Synopses & Reviews
When Parvati first heard the news, by way of a phone call from her youngest brother-in-law in Birtamod, she applied some coconut oil to her hair and called for the servant girl to massage her scalp and temples. The two perched themselves on the rickety wooden stairs leading to the house, Parvati with her legs wide apart, as the servant’s fingers adroitly negotiated their way through the thick tangle of hair on Parvati’s head.
"The demon," Parvati said, smiling to herself. "She’s dead."
"She’s dead," the girl echoed.
"Do you even know who I am talking about, you foolish girl?" Parvati gently hit the servant’s hand.
"Yes, your mother."
"Not my mother, but my mother-in-law. Your name is Kaali, you dark girl, and your brain is as dark as your face. You understand nothing."
"But you call her Aamaa, don’t you?"
"Of course, I have to. What else would I call my husband’s mother? My daughter? It’s a good thing you’ve found employment here, Kaali. With the way you think, you’d be thrown out of everywhere else. Not to forget the way you look – black as coal and those grotesque lips. Were my husband alive, he’d have kicked you out already."
Parvati turned back to look at the servant’s lip. Kaali’s teeth protruded from under the cleft, and she looked like a mouse ready to nibble on a piece of cheese. Parvati touched the deformity with her fingers.
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"No, I am used to it."
"That’s the reason you still have a home, Kaali – you never complain. You wash plates like a blind woman – just today I had to rewash three plates – and you mop like a baby. You aren’t good at anything and look like that, but I’ll put up with you because of your attitude.’
Kaali was now forming slow circles around Parvati’s temples. Parvati’s hair glistened in the Kathmandu sun, which was frail and playing hide-and-seek, and she let out a cry when Kaali, through a rough motion of fingers, selected a strand of grey hair and, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger, extracted a big, fat louse.
"Look at it," Kaali said, showing Parvati the insect crawling in between the lines of her palm.
"That’s adhaarey. It sucks more blood than a jumraa."
Kaali threw the louse on the ground and, before it could escape, brought her thumb down to crush it, causing a tiny speck of blood to flick up and catch her cleft.
"I don’t know where I’ve been getting these from," Parvati remarked. "It must be because I tie my hair right after washing it."
"These things thrive in damp hair," Kaali said.
"You know everything, don’t you?"
"I don’t see another one."
"You know what they say – when you see one, you don’t see hundreds."
"I don’t see any more of them."
"That’s because you can’t do anything efficiently, didn’t I tell you?" Parvati said, adding in a resigned voice, "Maybe it is Aamaa’s spirit."
"When will you go to Birtamod?" Kaali asked.
"Why? So you can watch TV all day? Think I don’t know what you do when I am gone?"
"No, no, I just want to know. When will you go?"
"I am mourning right now," Parvati said with a wry smile. "I can’t think straight. I am sure the relatives will come up with some plan for me."
"Will I go too?"
"Why? You want a plane ride, you greedy girl?"
"I didn’t know we’d take a plane."
"There probably are no plane tickets available for today or tomorrow. Or the day after. The bokshee makes everything difficult. A woman who so easily made our lives difficult when alive is equally bad dead."
"Do you think she can hear us?"
"Let her, I don’t care. But you haven’t said anything bad about her, so why do you worry? If her aatmaa is still hovering around here, I’ll be the one it will come to scare in the night. Your face would scare even the ghosts. Are you fourteen yet, Kaali?"
"Thirteen."
"If you stay with us for four more years, maybe we’ll arrange for some surgery. Will that make you happy?"
"And school?" She spotted another louse but didn’t pursue it.
"Why go to school?" Parvati looked straight at Kaali. "Look, I am high-school pass, and yet I stay at home doing nothing. You need not go to school. Learn the basics from me. Show some initiative. Bring your notebook and pencil when I am free. But why would you? You’re too busy running around Battisputalli with the neighbourhood children, too busy imagining what a beauty you will turn into after the surgery. Remember, the surgery only takes place after four years, and I shall take into account every misbehaviour of yours before I decide on it."
Yes, we will take care of the lip, he had said. And school, too. Now that you talk to me about going to school, it seems you have a brain we can’t waste, we shouldn’t waste. It’s just that all the mind-numbing chores at your mistress’s place have made you rusty.
The phone in the hallway put a stop to Kaali’s daydream.
"Go get it," Parvati ordered. "The relatives must have made some travel arrangements. If anyone asks for me, tell them I am crying."
"What if they want to talk to you?"
"Tell them I can’t talk."
Kaali ran to the phone while Parvati followed to listen in on the extension.
"Hello, Bhauju," the voice on the other end said. It was Sarita, Parvati’s dead husband’s sister.
"No, this is Kaali."
The voice at once changed. "Where’s Bhauju?"
"She’s crying."
"Call her."
