The Law Said Yes. The System Said No: 

BY: GARIMA Nepal’s Unsafe Abortion Emergency   Imagine a young woman, maybe 28, maybe 18, living in a rural village in the hills of Karnali. She missed her period. She’s worried. She knows there’s a health institution somewhere, but it’s a six-hour walk away, the roads wash out in the rain, and she can’t tell her husband. So she does what women in her community with the same situation […]

Passing the Pad

BY: GARIMA A Whispering Game  “Have you got one?” “May I borrow…?”  These are some questions we asked with hesitation and embarrassment. But the hidden word in those questions is “PAD”.  It’s like talking on a covert operation when you ask for a pad.   During my school days, I still remember how abashed I was as I had whispered it to my friend, she barely gave any […]

From Curiosity to the Ink Mark 

BY: GARIMA My Journey to Voting  I remember being a kid, watching my parents come home on election day with that small ink mark on their fingers. I’d stare at it, maybe even touch it, and wonder what the big deal was. It seemed like such a small, ordinary thing. I had no idea what it meant then. Now […]