Nepal Native Adjusts To Life at Harvard

This September, Astha Thapa ’07 traded in the spectacular summits of the Himalayan mountains and sloping green hills that have surrounded her since her childhood for the flat lawns and wrought iron fences of Harvard Yard.

The view from her third-floor Grays common room may be less stunning than those in her native Kathmandu, Nepal, but it is one she has embraced fully since her arrival in Cambridge a few short weeks ago.

“I like Cambridge, it has such a homey feel to it. It’s so pretty, and you can walk everywhere,” the petite and lively first-year exclaims as she sips an Iced Mocha Blast at Au Bon Pain, a treat she’s already adopted as a favorite.

Harvard has offered many new tastes and freedoms for Thapa, not the least of which is walking around the relatively calm streets of Cambridge.

She says that Kathmandu, while surrounded by vistas of incredible natural beauty, is a city bursting at the seams, packed with people.

“There’s such population pressure, and it’s badly planned,” Thapa says.

The social pressures, especially for Nepali females, are also intense compared to those she’s found in Cambridge.

“Families are very important. In Nepal social life is everything,” she says. “I live with my grandparents, and my grandfather’s seven brothers all live in the same area.”

Living under the constant scrutiny of an extensive, ever-present network of kin left little room for typical American teenage rebelliousness.

“I never stayed out with my friends past 6 p.m. because I’m a girl,” she says, adding that her male cousins had no curfew.

In Nepal, “people are always pressured to behave the way they are expected to behave.”

“Weddings, big social outings, everything is very formal in Nepal,” she says. “You have to be ladylike at these events, you’re forced,” she says. “But it’s good, it’s made me so sociable.”

Thapa says she knows her constrained upbringing and early curfew may sound bizarre to American students, but that it made perfect sense in the context of Nepali society.

“I can understand why you have to have it. It helped me spend more time with my family, to do my school work,” she says.

In Cambridge, however, movies, birthday parties and the festivities of Freshman Week have already kept her out in the evenings.

But while Thapa says she wants to utilize these new experiences to become a more global citizen, she says she will not forget that she is attending Harvard in order to be of benefit to Nepal. And as she learns ever more about the American way of life, she says she’s striving to maintain a strong sense of self and pride in her country’s traditions.

A Taste of Freedom

Thapa says she has quickly developed a close group of friends in the first-year class, who like her are adjusting to an entirely new way of life.

Like any first-year, Thapa has reveled in the new freedoms and responsibilities of college life: meeting an overwhelmingly diverse set of people, learning to make her own schedule, holding a job at Lamont, doing laundry—and somehow attempting to squeeze in a solid eight hours of sleep.

“Women are so protected in Nepal. Before I came here I was living in a shell...I was too protected, and it’s good to have a taste of independence,” she says.

These adjustments are doubled for Thapa, who is still getting used to what she calls “the liberal social life of the West.”

People’s dress was at first a bit shocking, she says.

“In Nepal, showing skin is not appreciated,” she says. “Here, people wear the bare minimum!”

Meeting the class of 2007 during freshman week events, along with dorm and entryway discussion sessions have also opened her eyes to the real diversity of opinion and lifestyle surrounding her.

For example, a first-year discussion on diversity in her entryway brought up an alternative view of child labor.

“In Nepal, child labor is food for the child,” she says. “The West has a totally different conception [of the issue].”

Thapa says one of the most important things about coming to Harvard has been the extent to which she “realize[s] people are living lives completely different from what I’ve taken for granted all my life.”

To best absorb this diversity of experiences, she says she plans to refrain from joining any religious or ethnic student groups at Harvard.

“I’m trying to get to know everybody, and I don’t want to distance myself by saying I’m in a particular group,” Thapa says. “It’s nice to hang out with other Nepalis, but I don’t want to belong to any...group.”

Attending an American university has also freed her from the constraints she felt under home country’s educational system, where students must choose the course of the rest of their studies in tenth grade.

“I chose the sciences, and you can’t shift,” she says. “Liberal arts is the most important reason why I came here; I really need to explore more.”

Thapa, who took A-level exams in chemistry and biology in Nepal, is now thinking about a concentration in social studies or government.

She enrolled this fall in Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel’s Moral Reasoning 22, “Justice” to help her test these new waters of social science.

“I love Justice, the fact that it makes you think about things you take for granted,” she says. “It makes me think in a different way from the sciences.”

Tackling the ample readings in that course and in her humanities classes has been another hurdle for Thapa.

Used to focusing exclusively on the sciences and math, she says the “huge” reading lists in American English are one of the hardest adjustments she is having to make.

A Dedication to Country

Though she’s enjoying her college experiment with American life, Thapa does not feel the need to completely conform with her peers.

She says she is determined to maintain a firm connection to the traditions of Nepal and says that being of service to her country is at the foundation of all of her educational goals.

“Harvard kids may be shocked that I have a curfew [in Nepal], that I’ll have an arranged marriage,” she says. “But just because I’m here doesn’t mean I want to change myself, and be something I’m not. I’m still the same.”

Her dedication to Nepal’s way of life is also reflected in her desire to represent her nation as a diplomat or in government.

She stays informed of all of the developments in her home country, in which there has been much political instability, and keeps in constant contact with her family via e-mail.

A chat with her sister last week was another reminder of the troubles at home.

“I was talking to my sister, and she said at 12 p.m. the whole of Kathmandu rang bells to protest against the Maoist insurgents, using children in war, giving them guns to fight for them.”

Nepal, the world’s only Hindu kingdom, became a constitutional monarchy in 1990. Since then, insurgents throughout the nation have violently protested against the new government.

In the past year, Thapa says, the killing of political and military personnel in Kathmandu has been on the rise, bringing the violence out of the rural areas and close to her family in the city.

“I always said with utmost conviction ‘I’m going back to Nepal, and working in my country, and living in my country,’” she says. “But it’s hard, coming to Harvard, and you begin to question. It would be nice to live in a peaceful country where you don’t worry about being shot. You ask, is it reasonable to go back?”

Still, she hopes things will begin to change for the better, and that she might be part of her country’s future.

“Diplomacy really intrigues me. My country needs good diplomacy, and it requires good people to deal with the Maoist problem where diplomacy is lacking,” she says.

Thapa is enrolled in University President Lawrence H. Summers’ freshman seminar on globalization, and hopes she can share a unique perspective coming from a more slowly globalizing country.

“I’ve lived life without technology,” she says. “No cable until 1998, and we only got the Internet in 2000. It still amazes me that I can send my mom e-mails.”

Thapa believes her courses at Harvard and her broadening experiences living in the United States are vital to making her a valuable citizen of Nepal.

“I’m being exposed to lifestyles very different from my own, and exposure is very important. I’m being globalized. Now I have friends from so many different places—India, Mexico, Eastern Europe—I feel more connected to everybody now even than just a month ago,” she says. “This is reality, my world is not just Nepal, it consists of all these other people, you can’t isolate yourself. I’m part of a global community. That’s perspective I need no matter what career I decide on.”

—Staff writer Margaretta E. Homsey can be reached at homsey@fas.harvard.edu.