"I can’t. She’s crying."
"I don’t care. Call her to the phone. It’s my mother who’s dead, not hers, and I am not crying."
"She says no."
"You’re so stupid. Are you the one with the bad lip?"
"Yes."
"Anyway, tell Bhauju to be ready. My brother-in-law has agreed to loan us his van and driver to go to Birtamod. There’s a seat left for Bhauju. Her share will be two thousand rupees."
"What about me?"
"What will you do at a funeral? You can stay at home, or if you’re that desperate, you can come sit in the trunk. It’s a long journey, but you might have more space back there than we will in the front. All right, we’ll be there in an hour. Tell her to be ready."
"I will, but what if she’s not willing to listen to me?"
"And you, please wipe that snot off your face and wear something clean. I want a clean skirt."
Kaali didn’t have to tell her mistress about the chat. Parvati hobbled into the hallway, a traumatized look on her face.
"How dare she?" she hissed. "You’re clean. We’ve taught you clean habits. Don’t you bathe once and sometimes twice a week? And no one should comment on your bad lip. It’s not your fault you were born that way. Didn’t she say she’d be here in an hour? We need to pack, Kaali. We have some work to do."
"Am I going too?"
"Of course, you are, you fool. I don’t know who else is going to fill up the van. No space? She’ll probably bring that Australian paying guest she takes everywhere with her – that elephant. You can sit in the trunk. After all, I am paying two thousand rupees. What are the others paying then? Nothing, I’m sure. Always taking advantage of our big-heartedness, all of Sir’s family. Nothing I ever do is enough for them."
Review
"Parajuly's debutant collection demands attention for the brilliant clarity of his writing and his mastery of characterization . . . Parajuly's brilliant work here promises that more fine fiction will follow. This title belongs in any library with a short-fiction readership in addition to those that serve a South Asian audience."--Ellen Loughran, Booklist
Review
"The Gurkha's Daughter] insightfully explores a diverse array of relationships among people in Nepal and throughout the Nepalese diaspora . . . Parajuly's main strength is in recognizing and revealing the connections, as well as divisions, between people in vastly different walks of life."--Publisher's Weekly
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"Involving"--Mary Ann Grossmann, Twin Cities Times
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"Eight beautifully written characters in neat stories that riff on displacement, perhaps but with wit and charm.... photo-real tales of modern movement."--Monocle magazine
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"The next big thing in South Asian fiction."--Anna McNamee, BBC World Service's The Strand
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"Equally moving stories, the author takes us effortlessly inside the lives of the families in this remote ancient kingdom and its diaspora."--Christena Appleyard, Daily Mail
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Praise for Prajwal Parajuly: "A master at capturing, with great wit and humor, the day-to-day interactions between his characters."--Manil Suri
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"[Parajuly] is inventive and fresh, and it's great to be reading fiction from and about a country that holds such an intrigue."--Time Out Bejing
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Praise for The Gurkha's Daughter: "Crisp, inventive and insightful... What gives Parajuly's characters warmth is an energy born of division or dispossession: a desire to be loved, to be better off, or to be elsewhere."--John Garth, The Guardian
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"[An] accomplished debut... Though its recurring themes--the conflict between tradition and modernity; the squirming of the individual under the community's oppressive gaze--may be familiar, Parajuly's wry humour and deft handling of voice point to a distinctive talent."--David Evans, Financial Times
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"Hope for a better life is the theme in ... the Indian and UK bestseller about the Nepalese diaspora, war, oppression, and occupation."--The Boston Globe
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"I could blame Prajwal Parajuly for the burn I got on the beach in Santa Monica on Independence Day. It was because of him that I sat in the blazing midday sun for hours, oblivious to my scorching extremities, devouring his debut, The Gurkha's Daughter, from start to finish . . . But I won't hold it against him, for the pleasure of these short stories - about the Nepalese diaspora - trumps the peril of having singed my skin. Parajuly has achieved what many writers only dream of doing: Drawing characters in realistic, artful scenarios that encapsulate the beauty and pain and complexity of life. No wonder his book has become a bestseller in the UK. His talent matches the hype. Each story left me longing for more . . . Parajuly has given us a lovely gift, food for thought, and delectable, too."--Lisa Napoli, Aerogram
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"Prajwal has a deceptively light touch that's biting but never bitter. To use a cliché from the region it's like perfectly brewed Darjeeling tea - steeped in just enough flavor of his mountains but without being overwhelmed by their majesty."--KALW 91.7
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"Each of the eight short stories in this book gives a glimpse into the lives of various Nepali people ... Parajuly exposes the complicated struggles of the Nepali people, such as embracing modern life while still keeping tradition."--Metro
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"Parajuly's stories are windows into a world of the Nepalese and Indian caste system and the prejudice and superstition that haunts it."--The Kansas City Star
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"(Mr. Parajuly is) making waves in the literary world."-- The Atlantic
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"Powerful . . . a remarkable collection, cohesive, original, and vividly rendered."--The Irish Examiner
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"Nepalese literature is not particularly well represented on the international stage, which makes the interest surrounding young Indian writer Prajwal Parajuly all the more encouraging. His first collection of short stories focuses on Nepal and the Nepalese diaspora. Parajuly has a nice ear for dialogue, is as adept with the notion of home as he is the immigrant experience and has a light touch with some of the horrors of the culture."
