Our Forgotten Cultures

About the Author

Bina Sharma is an MBA alumna of the University of New Brunswick, Canada. With a keen interest in research and development, she is a social entrepreneur, author, and a Google scholar. She was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. She left Nepal at the age of 25 and eventually settled in Fredericton, NB, with her husband and children, becoming the first family in the province from Nepal. She is affiliated with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and the Research Institute.

Dedication

In memory of my mother, Nanda Kumari, and my father-in-law, Padma Lal.

Copyright Information ©

Bina Sharma 2025

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

Ordering Information

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Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Sharma, Bina

Our Forgotten Cultures

ISBN 9798891555655 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798891555662 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024909510

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2025

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

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New York, NY 10005

USA

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20250115

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank my husband, Dev, our children, Lisa, Jenny, and Kumar. My sincere thanks extend to relatives on both sides of our family for sharing their memories and experiences with me.

Preface

This book is focused on what happened in our family during the year 2006. This is the year my mother had finally visited us in Canada, after years of pleading. It was Christmas time. All three of our children: Lisa, Jenny and Kumar, had come home for the holidays. It was also the very year Kumar quitted his programs from McGill University. This was after Lisa had dropped off from her PhD program and Jenny from her undergraduate studies.

My mother came from a highly educated family and was proud of her heritage. Knowing all that, I couldn’t tell my mother what our children had done. She was a smart lady. She suspected everything wasn’t alright in the family, but she couldn’t pinpoint I was living on the edge.

Dev, my husband, blamed me for our children’s drop off and I blamed him for the same reason. In his view, I was the stay-home (most of the time) mother. It was my duty to make sure our children did well in schools. My arguments were that I raised them well up to the elementary level (they all were ‘A’ students, then). After that Dev was supposed to guide them. After all, he was the ‘educated’ one, and that was one of the reasons I married him.

Dev is a pure academician. He has been alleged for not being ‘practical’ by our relatives. In some relatives’ eyes he is also disrespectful to his motherland and the culture of our ancestors. I have also been called names. Going back to school to educate myself at the age of 43 was wrong in their eyes. They told our relatives back home that I was ‘competing’ with my husband!

I was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. Dev was born in Bhojpur (a remote village in eastern Nepal). He left his village when he was 13 years old for better education. He left Nepal for the US to pursue his PhD program at the age of 26. I joined him two years later. I was 25 years old then.

We’ve three grown-up children. They were born in three different countries. We all took Canadian citizenship nearly 40 years ago. That hasn’t stopped some people asking us, Where are you from? Because of the color of our skin and the accent on our tongue (in my husband’s case), I suppose our family is Canadian only partially.

Nepal has changed dramatically since we left the country, 46/44 years ago. Maoist government came to power from the backdoor in 2006—overthrowing the 240 years of absolute monarchy systems. Maoist culture is more like the ‘mob’ culture. Their government, like the mobs, changed Nepal’s socio-political systems overnight! As a result, the Nepalese lost their long standing reputation of being, honest, loyal and ‘unsophisticated Gurkhali’ on the world’s stage.

Now, most Nepalese take education as a tool to make money, relative to take advantage from, and religion/faith either to belong to (for their own comfort) or to pass time. In my last visit to Nepal, I noticed even the elites of Nepal passively talking about their socio-political problems, but not actively trying to change them. Similarly, I saw people visiting pilgrimages and donating money more than ever before to impress others, but ignoring the needy next door.

The recent visa scandal¹ in Nepal partly explains the reputation of Nepal now, which is anything but loyal. This scandal also explains how desperate some Nepalese are to flee from their homeland and how dangerous routes some them have taken (and still taking). This phenomenon is nicely depicted in Krishna Dharabasi’s fictional book, Tallo Bato (तल्लो बाटो).

Our Forgotten Cultures is an immigrant woman’s candid story. But this memoir is much more than that. For instance, this book covers issues such as patriarchy, sexism, homo/transphobia, and school/workplace race/gender/age-based discriminations. Other themes covered in this book are immigration, education, politics, cultures, parenting, personal finances, and retirement plans. A true memoir usually ends on positive notes (to offer hope to the readers). This is what I have aspired to do in this memoir.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/24/ex-nepal-ministers-among-30-charged-in-us-bound-refugee-scam↩︎

Our Forgotten Cultures

One of our relatives vilified Dev in public for not keeping up with the Nepali traditions. That prompted a few other hurtful identity abuses that my family members had to endure. Another relative spread a rumor back home that Dev and I quarrel all the time. Our families asked, Are you two separating? The third relative made impolite remarks about our children and complained with Dev that I didn’t pick up the dirty plates after her husband.

