Born above a bustling corner shop in Kathmandu’s old city of Ason, Suchita Tuladhar grew up one of five sisters in a family that had sold ghee for generations. Her father was the fourteenth in that line proud of his small shop, proud of providing for his family. It was a working-class household where money was tight, space was shared, and daughters were expected to marry young.
Her mother, sharp with numbers and able to calculate sums mentally while others reached for the pen, had been forced to leave school after class five. Poverty had closed the door on her education. Years later, she quietly made a vow: none of her own girls would marry before completing at least class ten.
That promise shaped Suchita’s path. She still remembers being five, tugging at her father’s sleeve and crying to follow her sisters to school. The teacher relented. She started early, often the youngest in her class, and struggled through the language barrier between home (Newar) and school (Nepali). But she was determined.
When she finally cleared her School Leaving Certificate in class 10, she became the first in the family to pass that milestone. “I remember his pride,” she said. “Each time I passed, he was so happy.” He made sure the world knew, too. Customers walking into the shop to buy ghee were greeted with the news: “My daughter has passed her exam!”
That pride pushed her further. Marriage brought her into a scholarly family; her husband and brother-in-law are doctors; her mother-in-law was among the first Nepali women to complete an MSc. “Study was the atmosphere,” Suchita recalls. “Everybody goes to one corner, and they study.” With encouragement, she completed two master’s degrees in three years. Later, while spending time in England, she focused on her English, laying a foundation for what was to come.
That pride pushed her further. Marriage brought her into a scholarly family; her husband and brother-in-law are doctors, and her mother-in-law was among the first Nepali women to complete an MSc. “Study was the atmosphere,” Suchita recalls. “Everybody goes to one corner, and they study.” With encouragement, she completed two master’s degrees within three years.
Later, while spending time in England where her husband was pursuing postgraduate study, she focused on improving her English a foundation for what was to come.
Motherhood did not dim her ambition, only slowed its rhythm. Once her children were older and the extended household split into separate homes, she returned to formal education with an MA in Theravada Buddhism. She studied relentlessly, sometimes locking herself away for months before exams, refusing even wedding invitations. The discipline paid off: she topped her university cohort and earned a gold medal for her results.
If Buddhism rebuilt her academic confidence, law became her boldest leap. Looking around her extended family full of doctors, engineers, and an architect (her daughter Karishma) she noticed a gap: no lawyer. In their Newar community, lawyers were few and trust was rarer. “When bad luck strikes, you need someone you can trust,” she says simply. So, in her mid-fifties, she enrolled in an evening LLB programme that ran from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week for three years.
t was a punishing routine that redrew the boundaries of her life: no evening guests, no social visits, just classes and revision. “It was really difficult,” she admits. “As you age, you need to study the same thing many times to remember. But I wasn’t going to give up.”
Support made the difference. Her husband quietly planned flights and programmes around her exams, brought coffee to her desk, and never once asked her to put the books away. Karishma remembers coming home one year and staging a kitchen intervention: “Mum wasn’t eating properly; powder soups are not meals!” she laughs. More enduring than any stew was a birthday card she and her brother wrote: We believe in you. Suchita taped it above her desk. “Whenever I found it difficult, I looked at the card,” she says. “Those positive words matter.”
This summer, at 58, she passed Nepal’s bar exam. Friends call her an inspiration. She calls it determination and a decision to stop asking for permission. “In our generation, very few women were allowed to work,” she says. “Even with master’s degrees, my friends were told to stay in the kitchen.” At 40, she gathered her old classmates and said: We’re not naïve anymore. We understand what we’re doing. From now on, we will inform the family of our decisions; we are not asking permission.
Karishma, now based in Kent / South London, sees the legacy clearly. “People in South Asia love timelines: do this by this age, that by that age,” she says. “Mum breaks those rules with kindness. She’ll do what she wants and do it better.” What she’s learned isn’t to chase being first, but to keep trying. “If an exam is hard, she studies double next time. That’s the mindset we grew up with.”
There were costs. Three years of evening classes meant missed gatherings and a smaller social circle. After qualifying, Suchita realised her world had narrowed to fellow students. She’s rebuilding it now, one conversation at a time, opening her door to neighbours who need advice. “A lawyer must be trusted,” she says. “Not all are. With my background, people will trust me.”
Asked what she would tell women who feel they’ve missed their moment, she counts it off plainly: family support matters, money matters, but above all decide. “If you truly decide, nothing can stop you.”
Between a corner shop that sold ghee for fourteen generations and a new brass nameplate for Advocate Suchita Tuladhar lies a story of a father’s pride, a mother’s sacrifice, and a daughter who refused to stop learning until the world had no choice but to believe in her too.
