"I am not happy. I do not want to get married. I hope my husband gets a job in a foreign city. Then I can come back to my mother's home and stay for as long as I want to," 12-year-old Anjali Kumari King told photographer Poulomi Basu. It is a popular belief in some areas of Nepal that if a girl is married before she begins menstruation, her immediate family will ascend to heaven. Child marriage and Chaupadi are linked, says Basu, as they both involve ideas around pre-and post-menstrual purity.
The Risky Lives of Women Sent Into Exile—For Menstruating
In Nepal, a traditional belief about the impurity of menstrual blood means women and girls are banished to makeshift huts.
Photographer Poulomi Basu’s mother, a widow, does not wear the color red. In India, the country of Basu’s birth, red symbolizes both purity and sin and is also used to mark auspicious occasions. Traditional Hindu culture dictates widows dress only in saris made of white—the hue of mourning and death—for the rest of their lives. Further, they are forbidden from attending celebratory events or remarrying.
In the 16 years since her father’s death, 33-year-old Basu has convinced her mother to replace her white saris with brighter cloth, yet she still won’t touch red or vibrant pinks. Basu has managed to turn the tide of an oppressive tradition in the life of one of the most important people in her world; her