In Memory of Rajkumari

When I was younger, I was quick to idolize people. Reverence came easily to me. I loved my mother for her soft voice and her quiet, pleasant nature—the way she moved through rooms like a careful breeze, shoulders tense, disturbing nothing. I loved my father for his outspoken nature, for the certainty in his stride, for the way he could turn everything into gifts and give them in place of an apology.

I imagined myself living through them, becoming them one day—lifting their identities like bright stickers and pressing them over my own soul, smoothing out the edges until the differences between us disappeared. In a sense I believed them my gods, I wanted to walk in their image and I thought my prayers would assure I would live through them. I thought in this worship I could be held and treasured by a porcelain doll and ticking time bomb.

But I was quick to anger, sharp-tongued and defiant. My feelings did not flow like my mother’s gentle current, nor did they harden into my father’s controlled composure. They erupted. My heart beat violently against my ribs while my parents’ hearts seemed to throb dully inside theirs, muted and measured. I told myself that my worship would sand down my edges. That it would quiet the storm in me.

It didn’t.

And it wouldn’t.

I would never be submissive and calm, I would never be able to be still with shoulders spiked as a beating ran down over and over again. I would never make mistakes so large that the only solution was to control the narrative and seal the cracks with glue made of gifts and indulgences. I would never be able to ignore a broken home with tense shoulders and dull eyes. I was loud. I was abrasive. My heart beat violently against my ribs while my parents’ hearts seemed to throb dully inside theirs.

And because my heart felt exposed—like it had been pulled from my chest and used as a substitute for theirs—I learned to hide it. Anger became the mask I used to shield its relentless beating.

That was when I began to notice my grandmother.

Unlike my parents, her heart was loud too—louder, perhaps, and far more resilient than mine. It thundered and mine crackled in return. She tended her goats beneath the wide sky while I trailed behind her, small and watchful, cradling the young ones as she cared for the older ones. Her sari draped across her shoulder. The sun browned her hands. Her voice was raspy, shameless and loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

She scolded and yelled and cried openly. When I did the same, her whispered words and soft reassurances made my heart continue its steady beat in my chest. Her aching heart and mine felt like reflections facing one another— one older one younger but the same mirror.

She was someone I couldn't worship, because after all who can conform to their own soul? We were twins separated by all factors except for our very beings. When I borrowed her soul, it wasn't a small sticker our chests had the same exact chasm for when we swapped hearts.

A language formed between us. It was ironic, because our spoken language was rudimentary at best—fragmented words, half-finished sentences, gestures filling the gaps. But my limited Nepali and her old accent couldn't erase the steady thumping of two large hearts spilling out of our skins.

In her, I found something beyond reverence. I found recognition. I did not need to stretch myself thin to resemble her. In some quiet, unspoken way, I already was her.

She scolded my father while I yelled at him. She shielded my mother when I protected her. She slipped me candy my mother disapproved of while my father was away, and fed me again and again and again until I almost popped. The noise was still there, strong, hungry, unyielding, and louder as they became one sound.

As the years passed, a chasm widened. Her memory began to fray at the edges. She didn't recognize me anymore, but even then she smiled every time she saw me. She couldn't tell I was her granddaughter but her heart still thumped so loud she couldn't help but hear. She would lay in bed for hours softly petting my hair, making idle ramblings all while she stubbornly pushed forward.

The goats aged. The ones I had once carried in my arms grew independent, then stiff in their joints. As they grew sick, so did she. I began to understand that resilience does not mean immortality. Even the loudest hearts must one day tire.

When she passed—our eyes the same, our hair the same, that beating heart once shared between us—a part of me passed too. It felt as though a second pulse inside my chest had stilled, leaving mine to carry the weight alone.

My mother was silent in her grief, folding inward like paper.

My father offered money and gifts, no tears were shed.

But it was my voice that reached outward. My anger, once mirrored and validated, now echoed without reply. My heart was left to the sound of its own rhythm, loud and solitary.

There are a thousand more words I wish to write—about her name, her story, the battles she fought before I ever existed, what had made her heart so loud and forced it to echo. I want to write about the lines in her hands, about the way she stood against another angry man in her own home, about the stubborn tilt of her chin. But my words fail me. My eyes blur. The letters swim until they are nothing but ink.

So I write this not to her, but to her heart—and to mine.

Thank you, Hasurama.

Thank you for being my reflection when I thought the mirror was a window. Thank you for sharing the beat of your heart with me and letting me hear the sound of protection and a mother who loves.

I will live as if a piece of you is lodged inside me, because in a way, you are. You are in the way my voice is loud and unflinching. In the way I can stand in front while others stand in back. In the way my heart pounds unapologetically against my ribs.

And one day, when my own heart grows weary—when the goats I care for grow old and fragile, when the fields I walk begin to blur at the edges—I will lie down as you did. I will close my eyes waiting to see where you are.

And I hope that somewhere beyond this noise and earth, I will hear it again—

your heart, loud and clear,

waiting for mine to answer.