These are the relatives my husband and I had invested in the most, while they were still back home, and after emigrating to Canada. From filling out application forms for a variety of purposes to admissions to schools and/or universities, they depended on us. Some of them stayed with us a few days/weeks, and over a year. We drove them everywhere and helped them set up their initial systems (rental place, bank accounts, phones, etc.). We shared our experiences with them and treated them like our own children. In some cases, we treated them better than our children to make them feel good!

For instance, Dev constantly assured them: It takes time to find out things, but everything will be fine soon. He encouraged their children by telling, There is no limit to what you can achieve in this land of opportunity. Dev never said these things to our children when they were growing up.

Dev and I carry most of the values our parents taught us (they were honest, hardworking and never took anything for granted). They spoke modestly and helped others when they could. We thought those were good qualities to imitate.

For instance, Dev had an opportunity to receive a new suit as an award for free if he had applied for them when he was a graduate student in Nepal. The award was established for students like him, who achieved high marks in exams despite the financial hardship in the family. But he didn’t. He told me later that he was working all night for Nepal Telecom Ltd, while attending Tribhuvan University during those days. He could have enjoyed the ‘fancy-suit’ he never had. A few years later, one of his fairly rich relatives lied about his financial situation and got the suit.

However, that sort of habit had made our people think that we had unlimited time and money for disposal. But that wasn’t the case. We were both working hard with no bank balance and raising our young adult children. People don’t know that Dev usually goes to bed at midnight. He goes to bed even later on the nights he works for someone else’s paper or other documents. When he has more work than he can handle, he complains.

Dev’s modesty in dealing with people is often misconstrued by many. For instance, when someone asks Dev’s advice, money, or recommendation/correction, he provides these things right away, often with a great enthusiasm. His eagerness to help others has created a lot of stress for him, and squarely onto me also!

Dev also lends money easily to people who ask for his help, remembering our own difficulties when we didn’t have much. For instance, someone would tell Dev that he/she couldn’t purchase certain things that required credit card payment. He would right away offer his card to them, thinking that it’s just a matter of a few days/months then he would be paid back. The borrower, on the other hand, would have a very different idea. This sort of misunderstanding has happened more than once, and we have lost our relationships with more than a couple of relatives.

Dev and I have been asked money for free, as a loan, and/or to sign on a house or car loans, not just by our relatives, but even by someone we barely know. They say it wouldn’t cost us a penny. It’s just to fulfil the bank requirement. So, their intension may not been to cheat us, but they definitely didn’t understand the implications of signing on those loans on us!

During the Christmas of 2006, my mother finally came to visit us after years of pleading for her to come. It was the very year our son, Kumar, decided to quit his Arts and Science double major from McGill University. This was after Lisa, our elder daughter, had dropped off from her PhD program as a biologist in pursuit of another career and Jenny, our second daughter, had done similar things for another reason. Jenny had moved from the Forestry Science and Environment Management programs to psychology a few years earlier.

All three children had come home for Christmas that year. I was hoping they would spend some quality time with their grandmother.

We were all having a good time when, one evening at the dinner table, our son dropped a bomb: I know some of your friends’ children are in med schools and others are doing something noble in Nepali culture. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I know I’m smarter than them. Dev and I looked at each other. We didn’t know what was coming. He continued, They’re walking on a road many people have walked before, but I want to travel where not many have travelled—a new road, you know?

Lisa and Jenny probably knew about their brother’s plan. The three of them were very close and had been sharing their feelings/news. They hadn’t given us any clue as to what their brother was up to.

My mother had been saying, We have everything you have there and asking us to visit her instead. But when I told her about what Jenny had told me (our grandmother doesn’t seem to love us as much as she does her other grandchildren), she changed her mind. In addition to Jenny’s emotional plea, Lisa had been telling me, You’re bringing your relatives ahead of your own mother?

Our children did not get to see their father’s mother. She passed away when Dev was only four years old. Both of our fathers had also gone by this time. So, my mother’s visit was very important to our family, but it was the wrong time!

My mother valued formal education and was proud of our family. I was determined not to let my mother know what was going on in our home. She was a smart cookie, however. She suspected something had gone wrong but could not pinpoint exactly what that was because she did not understand the language (English) we were speaking.

I was losing my mind. I felt as if the sky had fallen over my head and people around me were watching me suffer. I had never felt this way before! We didn’t have much when Dev and I started our life together, but we both worked hard and knew that we would be okay after a few years. But this time was different. Things had fallen out of our hands!