--Metro (UK)
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"The language is so easy, the conversation so telling, the colours so vivid and the smells so intense it's as if the author has cut through a rich cake to exhibit the many different layers."--The Tribune (UK)
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"Parajuly, with his keen eye for social satire, comes across as the witty cousin who can do wicked-funny caricatures of the conservative, unpopular relatives."--India Currents
Synopsis
Prajwal Parajuly has been hailed as a writer with talents of “considerable strength.” (The Guardian). Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, The Gurkha’s Daughter is a moving collection of short stories of the Nepali-speaking diaspora in India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Manhattan. Among the characters and stories that live in it are: a disfigured servant girl who plans to flee Nepal; a Kalimpong shopkeeper who faces an impossible dilemma; a Nepali-Bhutanese refugee who pins her hopes on the West; two young Nepali-speaking immigrants meet in Manhattan; and a Gurkha’s daughter who tries to comprehend her father’s dissatisfaction with her. Eye-opening, compassionate, and deeply-human, the stories of The Ghurka’s Daughter evoked a powerful realism and tenderness that reflects those very real places of the Nepalese diaspora that inspire Parajuly.
Synopsis
A number one bestseller in India and a shortlisted nomination for the Dylan Thomas Prize,
The Gurkha's Daughter is a distinctive debut from a rising star in South Asian literature. This collection of stories captures the textures and sounds of the Nepalese diaspora through eight intimate, nuanced portraits, taking us from the hillside city of Darjeeling, India to a tucked away Nepalese restaurant in New York City.
The daily struggles of Parajuly's characters reveal histories of war, colonial occupation, religious division, systemized oppression, and dispossession in the diverse geographical intersection of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and China. In a cruel remark by a wealthy doctor to her tenant shopkeeper, we hear the persistent injustice of the caste system; in the contentious relationship between a wealthy widow and her sister-in-law, we glimpse the restricted lives and submissive social roles of Nepalese women; and in a daughter's relationship with her father, we find a dissonance between modernity and tradition that has echoed through the generations in unexpected ways.
Across different ethnicities, religions, and other social distinctions, the characters in these share a universal yearning, not just for survival but for a better life; one with love, dignity, and community. In The Gurkha's Daughter, Parajuly reveals the small acts of bravery--the sustaining, driving hope--that bind together the human experience.
About the Author
Prajwal Parajuly, the son of an Indian father and a Nepalese mother, divides his time between New York and Oxford, England, but disappears to Gangtok, his hometown in the Indian Himalayas, at every opportunity. Parts of The Gurkha's Daughter were written while he was a writer-in-residence at Truman State University, in Kirksville, Missouri.
Table of Contents
The Gurkha’s Daughter by Prajwal Parajuly
The Cleft
Parvati is a wealthy widow in Kathmandu. Kaali is her servant who possesses a sensitive intelligence and a face that is pretty—except for her cleft upper lip. From her mistress Kaali endures scorn and ridicule, but remains hopeful that she will one day receive the gift of cosmetic surgery and find a better life in India. When Parvati’s mother-in-law dies, she and Kaali leave for a long road journey to pay respects in Birtamod, near the Indian border. Accompanying them are Parvati’s sister-in-law Sarita and her son, who show an even higher degree of disgusted cruelty to the deformed servant. As they traverse Nepal’s bumpy and treacherous roads in a crowded automobile, the three women find many of their assumptions and values called into question by the tragedies in their lives, their hopes for the future, and by each other. As they approach the border, Kaali must determine whether she has the courage to flee the only life she knows for an uncertain future in a place that, for her, has only existed in dreams.
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
Munnu is a humble Muslim shopkeeper with a growing family in the northern Indian town of Kalimpong, whose bottom line is suffering from a steady loss of business to a new store nearby. And also from Shraddanjali—the kleptomaniac daughter of rich locals, who brazenly steals increasingly valuable merchandise from him every day. Munnu seeks counsel from his landlady and confidante Dr. Pradhan about how to deal with Shraddanjali’s disrespect, and also with his pregnant wife’s stubbornness that is fueled by Muslim values more conservative than his own. Knowing that accusing the rich, spoiled girl of theft will spark a conflict across economic and cultural lines that he is unlikely to win, Munnu sinks into despair until, in a moment of epiphany, he stumbles upon a seemingly perfect solution to all his problems.
