KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Kalpana Khadka, a 27-year-old married woman, says she feels liberated after sending her two children to school at 9 a.m in Kathmandu, the capital. Clad in tight jeans and a maroon T-shirt, she applies her makeup while humming a song from the latest Bollywood movie.
The ring of her mobile phone interrupts her. The caller is her boyfriend, a man she is having an extramarital affair with.
“I am ready for you,” she says into the phone. “Where are you?”
Khadka has sex with her boyfriend almost every day, she says. She’s more sexually satisfied by him than her husband, who works abroad. Her boyfriend is also more educated and more handsome than her husband.
“I cannot live without him,” Khadka says.
Khadka married her husband at age 16. They both come from Jiri, a small town in Dolakha, a district east of Kathmandu. Once she moved in with her husband’s large family, she became responsible for cooking, washing dishes and clothes and also working in the field.
But the yield of the land they owned was not enought to feed the whole family. So she and her husband decided to move to Kathmandu, where he could work as a taxi driver.
Her husband’s new income was enough to make a living, but frequent vehicle strikes prompted him to take a job in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He wanted to earn more money so that his children could study at good schools and he could buy property in Kathmandu.
After Khadka's husband departed, she had casual relationships with many men in order to fulfill her sexual desires, she says.
“But now, I am totally tied up in this love,” she says.
Six months after her husband left, Khadka fell in love with a young man who lived next door.
“I become very sad if I do not see him,” she says.
Khadka's boyfriend works in a private company in Kathmandu and is also studying to receive a master's degree. She goes out to the movies or dinner with him almost every day. She also bought a motorbike for him out of the money her husband had sent home from abroad.
Khadka used to live in a different apartment in Kathmandu, but she moved six months ago because her neighbors started talking about her closeness with another man, she says. Her boyfriend tutors her children, who call him “Uncle.” This also aims to assuage neighbors’ suspicions about his frequent visits.
“I cannot say if it’s good or bad,” Khadka says of her extramarital affair.
Khadka’s husband is not aware of her affair. But she plans to leave him once he returns from Dubai so she can start a new life with her boyfriend.
Extramarital affairs are on the rise in Nepal, where the liberalization of a traditionally conservative and patriarchal society is changing the institution of marriage. Economic factors, such as an increase in foreign employment because of high unemployment at home, also add to infidelity. Police and government representatives confirm an increase in men and women reporting extramarital affairs, which are illegal, but evidence is difficult to find to prove adultery. Sociologists suggest a socio-cultural repositioning of attitudes toward marriage in order to make relationships more equitable and realistic.
There has been no study yet to show the percentage of Nepal’s population having extramarital affairs, says Shishir Subba, a psychology professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. But he affirms that the cases of infidelity have been increasing in recent years.
Nepalese society has been historically closed, Subba says. But increasing education, awareness, means of communication, study abroad and foreign migration have liberalized local attitudes.
Nepalese society is traditional, conservative and patriarchal, deeming marriage essential for women, says Mina Upreti, an assistant sociology professor at Tribhuvan University’s Trichandra Multiple Campus. In the past, men have been in control of women’s economic, social and sexual roles.
But with more women pursuing education, they no longer put up with unsatisfactory situations at home, she says. The institution of marriage has been changing. Women marry for security then pursue a more meaningful exchange of emotions and feelings elsewhere.
“Women use their husband’s resources to start and continue their relationships with other men,” Upreti says.
Extramarital affairs have long been against the social norm in both love and arranged marriages. But this has been changing.
“The society is getting liberal gradually regarding sexual affairs,” Upreti says. “Therefore, these things are taken as normal.”
Overseas employment has been another factor.
Because of deteriorating employment in Nepal, many young people migrate overseas for employment, say Nirmala Sitaula, legal counselor for the National Women Commission, established by the government in 2007 to improve gender equality.
On one hand, the economy of the country depends on the remittances sent by these foreign migrant workers, she says. On the other hand, their spouses often squander the money or engage in extramarital affairs or incest, causing families to disintegrate.
Like Khadka, Binu Lama, 32, also developed an extramarital affair while her husband was working overseas.
Lama, from a village in Gorkha, a district west of Kathmandu, says she fell in love with and married her husband 11 years ago. But four years after their marriage, he sought employment in Saudi Arabia.
Although he came back twice to visit her and their child, he continued to renew his contract overseas. He and Lama eventually lost touch, so she pursued a relationship with another man from her village, who was married with three children.
Like Lama's husband, he was also working abroad, but they used to talk regularly on the phone, she says. They dated for three years and recently got married, without divorcing their original spouses.
