Book Review of ‘Jumla: A Nurse's Story’
By Riddhi Arsheyi Gautam*
Namaste dear Radha Paudel jyu,
I don’t remember the last time a book made me cry, really cry. I usually remind myself it’s just fiction, just another title to check off my “to-read” list. But that wasn’t the case with Jumla: A Nurse’s Story. Because Jumla isn’t fiction. It’s a terrifying, brutal reality that people actually lived through.
Chapters 1 and 6 of the book hit me the hardest. I cried uncontrollably reading about a 7-year-old rape victim and a 68-year-old woman whose uterus had collapsed but who hadn’t sought help in 18 years out of sheer embarrassment. These stories shook me. Knowing that people endured - and still continue to endure - this kind of suffering everyday broke my heart. And to see how even fellow Nepalis viewed Jumla as a “backward foreign place” only highlighted the indifference we sometimes have towards our own neighbors.
One story that particularly made my heart sink was Silwal’s. He was being held hostage by the Maoists, with not even a glimmer of hope, clinging only to thoughts of God and his family, unsure if he’d ever see them again.
The cruelty the Maoists inflicted was beyond anything I had imagined—not just targeting officials or police, but even civilians and their relatives. The fear they sowed affected every corner of daily life, and the psychological toll didn’t just vanish after the violence ended.
The writing was so vivid, it made my skin crawl. I couldn’t believe this happened in my own country. It felt both distant and terrifyingly close.
I found myself admiring the author Radha Paudel deeply. Her strength, her compassion, her willingness to go to Jumla in the midst of such chaos. I kept thinking, no matter how much I wanted to help, I don’t think I’d ever have that kind of courage.
Although I have not read the original Nepali version of the book Khalangama Hamala, even the English version tells a gripping tale. No wonder the book won Nepal’s most prestigious literary award, the Madan Puraskar in 2014.
I was raised in a relatively privileged household. The worst things I’ve faced aren’t nearly comparable to what the people of Jumla experience as part of their everyday reality. Although I have been to my ancestral village in Gulmi and seen poverty and deprivation in other parts of Nepal and elsewhere in the world, this book completely opened my eyes.
Currently, I live in Orange County, California. I read Jumla over a weekend; two days that left me emotionally raw. That Saturday night, I had to stop halfway through the book because it was just too much to stomach in one go. I tried to distract myself by watching ‘The OC’, a show about wealthy kids who live in the same area I do now, spending their days at the beach, wrapped in their bubble. It was a bizarre contrast, one I could partly relate to, but which also felt painfully out of touch when held up against the reality of Jumla.
And yet, Jumla is just one snapshot of the terror the Maoists inflicted. To be fair, I understand that the other side of the conflict, the Royal Nepal Army, too inflicted much pain on innocent civilians suspected of collaborating with the Maoists. Terrible atrocities happen in civil wars and insurgencies in many other countries as well. But I can’t begin to imagine what other places went through, how families managed to survive, or if they ever really did.
As I read, picturing how one group of Nepalis could so brutally attack other fellow Nepalis, I kept asking myself: How could people do this to their own? How could they let their country fall into this? I still don’t have an answer, and I still can’t believe that anyone was okay with letting it happen.
Thank goodness, the insurgency in Nepal is over now, and the country is at relative peace. But stories of human suffering and cruelty like the ones described so vividly by Radha Paudel in Jumla, need to be told and publicized so we can commit to never letting such violence happen again anywhere.
