In a community where living with extended families was the norm, she was an anomaly. An older woman living by herself with no partner to keep her company, no sibling to foster friendly rivalry with and no children to be responsible for.

She mostly kept to herself, followed a rigid routine and did not engage in small talk. Our interactions with her were limited to exchanges of polite smiles when we crossed paths on the staircase leading to our first-floor flats. She lived in a one-room unit, a few doors down from ours.

My siblings and I often mused over how lonely her existence must be. We had noticed that she did not own a TV or a phone when we went to drop off a plate of momos (meat dumplings) once as a courtesy. To us, it was unimaginable how a person could spend hours living in a room with no visible source of modern entertainment. She didn’t seem like the pious kind either who’d spend hours in prayer.

• Tags: Issue 29, Nepal, Tsering D. Gurung