Kathmandu, April 16 -- 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.

Sapana Pradhan Malla grew up knowing this. She has always seemed to find it funny, in the particular way that people find funny the things that drive them.

"That's probably why my whole nature is a boy's," she said in a recent interview at her home. "I always made my gang ...