After returning to Kathmandu from abroad several months ago, Lama’s new husband did not go to his house in Gorkha to visit his wife and children. He came instead to the lodge in Kathmandu where Lama lives.
“I am having a new life with my new husband,” Lama says, giggling.
Her child lives with her parents.
Although extramarital affairs are becoming more common, they are still taboo. People in Lama's village gossip about her and her new husband, and their families don’t approve.
“Our relatives hated our marriage,” Lama says. “Therefore, we have not gone home.”
As for Khadka, her neighbors are suspicious of her children’s “tutor” and doubt her happiness will last, says a local shopkeeper, who declined to publish his name regarding the taboo topic.
“The guy will not knowingly marry a mother of two kids,” the shopkeeper says. “This affair will finish up the money and ruin their lives.”
For men who work abroad, the affairs can come as a shock. One resident of Pokhara, Nepal’s second-largest city, who declined to publish his name to avoid stigma, says he moved to Japan for work so that he could provide for his wife and children. During his decade-long stay, he earned enough money to buy land and a house in Kathmandu in the name of his wife.
But when he returned to Nepal, he found out that his wife had married another man and had taken their children and property. He was disheartened to see another man enjoying the property that he had earned, he says.
With nowhere to go, he has now started a new life working in the real estate business. He recently remarried, and he and his new wife live in a rented room.
“I do not trust women at all,” he says.
Extramarital affairs, if they can be proven, are illegal in Nepal, Sitaula says. For police intervention, the spouse must provide evidence of sexual relationships or marriages before both parties were divorced in order to start an investigation.
Anju Acharya, 30, recently filed a case against her husband at the Women’s Cell of Nepal Police in Kathmandu. He has been neglecting her since he started having an extramarital affair more than a year ago, shes says.
“I had dreams of happiness, and now see what happened to me,” she says. “My life is taking an unexpected turn.”
Acharya's life was blissful after marriage, she says. Her husband used to come home from work on time and help her with the household chores while she watched their young child.
Then about a year ago, her husband started coming home late and stopped answering her phone calls, she says. When he was at home, he neglected her and their child.
“Suddenly, when my husband’s feelings changed, all my dreams were shattered,” Acharya says.
Acharya was shocked when she found her husband talking to another woman at midnight from the bed they shared together. But he became angry when she asked him to stop.
In desperation, she visited his office. When she found out that her husband was having an affair with one of his co-workers, she met the girl and asked her to not get involved with a married man. She also pled with the girl’s family.
But she couldn’t change her husband’s heart, she says. That was when she decided to seek legal help. When she registered her complaints, the police arrested her husband.
Acharya and her husband reconciled after he signed a paper promising not to get involved outside their marriage again, she says. But it was not long before he broke that promise.
So she made her husband quit his job and move to Ilam, a district 600 kilometers from Kathmandu. She started a small grocery store but has not been able to start over with her husband.
“Physically, he is here, but his heart is elsewhere,” Acharya says in exasperation during a phone interview after moving. “To change over a new life has been very difficult.”
The number of women seeking help through nongovernmental organizations working for women’s rights and through the Nepal Police’s women’s cells after their husbands begin extramarital affairs has been increasing, Sitaula says. But there are no statistics on this issue yet.
Lal Kumari Khadka, the subinspector at the women’s police cell in Lalitpur, a district adjoining Kathmandu, says her office receives four to five cases every month related to extramarital affairs.
A year ago, when the real estate business was on the rise, rich businessmen were the ones involved in the extramarital affairs, says Lal Kumari Khadka, who is not related to Kalpana Khadka. But now, both men and women of all economic strata of society come to the police with this problem.
The female victims cite domestic violence, lack of care, negligence and bigamy, she says. Male victims say their wives run away with all their money, leaving the children behind.
Police register cases of extramarital affairs under domestic disputes.
“We counsel the couples who come with these problems, help them reconcile their differences and ask them to live together amicably,” Lal Kumari Khadka says.
The National Women Commission also handles cases, registering them as domestic disputes as well. The commission received 337 domestic violence cases during the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Sitaula says. But it is difficult to gather evidence to resolve such cases.
Maheshwari Kunwar, a master’s degree student studying sociology at Tribhuvan University’s Padma Kanya Campus, says that men and women should be partners with equal rights, including the ability to leave the other at any time.
“Women shouldn’t be dependent on their husbands and should be rather empowered,” Kunwar says.
Lama says she is already unsure whether her new marriage will stick.
“I think this marriage is not going to turn out the way I wanted,” she says. “I might leave him and live alone.”
But Kalpana Khadka says she has found happiness with her new boyfriend.
“I can leave my husband and children, but I cannot leave my boyfriend under any condition,” she says.
