Kathmandu, May 15 -- I remember looking at my mother's pictures from her college days in an old 90s-style album in Dharan. In one photograph, she is surrounded by a group of girls in Biratnagar, all wearing kurtha surwals in the same shade of blue. She has a soft smile, and her youthful face looks almost too delicate. Whenever I see these photographs of my mother, captured in a life I never knew, I feel an unease that I can't quite comprehend.

Who is this young woman I was seeing? Why does she feel so familiar and distant at the same time?

Bunu Dhungana tells me that we spend much of our lives never truly knowing who our mothers are beyond the roles they play. We even forget that our mothers have names other than 'Maa', 'Aama', or 'Mumm...