When I returned to check in on the young couple in 2014, the long days spent farming along the impossibly steep slopes had aged them. Yet they were determined to give their children, then 5 and 8, a better life. “I will not let them marry early,” Durga told me. “If they don’t study, they will become like us — or worse.”

He was right to worry. In the wake of natural disasters, rates of child marriage increase. How this happens became clear to me in February, when I visited the couple again, this time to see how they had fared since the earthquake.

They had barely been able to cope with life’s ordinary hardships, let alone an earthquake. Niruta told me that some months before the tremors, she had discovered she was pregnant with her third child. Without telling her husband, she attempted to have an abortion, a common recourse for girls who are forced to marry young and never learn about family planning. The procedure led to extensive blood loss, and Niruta feared for her life.

“I had pain all over my stomach,” Niruta explained. “I cried, saying, ‘I am about to die!’ ” The fetus remained unharmed, and six months later, she realized that she was still pregnant. She delivered a baby girl just weeks before the earthquake.

Shortly afterward, Durga’s father died after a three-year battle with cancer. Attempts to treat his illness left the couple with crippling debt. Making matters worse, the father had been in the middle of a legal battle over farmland he bought in a handshake deal. Young, uneducated and inexperienced, Durga and Niruta lost the case, and half their land — a devastating blow.

Add to all of this a catastrophic earthquake, and one can easily see how hopes for their children’s futures can be dashed. “I’m ashamed to say, at that time, we didn’t even have food to eat,” Durga said. Beside him sat his oldest child, Sumitra. At 10 years old, she is still too young to marry off in this community — but not by much.



