KMAG

KMAG ko santan le social media ko danda kada chaula jasto chha yehi speed le!

Harek din naya page dekhchu ta.

Met her unexpectedly. Her name is Sarisma Thapa. She has been on my newsfeed for quite sometime now for different issues and her bluntness.

All this time, I was thinking she must be a law student or social work student or something like that given her clarity on political and social issues and her brilliancy in framing persuasive arguments with full conviction. I am supersurprised to learn that she is actually a bartender, who did her +2, got trained on bartending, went to Maldives, worked there for 3 years, came back to Nepal to apply job at Dubai when Gen Z happened, where she lost her friend.

And that changed everything!

Her life changed, her career plan changed, from a girl about-to-leave-for-Dubai-for-work became the fighter of voiceless and oppressed ones.

She is no different from how she is seen in the videos circulating on Facebook and TikTok. Loud, charged up, fierce, with absolute clarity on what she feels and thinks right.

She is now the living example for me - you don’t learn and understand politics from books and documentaries but from the street, fighting for the causes and issues of people you deeply care for and in the process, you discover principles and values on your own because in the end, politics is a matter of common sense.

I told her, “you look like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to me, both by looks and the fire in you.”

Ever called your friend CHAKKA as an insult??

You know what? Most of us have done it. Thrown that word around like it meant nothing. Like it was just a joke.

But it was not nothing, was it?
We carried what society has shaped us to be. It didn't feel like poison. It felt normal. It felt like humor. It felt like just how things are. Then, there comes a day when you actually think and you go: wait, Why did I say that? Why did that feel okay? Who taught me this, and why did I believe them without a second thought? and it's that time we deny carrying it any further. After this certain age, conscientious takes over us and gives us the chance to sit down with ourselves and rethink all the perceptions we were poured when we were young. We realise how unfunny, how dumb it was.

That discomfort you're feeling? That guilt? That's not a bad thing. That's your conscience doing its job. That's you becoming more human, not less.

A gay man exists. A trans woman exists. A q***r person exists. Not as a punchline. Not as an insult you throw at your friend when he's being "too soft." They exist as people. Full, real, breathing people with families, fears, dreams, bad days and good ones.

And the only reason we ever used their identity as a slur is because somewhere along the way, we decided difference was a threat. That anything outside the MALE, FEMALE system was... wrong. Weird. Less.

But who decided that? And more importantly, why did we just agree?

Nobody expects you to unlearn decades of conditioning overnight. But the moment you catch yourself, the moment you pause before the word leaves your mouth? that pause is everything. That pause is growth. That pause is you choosing to be better.

They're not asking for your approval to exist. They never needed it. They just deserve the same basic dignity you'd want for yourself.
So yeah, Happy Pride Month! 🏳️‍🌈 Wishing you a month full of joy, and celebrating exactly who you are.

िनी