“Everything failed. Father had three wives so mother decided to leave. She raised me but I guess the fault was in me. I wasn’t able to study. I could not concentrate at all. Years after, the struggle didn’t leave. After 6 months of unpaid work at the carpet factory, I was laid off in the grounds that I was incompetent. I had an ailing mother at home and I saw no light in sight. I somehow started a business of selling eggs. One day I had gone out of the valley leaving my shop to a relative but I came back to find no shop. They had taken away everything. This was it. I didn’t want to live one more day. That day, I went to the Gompa and cried out, ‘Why me? What have I done to you for you to treat me like this’. That day I vowed never to return and left crying and heart-broken. I saw no hope and I started caring less. I joined a group of nomads who visited villages and sang and with them slept in the open. I stopped wearing shoes and my words stopped making sense, even to me. My face was covered with unkempt hair and my body with dirt. One day a distant relative came and feeling sorry for me said, ‘If you can help me find a piece of land that is for sale, I will reward you with good money.’ I knew the land I was standing at was for sale. It took only a day for me to seal the deal from which I earned many thousand rupees. After that day, I cut my beard, took a bath, went to the temple, said I was sorry, bought a safari suit and decided to be a land broker.” (Chewang Ghyalthan Lama, Bhaktapur)