From Roots to Routes: Navigating Diasporic Sensibility in Prajwal Parajuly's The Gurkha's Daughter

Abstract

The Indian—Nepali author Prajwal Parajuly's collection of short stories The Gurkha's Daughter: Stories (2013) traces the trauma of displacement of the Nepalese against the onslaught of globalisation. Originally from Nepal, these migrant Gurkhas have suffered exclusionary status even after their years of loyal stay in India. They have been persecuted in Bhutan and Burma too. Parajuly traces how the desire to be assimilated within the mainstream culture has been met with frustration. Hence the metaphor of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ play an important role in the consolidation of Nepali identity. Unlike in the classic case of Diaspora, the Nepali Diaspora harbours no dream of eventual return to their homeland. The movement for them can only be onward, not backward. This paper is thus an attempt to make a case history of the Gurkha Diaspora; it will also make an attempt to interrogate the essentialist definitions of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’; and will try to explore where the Gurkha situates himself in the larger narrative of global Diaspora.