The woman rewriting the rules

Sapana Pradhan Malla’s family named her as a lament for the son they didn’t get. Today she is the most powerful judge in the country.

Her parents named her Sapana not as a wish for her future but as a marker of their disappointment. Two daughters had already arrived in the family before her, in the village of Ramgram in Nawalparasi. By the time her mother carried a third child, the family had convinced itself that the longed-for son was finally coming. When he was not, when she was not him, they gave her the name that means the thing you want and cannot have: dream, or Sapana.