Lhakpa Phuti Sherpa
I was born at the home of my mother’s parents.
When I was born, Father was away to Jainagar of India on some business mission. Seeing that there was no one to attend to my mother’s needs, she had been taken to her parents’.
And I happened to be born at such a time.
Mother often says, I was half her son and half daughter. I was rendered a daughter by someone’s transgression.
In Sherpa community, one can hear much hearsay connected with one’s prenatal life. My birth too was connected with one of such hearsays.
I am the first child of my parents. I was born in the bright fortnight when the Lhosar Festival was round the air.
My mother told me later, I myself discovered the date of my birth by checking a number of calendars. I was born on Wednesday, the 5th of February, 1964. Initially, I found it quite a task to convince my mother about my date of birth.
The elderly men and women of our village too had made many speculations about my birth date, day and time.
Later, the calendar came in handy. I was by all means successful in finding it out. I informed my French friend Martin Duchet—a teacher by profession—about the difficulty I had faced in ascertaining my date of birth. Following this, she found me a calendar of 1964 that clearly mentioned dates, bright and dark lunar fortnights and everything else in detail. This proved extremely instrumental in helping me find my date and time of birth.
Duchet did me an invaluable favor!
Altogether, my mother gave birth to nine children: five sons and four daughters. In my turn, my grandparents had pined for a grandson, but I appeared as a daughter. The third child after me was a sister. A brother born in between died early.
After my brother was born, it somehow occurred to me that he was receiving more love. Whenever Mother carried him, I grew rather envious. I even asked why Mother had begotten him, after all!
I fumed badly within, as I thought, my parents were slighting me.
I also often fell out with Brother, though he was the one I mixed up with, most intimately. At present, I am in extremely lovable terms with him. We are exceptionally close to each other. As long as we were kids, we quarreled quite often, only to pine for one another a short while later. However, I didn’t like his habit of secretly reporting everything to our parents. Many times, his reporting earned me good chidings from my parents.
However, Brother was among the best students of the village school. Sitting close to the fireplace, he often recalled his lessons and wrote on the floor with his fingers.
I can still remember those lively things vividly.
I was born in the hinterland—an extremely remote place. Though my parents were uneducated, I credit them for teaching me many a thing from their experiences. More than theoretical stuffs, they taught me practical lessons in unforgettable ways.
It was my father’s lesson that we should work; he taught us that labor helped us make life comfortable. I still recall my parents teach that we should never waste our times gossiping about others .
I consider myself extremely lucky to be born as a daughter to my parents. In my next life as well, I would love to be born as the daughter of the same parents.
The lesson of honesty my father Phurba Gyalzen and mother Dawa Lhamu taught is the wisdom of highest order for me.
Even at this age, I always remember those things. I am always mindful of the moral lessons that I should never be a cause of harm to my society, to any individual or to my nation.
The moral lessons my parents imparted have also deeply influenced my brothers and sisters as well. Though they are younger to me, they have always helped me distinguish the right from the wrong. Many times, their suggestions have helped me redeem the mistakes I have unknowingly made.
I am of the opinion that though our parents didn’t acquire formal education, they were blessed with many invaluable ideas. Their highly knowledgeable and practical lessons could acculturate their children with a lot of knowledge.
At present, I see our society quite lagging in this regard. I have seen many children confused and spoilt for want of their parents’ proper mentoring and guardianship.
My mother happened to have endured four-day labor to beget me. I was born in a cottage outside the main building of our house on a frost-bitten night. My mother had to bear untellable agony. When I gave birth to my own son, I realized that one should never talk back to one’s mother.
As a child, I was of stubborn nature. At any rate, I had to posses the thing I demanded, wished for, or searched. My nature deeply saddened my mother many a time.
Lama Wangchhu, the astrologer who read my mother’s horoscope had said, “Your first child will be extremely wise and good-natured. Never slight this child God has given you. Never scold her.” But upon finding me quite opposite to what the Lama had prophesized, Mother often said, “Why don’t those predications match in your case?”
My mother is sixty-eight at present, and father somewhere around seventy-four. My father is still extremely laborious. During mountaineering season, he goes to the Himalayas guiding the tourists, while in other months he takes care of plowing, farming, animal-rearing and the like. Mother is of independent nature; she loves to do everything by herself.
In the farm too, Mother enters ahead of anyone else. I remember my parents advise me quite often: “The shrewd women do not work; they make others work, and they enjoy the fruit.”
My father is an extremely simple man and spiritual and hard-working in nature. Even these days, he equally shares his hands in kitchen chores. The stuffs he cooks are extremely tasty. It has been five to seven years since he has stopped climbing the mountains with the tourists.
Even at present, my parents are living the same life of simplicity and guiltlessness in Mushey, our village below Lukla.
—o—
(An excerpt from Sherpa’s book Forty Years in the Mountains)
[Lhakpa Phuti Sherpa is a Nepali mountaineer and guide. She was a part of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s contingent on the way to Everest. Phuti has authored two books: Himalma Chalis Barsha (Forty Years in the Mountains), a memoir, and Himalki Chhori (Daughter of the Mountains) a novel. She is the former Chairperson of Nepal Mountaineering Academy.]