This paper analyses Prajwal Parajuly's short stories "The Gurkha's Daughter".
In "The Gurkha’s Daughter" (2012), Parajuly concerns characters survival through cultural practices between Nepali and English convention as hybridity in a host country. The characters of these stories immigrate to the host country with some purpose where they develop hybrid cultural space. They seem to have difficulty in coping with the host culture and the country because of which they start to negotiate and adapt new language, behavior, religion, lifestyle, relationship etc.
In order to show the presence of hybrid cultural space, different hybrid elements from the stories were identified and reasoned for hybridity. Hybrid is a word termed by Homi K. Bhabha which gives rise to new and unidentifiable cultural identity that has negotiation of meaning and representation. Hybridity is a product of adaptation and negotiation that is developed by immigrants in a host country for acceptance by the host community or for survival.
Abstract
In the short stories, The Gurkha’s Daughter (2012), Prajwal Parajuly concerns characters survival through cultural practices between Nepali and English convention as hybridity in a host country. The characters of these stories immigrate to the host country with some purpose where they develop hybrid cultural space. They seem to have difficulty in coping with the host culture and the country because of which they start to negotiate and adapt new language, behavior, religion, lifestyle, relationship etc. In order to show the presence of hybrid cultural space, different hybrid elements from the stories were identified and reasoned for hybridity. Hybrid is a word termed by Homi K. Bhabha which gives rise to new and unidentifiable cultural identity that has negotiation of meaning and representation. Hybridity is a product of adaptation and negotiation that is developed by immigrants in a host country for acceptance by the host community or for survival.
Keywords: Community, Culture, Immigrants, Hybridity, Negotiation, Adaptation, Survival, Host Country
Prajwal Parajuly’s 2012 short stories in The Gurkha’s Daughter critiques hybridity in the host country resulting survival strategy that is sprung through acceptance between Nepali cultural institution and English cultural conventions. The Gurkha’s Daughter by Prajwal Parajuli contains eight short stories from different geographical region. These short stories focus up on different issues such as quest for identity, diaspora, ethnicity, psychological turmoil and despair of those Nepalese who have been dispersed from Nepal to India, Bhutan and U.S. However, this paper focuses mainly on three stories: “The Cleft”, “Missed Blessing” and “The immigrants” issues regarding hybrid cultural practice. This paper is about the exploration of hybrid cultural practice as survival strategy in the host country through acceptance and negotiation of the norms, values, language, behavior and life style in the selected stories for thesis. This paper examines the characters of the stories to find hybrid cultural practice and negotiation among them.
The selected text and the issues produced by Prajwal Parajuly has attracted my interest because the author have brought many issues related to the immigrant’s life like cultural acceptance, negotiation and their survival in the host country. Among many issues, hybridity seems to be the evocated reason for the survival or the reason to maintain their living with in the host community which is completely unfamiliar to the immigrants as presented in these stories. It seems like Prajwal Parajuly as being Indian-Nepali author, being himself as hybrid born with multiple cultural information has reflected that quality in these stories.
This paper aims to reveal the rationale for the practice of negotiation and accepting the norms, values, behavior, language, religion and lifestyle between Nepali and English characters who produces hybridity in a host country. Many critics and scholars have given their own kind of concept and understanding about this text but none of them seems to highlighted the concept of hybridity in this text. So, to talk about hybridity in this text and to find the rationale behind hybrid cultural practice, the concept about hybridity by theorist Homi K. Bhabha has been invoked in order to analyze the characters deliberately set out to practice hybrid culture or lifestyle.
An author of two books, Prajwal Parajuly is a son of Indian father and Nepali mother born in Gangtok, the Sikkim region of north-eastern India on 24th October 1984. He spent his childhood in Gangtok but he was educated at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, and the University of Oxford. He is one of the youngest Indian-Nepali authors who wrote books in between the diverse culture of two different country. He started his career from the work as an advertising executive at The Village Voice and later become the writer. He published his first book in 2012, The Gurkha’s Daughter a short story collection. In this book he has described and dramatized the experience of Nepali people and their diaspora. Similarly, his second book Land Where I Flee, a novel published in 2013, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Prajwal Parajuly has successfully established himself as a distinctive author in the world though his finely crafted writing.
Prajwal Parajuly’s books were published in the present time so they are contemporary literature. According to literary time period, since 1945 or after world war II till present every literary writing were considered as contemporary writing. The contemporary writings were mainly reality-based stories with strong characters and true story. Contemporary period of literature reflects upon the current political, social and personal issues of the society. Contemporary literatures are ironic and questions the fact that exist and make the characters to understand themselves and others. Contemporary literatures are often character driven which are based upon characters behavior, attitude and personality. Contemporary literature does not have one or single theme as it incorporate many issues that are related to the society so its theme may have variation based on the change in society over a time. Parajuly’s The Gurkha’s Daughter is a piece of contemporary literature because of the features in this book. The stories have depicted different political, socio-economic and personal issues related to the character and their society which changes over the time.
