It is early morning in West Nepal. In the valleys below Pachnali village the night fog lies as a thick cotton duvet. Slowly it creeps up the 

mountain sites. The sun is hiding behind the mountains. Around 7 am it will rise and envelop the village in a soft yellow light.

Parvati got married at the age of nine. She was born in a village about two hours of walk from Pachnali. After marriage she moved to her husbands household - as the custom is in Nepal. By the time Parvati and her husband had been married for sixteen years she still had not got pregnant. They went to India to get a medical examine. “When the doctors found out that my husband was capable of getting children I decided to find one more wife for our household”, Parvati tells. “It is my duty as the first-wife to ensure the continuity of our family. As I could not give my husband any children I had to find him a second wife. Besides, if we have no children who will look after us when we get old?”. Now, two years after the other Parvati joined the household the CO-wife is expecting a child.

During daytime Parvati and her CO-wife take turns at looking after the shop. The other will in the meantime fetch water, cut leaves for the livestock and cook food. In the shop Parvati sells biscuits, dried wiwi-noodle soup in colourful plastic bags, cigarettes, bidi’s (small hand-rolled cigarettes), sugar, salt, rice, batteries, sweets, glass pearl necklaces and hand-knitted polyester caps, among other things. Many people from the different dalit groups in the village pass by the shop - either to buy a few items or just to have a chat. While Parvati serves the customers there is a clear difference in the way she carries out the deal. Some villagers receive the goods in their hands and handle Parvati the rupee notes (Nepali currency) in her hand as well. Others must pick up the salt, sugar or cigarettes from the floor and put the money on the floor or some other place in the shop. It is only among kami customers that Parvati has physical contact by touching.   

In broad lines the caste system separates the Nepalese population into “untouchables” and “touchables” - the dalits and the upper castes. But also among the dalit people themselves the practice of untouchability is carried out - though to a lesser degree. They cannot enter each others kitchen area. They cannot share food which have been in contact with water and fire - which will say cooked food. They might share a packet of biscuits as it is considered uncooked but if they take tea at the same time, they cannot eat from the same package of biscuits as tea is considered “cooked”. A cigarette may be shared among people from different dalit groups; but when the cigarette passes from one hand to the other, it is dropped down in the hands of the next person in line to smoke in order to prevent touching.

In this way, the caste system has been quite pervasive. It has strong impact on the social relationships between people, be it the relation between upper castes and dalits or among dalits themselves. “It is from a long time back in time that also dalit people do not touch each other”, Parvati tells as an explanation to the different way of treating the customers in her shop. “The elders tell us that we get sick if we touch each other or eat together. I do not know if it really will happen. But it is difficult to change the tradition and most of the time we just do what the elders always have done”.

Pachnali village is situated on the edge of a mountain side. All the houses are build of clay with roofs made of heavy stones in squares. There are about one hundred households in the village. Each household consists of five to eight family members - wife and husband, the husbands parents (if still alive) and two to five children. Other family members live next door in the same house - either the husbands brother and family, an uncle or other relatives.

The different dalit groups in Pachnali all live in separate parts of the village. The kamis and lohars, which is a subgroup of kamis, live in the area surrounding Parvati’s shop. Further down the village towards the hill slope the sarkis, bhuls and damai reside. During day time grey smoke reaches to the sky from outdoor fireplaces scattered around in the kami tole; here the kami blacksmiths make iron axes or sharp knives in elephant-trunk shape which are used for cutting leaves and firewood. Down in the damai tole the tailors have put their old iron sewing machines in front of the houses and are busy sewing clothes. Half-moon shaped wooden drums hang down from the walls outside the houses. It visually indicates that this is a damai living area. In the sarki tole pieces of animal skin are put out to dry in the sun. The leather is mostly used in bamboo baskets as a way to make the baskets hard-wearing by putting a square at the bottom. Or used for making leather reins for leading the ox’s in time of ploughing.

In the afternoon Parvati puts her cylinder shaped water trunk on her head and leave for the water tap. On the path she meets other women and young girls. They are on their way to the fetch water as well. At the spring there are two water taps but all the dalit woman queue up in front of the one. The other tap is reserved for the few upper caste households in the village. “We are not allowed to take water from their tap”, Parvati explains. “If we take water from their water source it immediately dries out. We will get very sick and somebody in our household will die from difficulty in breathing”. Parvati has never seen it happen - but she strongly believes it will if they start taking water from the upper caste tap.

A few minutes later Pavitra Malla, a woman from a chhetri upper caste household in the village, arrives. She crawls up the hill and turns off the pipeline leading water to the dalit tap. The water in the upper caste tap starts to run faster and she quickly fills her trunks. “If the dalit people take water from our tap the dewata gets very angry”, she tells. The dewata is the name of the local god. “It is dewata’s water and the god has the power to make people ill if offended. The dewata cannot accept unclean people in contact with this tap. In this way we don’t decide who can take water from which water source. Dewata decides”.

The dewata has a high degree of influence on the daily life of the villagers. The god informs the villagers how and where to built their houses, which water sources to use, when to carry out marriages etc. The dewata gives orders through the local healer, the Dhami Jhankri. The healer goes into trance and let the spirit talk through him. There is a Dhami Jhankri in each village. He is often consulted - when a person gets sick or when the villagers want to have the dewata’s advise. One time Parvati tried to used kerosene for cooking. A few days later she fell ill. The Dhami Jhankri told her that the dewata did not like the smell of kerosene.

In Pachnali the caste system and the guidelines from the dewata and Dharmi Jhankri are closely interconnected. Most villagers explain the different life circumstances for the dalits and upper castes respectively as “the order of dewata”. If they try to change the system by breaking with the codes of conduct, the dewata gets angry. In this way the working of the caste system feeds on many sources.

Later this afternoon Parvati’s husband, Dambari Kami, returns back from India. He has bought a red “camping chair” in India and immediately takes it into use inside the shop. Many villagers hurry to the shop. They are eager to learn if Dambari has some news from their relatives working in Bombay. Sundari - a thirty year old Damai woman, wants to know if he has brought money for her from her husband, Jaysingh Damai. He went to Bombay seven years ago together with their two youngest children and her mother-in-law. Dambari received money from Sundari’s husband, but as Jaysingh Damai still owes money to Dambari from the time of travelling to India, only two hundred rupees (around 3 US$) is left for Sundari.

Parvati is not too happy to see her husband back. “When he is not around, I and my CO-wife wife get along well. But as soon as he is back we start to quarrel”. She is worried what will happen when the CO-wife gives birth. She is afraid that the husband will send her away or give some of the privileges that she enjoy to the CO-wife; among other things the control of the shop.

She wants to go home to her relatives in the neighbouring village for a while. But her husband insists that she stays in Pachnali in order to do the heavy work which the five month pregnant second wife cannot carry out. “There are a lot of different castes in our village. Kami, damai, sakri, lohar, chhetri, thakuri…”, Parvati says. “But sometimes I think that there are two additional castes - and that’s men and women!”.