and avoiding looking at mirrors as much as she can. While preparing for a magazine photo shoot recently, Mishal sat in front of a wall of mirrors for over an hour while a stylist applied her makeup and fixed her hair. That was the most uncomfortable part of the experience for her, saying she gets mad at herself if she looks in the mirror too much.
"I'm not that satisfied with my body," Mishal says, "and I'm also not that satisfied with my face. When you look at everyone's face, it seems like they all are in order but I don't like my external shape or structure. When I look in the mirror, I think that I look skinny, like a tall, thin bamboo shoot."
Mishal also remains dissatisfied with her skin, and says she wants to be darker rather than fairer. She recounts a story about not even being able to see her face in a group photograph from her school days because her skin was so white then. And once again, she insists that it's better to be dark than to be fair. But still she wears Oil of Olay whitening cream every morning before leaving the house.
In Mishal's rented ground-floor room in New Baneshwor, late-morning light filters in through the west-facing windows, illuminating the peach-coloured walls and the glass-door cabinets crammed with knick-knacks, cosmetics and dishes. Buddhi Man Tamang sits on a floor cushion with his back against the wall, waiting for his daughter
to return.
In a burst of energy, Mishal comes through the front door and into the room, slinging a compact grey suitcase onto the floor next to a red one of the same size. "Jashu, where have you been?" he asks his daughter without looking directly at her, using the name her family and friends call her. "It's time to go to the airport."
"I had to go to the bank to get traveller's checks," she replies, criss-crossing the small room multiple times, showing off her new passport, flinging clothes and Wai Wai packets into the grey suitcase, and shovelling freshly made mulako achaar into a plastic bag to deliver to her cousin-brother in Singapore. Once the achaar is sealed in plastic and tucked into the suitcase, Mishal settles down into a corner to eat lunch.
Mishal finally has the closest thing she's ever had to a real job, and it's also taking her abroad for the first time. With her friend Babi and Babi's brother-in-law, Manoj Yadav, Mishal will spend a month in Singapore and Malaysia co-ordinating and designing costumes for a series of music performances targeted at the Nepali expatriate communities there. Her initial flight to Bangkok leaves in less than three hours, and she is a flurry of nervous energy.
The first one to get to the airport, she checks in at the Thai Airways counter by herself and sits down with her boarding passes, e-ticket and passport in hand to wait for her two travelling companions. While sucking on a lollipop, Mishal keeps an eye on the individuals around her, shaking her crossed leg impatiently and cracking her knuckles, revealing the nervousness that sits just underneath her confident veneer. Every 30 seconds or so, she stares at her mobile phone, willing it to ring, until it finally does. Babi arrives at the security and is soon followed by Manoj.
Along with the two latecomers, Mishal rushes off towards the escalator that will take them through immigration and into the upstairs departure lounge. Mishal pauses at the bottom of the escalator long enough to promise that she'll eat a lot when she's in Singapore and Malaysia. Then she is gone.
"There is a big difference between the old me and new me," Mishal says, and reiterates that it's not based on the 20kg weight difference. "Now I feel I could beat up two or three boys by myself if they gave me trouble. I am more confident." Since arriving in Kathmandu at 18, Mishal has entered a different world than the one she grew up in. As a child, she believed her relatives when they told her that you could get pregnant by holding hands with a boy. She wasn't allowed to watch television or talk to many people, and thus was quite shy. "My friends in Kathmandu have helped me a lot, by explaining things to me. But I learned many things on my own, too," Mishal says.
An independent young woman living alone in Kathmandu is still quite an anomaly and often the subject of persecution. But Mishal believes that despite the negativity she has encountered, she hasn't strayed from her path. She is determined to find legitimate work, finish college and support herself without compromising her dignity. Her current project in Singapore is a step in that direction, and one that will likely deliver her back to Kathmandu with ever-increasing confidence.
"Confidence isn't related to weight at all. It's something that happens in the mind," Mishal says. "Weight doesn't make any difference at all."
Liz Lance is an American writer and photographer who received a Fulbright fellowship to research beauty and body image among women since her return to Nepal in August 2008.
Liz is showcasing her photo exhibition titled Fair and Lovely? Beauty Lies in Nepal on beauty and body image among young women from 29 May–7 June at Indigo Gallery, Naxal, Kathmandu. For more information call 4413580.
The same exhibition will also be showcased at the Nepal Art Council, Babar Mahal from 12 June– 18 June. For more information call 4220735.
