Will Vinita live?

The Bheri River in western Nepal's Surkhet valley flows along the road that connects the valley to Nepalgunj on the Indian border. It was a hot summer noon with the sun shining at its brutal best. I was on my way back from Surkhet to Nepalgunj on a treacherous road full of potholes caused by the massive landslides that inevitably follow after a heavy downpour. Our Maruti van, which seemed two decades old, made loud rattling noises each time it struck a pothole. My Nepalese driver, who was doing his best to avoid them, would curse government officials for their shoddy work each time we hit a bump.

As we passed several tiny villages along the road, whose names my driver announced with encyclopedic joy, I could see the occasional truck or bus, and small groups of people dressed in colourful attires looking curiously at every passing car. The children were waving while the women turned their backs with shy smiles. Men were smoking bidis or working at construction sites and fields along the road. Others were resting in the shade to avoid the blistering sun.

Halfway from Surkhet, my driver informed me that the van had overheated and needed to cool down. He went to fetch water from a nearby mountain stream while I stood on the road watching the remains of massive trees that had washed away during the rains at the banks of the Bheri. After some time, the driver announced that we were fit to go. He started off the engine and we once again followed the serpentine road. A few kilometres ahead, I saw an old man and a small boy at the side of the road attending to a woman in her mid-twenties who seemed to have fainted in the heat. We stopped our car and got off to see what was going on. My driver asked the old man in Nepali. He replied that as he was on the way to Surkhet, he spotted this woman lying on the road. She was unconscious. The old man and the driver did their best to revive her, and after water was splashed on her face, she regained partial consciousness.

A woman, who was working in the field nearby, said the woman belonged to a nearby village and her name was Vinita. We helped her into the car and took her to her village. When we reached the bus stop, we figured out that her house was on the top of the hill and it would be difficult for us to take her there. We decided to take her to the only shop at that bus stop and enquired whether anyone knew about her. Initially, the two women sitting in the shop refused to recognise her but later revealed that she was their sister-in-law. One of them said, "She is not a girl of good character and should rather be dead. We are not responsible for her anymore as she has left her husband's home and has nowhere to go."

By now, the woman was feeling better. She said that she was an orphan and was brought up by her cousins who then got her married to a local boy. "Two days after I was married, my husband went to India with the promise of returning soon to take me with him. I was pregnant but he never called and did not come back in five years. Then my mother-in-law told me that my husband has abandoned me and I have to leave the house and go somewhere else."

Her brother later revealed that she was forced to marry her husband's polio-stricken elder brother, an alcoholic. "I had no choice as I had to feed my baby. I had nowhere to go." But fate had other plans for Vinita. Two weeks after her marriage with the elder son, the younger one returned from Delhi. After he came to know that his wife has married his brother, he was enraged. He beat her up brutally. She told him her compulsions, but her husband, along with his family, announced in the village that she was a woman of loose morals. They took her son away and beat her up and asked her to take care of herself. Even Vinita's brothers refused to take her back.