When I was a child, I always dreamed of serving Nepal as a soldier. I felt like a powerful person. Even though I was born with a female body, I felt like a boy and wanted to join the forces to express my masculinity. For a while, female-bodied people could only join the police. That didn't make sense. Why could women join the police and not the army? So I came to Kathmandu from my home village, Darna Acham, in the remote, far-western remote area of Nepal, to apply for a job with the police.
While I was taking my exams for that position, there was news that the Royal Nepal Army was finally open to applications for women. Maybe this was a response to the use of female soldiers by the insurgent Maoist rebels. After all, this was during Nepal's civil war, fought between the Maoist rebels and the Royal Army in the early 2000s.
During the recruitment process, I encountered much discrimination because I sounded like a boy yet was applying for a female seat. Everyone was asking what I was. After a special medical examination to determine my sex, I passed as a female and began my training in Chhauni, a military training centre in a suburb of Kathmandu. Everyone was very excited for me. Joining the army in 2003 was my greatest victory.
During training, the officer above me got suspicious, and he sent two of my colleagues on a mission to check my private parts. These two women took me to the toilet. When they tried to remove my clothes, I told them, "If you are going to strip me naked, you should get naked as well." The women realised they shouldn't violate me like this. I also think they were afraid of me. So they lied to the officer that they had confirmed I was a female.