KATHMANDU, March 22 -- When I first saw Toya Gurung's name in an anthology of poems, I thought she had to be Japanese. I had known of no Gurung women writers. "Toye means water, and toya means lotus," she tells me in the living room of her home in Baneswor that sits on a street named after her. "My maternal grandfather who knew all the Hindu scriptures by heart gave me that name."
Her house is surrounded by juniper trees, the inspiration behind her book-length poem Dhoopi (The Juniper), and later when we walk into her wild garden full of roses and angelias, Toya will look like a dandelion puff, floating in the green, wearing a crown of soft white hair.
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Born in 1947, Toya ...