Tara Devi Tuladhar

Tara Devi was born to an old merchant family at Tanlāchhi (तंलाछि), Kathmandu. Her father Triratna Man Tuladhar was a Lhasa Newar trader. Her grandfather Dharma Man Tuladhar was a philanthropist best known for renovating the Swayambhu stupa in 1918.^[3]

There were only a few schools in the 1930s as the Rana regime did not want ordinary citizens to get an education. For girls, it was even more difficult to join school. So Tara Devi received informal tuition at home.^[4]

In 1948, her family sent her to study at St. Josephs's Convent in Kalimpong, India. Returning to Kathmandu, she joined Kanya High School and finished 10th grade. In 1953, she went to Allahabad, India and enrolled at Kamla Nehru Memorial Hospital to pursue her long cherished goal to become a nurse. Two years later, she received her Diploma in Midwifery.^{[citation needed]}

She had been inspired to become a nurse by the tales she had heard as a child about how nurse Vidyabati Kansakar had cared for the injured during the great earthquake of 1934 in Kathmandu.^[5]

In 1960, Tara Devi began service at Prasuti Griha Maternity Hospital, Kathmandu. After doing her Post Graduate in Nursing from the College of Nursing, New Delhi in 1964, she became a senior tutor at Nursing School in Kathmandu.^{[citation needed]}

In 1961, she became the first female blood donor in Nepal by donating blood to a patient who was due for surgery and required blood urgently.^[6] She was the supervisor at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital before she retired in 1990.^[7]