The book is full of metaphors, like the one about how all men know to do is plough while women have to tend to it thereafter. Given that these events took place in the past, how difficult or easy was it to do that?
While I was working in hill and mountain areas in the ’70s, I came across a lot of earthy ‘women’s’ sayings and songs, which used such metaphors. Some of them are extremely bawdy. When I first came to Nepal on July 4, 1971 it was barely a literate nation and this hadn’t changed much by the millennium. Oral traditions still thrived, so I used this particular metaphor, which you still hear in the hills, particularly in very patriarchal areas where men play cards once the ploughing is over while the women carry out all other agricultural work.

Author Greta Rana feels the book is relevant to all modern societies even today. She argues that our societies are no different from the one in Nepal in Jung’s time. PICs COURTESY/Roli Books