A fascinating short account of the circumstances and context around -- and the story behind -- the founding of St. Xavier's Godavari School, my old school in Kathmandu, Nepal by the Jesuit Priest Fr. Marshall Moran. The extract comes from a book about the founder.
As a primary school student, I loved the arts and was good at acting and singing, and did a lot of that. But acting was also an "out," a means to escape my own self, to become someone else, suffering as I had been from a number of personal issues.
Had I been born a different caste or in a different country, I would have probably become a performing artist as an adult.
How people are in some respects -- and also how power dynamics -- work don't change with time. Should you suffer in some way because of that, hardly any of it is about you AND as such you can't do anything about it really. And that's ok!
Corporal punishments rarely impart any meaningful lesson, and yet, in Nepal, it's defended as part of our "culture." My classmates and I suffered from it too and as far as I can tell, they didn't do much good for us!
What's more, it is possible to educate and raise children without punishing them physically.
How, in fifth grade, I began nurturing a near-impossible dream because that had been the only realistic dream!
Details of the discrimination I faced in Nepal, what I do, and why I do what I do for those who suffer even more discrimination!
Just a basic education had been in the cards! But determined to get more, much much more than that which I was told I was "entitled" to, I would have an incredible academic career!