12/10/2019
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bista’s work about the menstrual taboo of Chhaupadi, featured in the October issue of Caravan magazine.
Posted • Kamala Tamata from Achham district in western Nepal, photographed by Uma Bista (.bista). Chhaupadi, a Hindu custom, demands that women live in seclusion for five to seven days a month, in a chhaugoth—a windowless hut or shed—outside their houses because they are considered impure during their period. Chhaupadi is so rampant in Achham, that when people talk about the practice it is the first place they bring up.
Chhaupadi was banned by Nepal’s Supreme Court in 2005. In August 2017, a bill passed in the Nepali parliament criminalised anyone who forced a woman to observe chhaupadi with a 3,000-rupee fine and a three-month jail sentence. Deaths of women isolated in chhaugoths—including from snakebite and suffocation or burns caused by fires they lit to stay warm—suggest a conflict, in which the taboo being deeply ingrained in custom eclipses the effects of its illegality. This year alone, four people died as a result of chhaupadi in Nepal
Bista’s series, “Our Songs from the Forest,” focusses on a “chorus of young women coming of age in a fast-changing society.” She tells stories about their friendships, the different ways these women navigate the practice, or question and refuse to engage in chhaupadi, and how they feel about the more traditional, older generation that approves of the practice.
Click the link in bio to view Bista’s photo essay on how women navigate menstruation taboos in Nepal. Text by Maya Palit.