The Gurkha’s Daughter is a collection of eight insightful short stories from different Nepali speaking societies and geographical region. This book was published in 2012 by Quercus USA in America. The collection brings the story of Nepalese people and diaspora, identity, ethnicity and despair. Parajuly has brought the larger group of people from different territorial identity into a single circle through those stories in this book. Each of the story has different issues but they are linguistically, ethnically and geographically related to each other. The first story “The Cleft” is about the disfigured servant girl who wants to run away from Nepal. Second story “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” is about a shopkeeper from Bihar in Kalimpong who faces an illusions and problems in his life. Third story “A Father’s Journey” is a father’s reflection upon his relationship with his daughter. Fourth story “Missed Blessing” is about Hindus religious festival in Darjeeling that brings a sacrifice with it. Fifth story “No Land is Her Land” is about a Nepali Bhutanese refugee who has a hope to migrate to west. Sixth story “The Gurkha’s Daughter” is about a Gurkha’s daughter who tries to comprehend her father’s complaints. Seventh story “Passing Fancy” is about a retired woman who contemplates an affair. And finally, eighth story “The Immigrants” is about two young Nepali Speaking immigrants who meets in Manhattan of U.S. This story collection has brought the present issues of the society that exist in our contemporary society.
This study has used three selected stories from the collection of eight stories: “The Cleft”, “Missed Blessing”, and “The Immigrants”. “The Cleft” is the first short story among eight stories of the book The Gurkha’s Daughter. The story begins with a phone call to a parvati who is a widow. She becomes happy after the phone call and calls her servant Kaali to massage her scalp and temples. Kaali is a 13-year-old servant girl who is kept by her mistress. Kaali belongs from poor family and because of her poverty she was left by her mother at parvati’s house. She is named Kaali and often mistreated by her mistress parvati because of her black skin color and her cleft lip. Parvati thinks her mother in law has treated her badly. But her mother in law died for which her sister in law came to do the funeral at Birtamod. Parvati’s sister in law sarita, who dreams to stay abroad and comes with one Australian woman whose name is Erin. She is a paying guest and has learned all the Sanskrit Shlokas which she uses to enter into the temple. She likes Nepali foods and Nepali lifestyle so she goes with them to see funeral rites too. While travelling to Birtamod in Van they have conversation about their past life and the present which changes over time. Whole night they travel in van and at morning they reach to their home. While everyone enters the room Kaali runs away from there.
“Missed Blessing” is a fourth story that reveals about a young graduate Rajiv who is not interested to join the job far from his hometown and ignores to accept the religion conversion. This story begins with his family’s description who have been passed away. He has graduated his engineering and searching for job but he does not want to leave his grandma alone. Everyday Rajiv begins his day by looking his family’s photos and thinking about them. His younger brother Sandeep is at home for his Dashain vacation from boarding school. This is a festival time so he has to attend many guests and share his room even knowing that he cannot afford he tries his best. Meanwhile since few weeks a middle-aged couple from America have been seen at Rajiv’s place at six almost every morning. They have lived in Darjeeling for a year and helped poor people to know Christ. They come to Rajiv’s home to visit Rajiv in order to help him to understand about life through Bible. They have adopted Nepali life style and language which have made them to live a comfortable life in Darjeeling. Their name is Michael and Christa but Rajiv call them Mr. and Ms. Scott. They use to have a good and civilized debate with each other and spend hours of time with him.
It is Sunday when his family members come to his home and he has been awakened by Tikam’s Greeting, informing about arrangement of the space for everyone who are coming for Dashian. Rajiv wanted to question about the work to his mama which his grandma cannot do as she is old and her health is not good. But he drops the idea and try to do his best to satisfy everyone. While he was doing his best, he finds that even though he does fully by his heart it is not going to satisfy them and that makes him disappoint. On the other side, Michael and Christa tries to convince Rajiv towards religion conversion which makes him angry and he disrespect them.
“The immigrants” is an eighth story of the collection in which two immigrants meet in Manhattan. In the restaurant of Manhattan, Amit waits for food while he saw one woman waiting for a taxi on the street holding umbrella with one hand and waving with one hand. He thought to help her and asked her to wait in the restaurant until the rain stops. Her name is Anne and she has one Nepali maid Sabitri who used to come to her house. She tells about her excellent works to Amit and she offers him to hire her for his work. Amit lives in his own apartment which he has owned but yet has not get permanent work visa for which he is struggling. Anne takes his phone number and assured him that Sabitri will call him for work. The next day Sabitri calls him while he is in meeting and ignores it. Later he calls and talk to her about the work for him in his home.
