I was born in a village in far west Nepal – a remote area near a jungle. There was just my mum, my dad and me when I was born, I had had two siblings but they had died in infancy. My family wasn’t bad to me – although of course we had some problems. My father was alcoholic, and behaved irresponsibly towards the family. He never harmed me or my mum, but he was harming himself. I ended up spending most of my early childhood with my mum.
I was only young but I had a deep feeling that I didn’t belong there. My parents tried to make me go to school but I didn’t want to go, I didn’t feel like I could learn anything there. Instead I would do more creative things. There was a time when I tore up a book to make a TV screen so I could pretend I was in a movie. I made a frame from pipes and used the book pages as rolling images and put a radio behind the screen – I even started charging the other village kids to come and watch the show, as there wasn’t a real TV in the village. My dad punished me for that. It wasn’t until much later when I understood the importance of that book – he had been trying to make good and had got his first ever job. The book was for his work.
