A piece of sunshine enters the staff room, in the form of a girl wearing a bright yellow dress with the most dazzling smile on her face. My co-fellow jumps up and exclaims thank god you’re here. I find out that she walked two hours under this baking noon day’s sun for advice on her UWC’s scholarship application form.  Before I have time to process this, my co-fellow Sajan and Karishma (as she’s indeed a miracle as her name suggests) enter a spare classroom to start working on her first draft of the form. It’s the 11th today and the deadline is on the 15th. Typical, I know.

I enter the spare classroom to find the both of them engrossed in the form’s personal essay section. Sajan suggests I go through the rest. Reflecting on what I know now, I am half tempted to say I shouldn’t have entered the classroom at all, nor read her form. But I did, and here I am now, writing this down, for myself and for others.

Her statements are simple, and point out the stark truths in her life without any fanfare. Some might be familiar to you, someone who has inklings of how a rural community school’s girl student lives her life. But then, there are these other events, narrated with a painfully understated tone in her even paced Nepali handwriting, events that shaped her past, events better left unsaid here.

There are deaths and hands in the dark, broken promises litter her past, the toiling and sweat of parents and elder sisters hold her and tear her apart at the same time. There are hopes and dreams sparked by childlike innocence and curiosity, and the same hopes and dreams dying short and long deaths under situations outside of her control. The southern Lalitpur’s relentless and unforgiving sun bakes the very dust under her slippered feet that have walked countless miles to and fro the school, her one chance at shining and maybe, just maybe, a small step upwards towards something better.

She unconsciously wrings her hands and smiles painfully if you focus on her too much while conversing. Her voice is small and made even more illegible with the mask she’s wearing. One could immediately make assumptions based on this fact alone. But shining through the dark are other events, again narrated with the same bland understated tone. Cups won on football matches, spelling bees, STEAM competitions. Demonstration of leadership, street drama performances that critique her society and push them to be better.

We talk about the form and ways she could make it better, increase her chance of a fully paid college study experience abroad. I try my damnedest to make her feel at ease, after all she’s meeting me for the first time while Sajan has been her mentor, teacher and friend for more than a year now. Her smile changes with each of my silly jokes, and opens up more till we’re chatting like old friends. Then we attack the strict structure of UWC’s form, it’s rude whys about why she should be the one who deserves the scholarship, multiple bullet point lists that demand a complete picture of her academic life and leadership potential.

For what reason did I join the fellowship if not for this? I breeze through the form, dredge up all my experience of handling application forms at my previous job, and point out how exactly she’ll be able to please the multiple tiers of examiners who’ll go through her form with a critical and unemotional eye. Almost an hour passes and then we’re done. The first round of feedback for the first draft is done. A two hour walk home knocks at the door and she declines offers of tea or lunch with us, lest it gets too dark.

We walk a bit o’way together and I watch Sajan and her recount fun memories of her Grade 10 days. Selfies are taken, promises are made to implement the feedback as soon as possible and return to school tomorrow. Final goodbye waved,  the long dusty road that snakes it’s way out of Gimdee swallows her and the bright yellow dress.