Sabitri is a Nepali girl who comes from village of Nepal and have green card through lottery system and works as servant. She is weak in speaking English and she decides on learning proper English with Amit and in return she will work for him. Later she starts staying at his apartment and servers him as a friend. While working he gets to know that his visa cannot be extended further so he gets disappointed. He is a man of pride of his success so he tries to hide the problem from Sabitri but she keeps on asking him the cause of his disappointment. He tells her the problem, after knowing the situation Sabitri gives him one offer to solve the problem but he disregards her opinion and moves on with his own idea.
Various critics have viewed Prajwal Parajuly’s The Gurkha’s Daughter in different lights. They have their own perception towards those stories which explores the spectrum of ideas and themes. These collection of stories reveals the theme of diaspora, identity crisis, ethnicity, despair and other ideas. John Garth, a scholar writes, “Crisp, inventive and insightful, The Gurkha's Daughter paints an almost irreducibly plural picture, but exodus to the west is a shaping theme” (Garth 1). This line expresses that the stories are highly innovative and gives deep understanding of the life. However, he mentioned that the stories incorporate the diasporic vision or theme that shows the lifestyle of Nepali people. The life of Nepali people is not satisfactory because of which they are immigrated in search of good and satisfactory life towards west. He also expresses that the stories potential theme is about the Nepalese who were exiled from Bhutan but the writer has focused towards the characters with their domestic incidents. Garth has his own unique point of view and was able to explore his deeper understanding about the inventive quality, multiple pictures with unique stories, painful experience of Nepalese people and their compulsion to immigrate.
Parajuly has been successfully able to persuade the readers with his realistic views in the stories. These short stories are the reality-based stories as mentioned by Shayasta Tuladhar in his review article of this book. As he writes, “Parajuly’s stories are hauntingly true, and very relatable to Nepalis” (Tuladhar 166). This sentence reveals that the stories are not mere imagination rather it is representation of social, political and economic reality of the Nepalese life so the readers experience the events as real in the stories. The language used and the attitudes of the characters are almost exactly to our daily life experience. The stories reveal the need of transformation in the society where transformation takes place later in other stories. Shayasta Tuladhar also brings the reality about the Nepalese living in different geographical region bounded within single fold that is incorporated by Parajuly in his book.
Similar to Shayasta Tuladhar, Colin Cooper writes, “The Gurkha’s Daughter uses straightforward storytelling and nuanced characterization to convey social realities, regional quirks and multicultural misunderstandings” (Cooper 1). This shows that the writer has felt the tragedy of people and explored those life experiences of people from different geographical region in an unnatural way in his stories. Cooper’s opinion heads towards the oddity of religion that comes in contact with other religion in an uncanny way and creates cultural synchronization and misunderstanding among characters. In his review, he mentions that Parajuly has used convincing dialogue and he has allowed personal experience rather than qualitative research for the narrative. He has talked about the pictorial depiction of map before every story is actually a direction to the overseas readers who might be not familiar to its various settings. Overall his ideas mainly give a look to his way of expressing and conveying the social realities, regional quarks and multicultural misunderstandings.
In the review by Eve Lucas, it is mentioned that “people have to define themselves as they deal with change” (1). This review is focused towards the identity crisis which is expressed in the stories of Prajwal Parajuly. It expresses the view that to understand the culture of the person from which they came have to keep their identity even though they are immigrants in foreign country. Showing small habits and practices of old tradition of their culture can provide comfort during the time of confusion and helps to get integrated. This review shows that however we are close to our place of origin we have to define ourselves to keep our originality and also to let others to know about our culture among different group of people. Keeping originality in foreign nation is not so easy but to get connected with own people and culture we have to stick to our identity and show our tradition, culture and behaviors. Doing so will also help to understand different cultures that persist in the society. Parajuly has nicely expressed such ideas in his story “The Immigrants”.
In another review by Joy Benevento focuses upon the class differences of Nepalese people who are managing to survive outside Nepal. As he mentions, “the stories’ frequent treatment of class differences, most particularly those involving the caste system, make its themes familiar to anyone versed in Indian culture and religion” (Benevento 169). His writing shows that the cruelty and prejudiced form of life by upper-caste people reveals how those lower-class people are living under the limitation of their life. His review brings the theme of social class culture struggle and exploitation of lower-class people. It shows that Parajuly has brought this issue in his story to reveal that the class struggle is inevitable in every society either it is middle class, lower class or upper class.
However, these all perceptions and reviews have been depicted on the basis of their own understanding and readings regarding the contemporary time, society and issues. These writers have depicted different themes such as diaspora, disparity, displacement, identity crisis, social realities, multicultural misunderstanding etc. As we can see there are many critics who have talked about the issues brought in the stories but along with those issues, I saw that the stories imbedded developed cross-cultural identity or hybrid culture among these characters which has not been focused yet. So, this paper highlights the concept of hybridity of Bhabha as it can be seen through cultural practices by the characters because they neither stick to their originality nor they can adopt the new culture completely and remain in-between making it their survival strategy.
[...]
-
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X. -
¡Carge sus propios textos! Gane dinero y un iPhone X.