Kul Bahadur Rana

“Where did you grow up — what was the place like, and what is your earliest memory of it?”

I grew up in a small village called Tansen, in the Palpa district of Nepal. The houses were made of mud and the streets were narrow and winding. My earliest memory is sitting on the stone steps outside our house at dawn, watching my mother light the clay stove to make tea. The smoke would rise slowly into the cool mountain air.

6 January 2026

“What was your family like when you were young — who did you live with, and what do you remember most about them?”

I lived with my parents, my two older brothers, and my grandmother — everyone called her Aamaa. My father was a quiet man. He worked the fields from sunrise to sunset and rarely spoke unless it was important. My grandmother was the opposite — she never stopped talking. She was the one who filled our house with stories, songs, and the smell of ghee and cardamom.

12 January 2026

“How far was the school from your home, and what was the journey like?”

The school was three miles from home, up and over a hill that felt enormous when I was small. I walked it barefoot most mornings with my older brother. We would stop to pick wild berries from the bushes along the path. In the monsoon season the path turned to mud, and we would arrive at school with red earth up to our knees.

19 January 2026

“Was there a teacher who influenced you — someone whose words stayed with you?”

There was a teacher named Mr. Sharma. He taught mathematics, and he had studied in Kathmandu. He once told me something that stayed with me my whole life — "Your mind is the only thing no one can ever take from you." I was ten years old when I heard those words.

28 January 2026