No matter how hard I tried reasoning that what was going on in our family was a normal course of life and that we would be okay eventually, my mind couldn’t rest. I cried alone so much during these difficult months that I thought I had emptied all my tears!

I could not confide in my colleagues (or even my close friends), knowing that some of them had been accusing me for ‘spoiling’ my husband and children. They were telling me that I was too lenient to them, and had been scolding me, Why are you worried about your grown children? Look after myself.

One of my friends prepared ‘fondue’ dinner in one of her invitations to us. That was the first time boiled potatoes were part of the fondue and each of us had to peel before we roast on the fire the way we liked. Seeing Dev looking confused, she remarked, Can Dev peel his potatoes himself?

Another friend was a bit jealous of what I had. She had been telling me: How many things can you do? You worked when your husband was a student; brought up your three children in North America, alone, and you have a beautiful home overlooking a river. That’s a lot, isn’t it? Why do you need to work?

Dev had been telling me that nobody wants others to succeed. Definitely not ahead of themselves, I had noticed. But there are also a few cynical people—like this one: My husband enjoys other people’s grief, one of my colleagues had confided in me a few years ago.

Dev had/has the reputation of being a trailblazer among our relatives on both sides of the families. He was the first person in his entire family to leave his birthplace to study in Kathmandu, and first to edit a newsletter in college. He was the first to marry a city-girl (Kathmandu), and the first to come to the USA. He was/is the first to raise children in North America and first to buy property here. He is also the first Nepalese professor in Canada and the first to hold a management position (Associate Dean of Research and Outreach). Among all our relatives, he is the first person to publish an academic journal and to host academic conferences in North America! With those reputations, Dev blamed me for our children’s drop off and I blamed him for the same reason. In his view, I was the stay-home (most of the time) mother. It was my duty to make sure our children did well in schools. My arguments were that I raised them well up to the elementary level (they all were all A students). After that he was supposed to guide them. After all, he was the ‘educated’ one, and that was one of the reasons I married him.

Our children were doing great when we were in our first home (which was smaller and not envious), I reasoned. Up to that point our children did what we told them to do. They were among the top few students in their classes. Considering all this, I suggested to Dev that we put our house up for sale. In the meantime, I wanted to ascertain my suspicion about our home. I called one of our Asian friends with whom I could trust. I explained to her about our house’s unique layout. To which she replied, Oh, you believe in Feng Shui? Good thing you moved the patio door to the other corner; less bad luck this way… This only reinforced my belief that the house was the reason our children were losing interest in formal education.

By the time my mother visited us, I had also established a vegetable garden. She was supposed to visit us in the spring of 2006, but the documents we sent got lost or stolen enroute. She ended up coming in December that year. We mailed the documents at the address one of my brothers suggested. I still can’t help thinking that if the documents had reached on time and my mother had come to Canada in the spring she would have liked it here and stayed with us longer.

I did not even weed our garden that year, thinking that my mother and I would do it together. Since she loved gardening, I was planning to grow a few of her favorite vegetables in our garden. She probably would have found those vegetables better tasting—she had been telling me food doesn’t taste as good. I’ve lost my hunger.

One thing I was sure about is that my mother would have liked the fall weather of Atlantic Canada. She would have enjoyed the colorful leaves: the brilliant red, wash of fiery crimsons, scarlet and yellow amongst the evergreen trees!

My mother started talking about returning to her family in Nepal right after the Christmas holidays—which was little over two weeks after she arrived in Canada. She insisted that she must return home to begin organizing for her ‘Chaurasi’ even though she was only 82 years old at the time and her Chaurasi was two years away.

Chaurasi is part of Hindus’ rite of passage observed when someone reaches 84 years of age. On this rite, the 84-year-old performs a series of pujas and gives away clothes, food, etc., as a dan (donations) to 84 others. My mother firmly believed such rite would help her achieve heaven, but it was also one of her excuses to return Nepal I later found out.

Dev and I used to glamorize the country and the culture we left behind. We had forgotten the jealousy, back-biting and competing amongst themselves for a small thing—the unhealthy habits of Nepalese people. We thought that those things were more common in the individualistic societies where everybody must make their own living, than within the collectivist culture of the east, where family members live together and share each other’s fortune. In our memories, Nepal and the Nepalese people remained the same as they were 46 years ago, when we left the country. We had the ‘freeze mentality’ as most immigrants do.

With our freeze mentality, we wondered if we needed a small community of people with whom we could share our experiences of the birth country. We thought that celebrating some of the festivals we enjoyed when we were growing up would be