A Father’s Journey
Prabin and Supriya have the sort of father-daughter relationship most can only dream about: Full of laughter, warmth and genuine affection, they are truly the best of friends. But when he chooses to observe an antiquated seven-day isolation ritual after Supriya’s first menstruation she is humiliated and furious, leaving their close bond permanently damaged and Prabin full of regret.
She matures into a beautiful, headstrong young woman and goes abroad for university, while Prabin’s loneliness compounds as his marriage to Supriya’s mother grows loveless and devoid of passion. And they are at odds over whether Supriya ought to honor tradition by marrying a Brahmin like herself, or—as Prabin believes—is free to marry a man from a different caste.
Intent on making her own decision, Supriya declines the affections of a meek intellectual and accepts those of a wealthy, handsome and charming Brahmin prone to embarrassing drinking binges. Prabin’s sixtieth birthday party takes place a few weeks before the wedding, and as his future son-in-law wreaks more chaos with each glass of wine and shot of liquor, Prabin and his daughter share a moment of reflection on how far they have—and haven’t—come since their idyllic early days.
Missed Blessing
In the Indian tourist town of Darjeeling, a young man named Rajiv—whose parents are dead—shares a squalid one-bedroom home with his adolescent cousin Tikam and his grandmother. He is bright and well-educated, but the local job market is hopeless and he cannot simply leave for greater opportunity since his relatives depend on his able body and presence of mind to survive. Their lack of appreciation for his efforts on their behalf fills Rajiv with a creeping sense of resentment and anger, which he expresses to a pair of Christian missionaries from America who visit him regularly. Although Rajiv attended a Christian school, he is skeptical of the Bible’s teachings and reacts with increasing hostility to what he sees as the missionaries’ subtle attempts to convert him. When this mixes with his feelings towards his family’s ungratefulness, Rajiv finds himself in an emotional tailspin where he lashes out at others and must figure out his own definition of faith in order to carry on.
No Land Is Her Land
Thirty-five year-old Anamika Chettri and her two daughters live in a Bhutanese refugee camp in eastern Nepal. She has been there for twelve years, since being evicted from Bhutan due to the dissident political activities of her then-husband, who had left her already by the time the soldiers came to her door. In Nepal, the strikingly beautiful Anamika endures catcalling and hostile scorn from Nepalese, and is frustrated that she is forbidden from being a productive member of society. Yet she has no desire to return to Bhutan—in her thinking, if her country does not want her back, she does not want it back.
Then a small miracle occurs and her family is selected to interview for the privilege of emigrating to the United States. But once word spreads, her estranged second husband—a bitter, abusive Nepali man named Ravi—appears bearing veiled threats about what will happen if he is not allowed to go to America too. Facing the moment that will decide her future and that of her beloved daughters, Anamika wonders: Is it her beauty or her helplessness that draws men to her?
The Gurkha’s Daughter
The unnamed young girl who narrates this story enjoys nothing more than playing games with her best friend Gita. A new favorite for the duo is to put on fake mustaches, chew candy cigarettes and imitate each others’ father—both of whom are Gurkhas, Nepalese soldiers fighting in the British army. The narrator’s parents place total faith in the predictions of a pointy-nosed astrologer who claims their daughter is a source of bad luck for the whole family, and that the best remedy is a miteri (“kinship”) ceremony. He explains that in the ceremony, the narrator will be bound spiritually to another girl her age, thereby transferring her misfortune.
Without disclosing the motive, the narrator’s father convinces Gita’s father to allow the astrologer to perform the miteri on their daughters, binding them in kinship before the community. Meanwhile, the two Gurkhas are expecting to be sent back to Hong Kong soon, but after Britain transfers sovereignty of the nation back to China their future is in doubt. . . Until Gita’s father is transferred long-term to the U.K. and prepares his whole family to leave Nepal. Facing the imminent separation of her relationship with her spiritual sister, the narrator comes to an understanding of good luck, bad luck, and the secrets everyone seems to keep from each other.
Passing Fancy
A wife and husband in Gangtok, India take their son Rakesh to the airport for his flight to America—the third and last of their children to leave for another country. With an empty nest, the wife retires from her government job and tries to enjoy her newfound tranquility and spare time. Though she falls short of her initial goal of reading Tolstoy, she settles into a happy routine of early-morning walks in the park and playing low-stakes card games with her husband—though the games sometimes become antagonistic, especially when the topic of their departed children is raised as they play.
Her neighbor Mr. Bhattarai tends to take walks in the same park at the same time, and so they become better acquaintances through discussion of their hobbies—his is painting—and families. She empathizes with the lonely Mr. Bhattarai, whose mentally unstable wife has been committed to a nursing home. But when she accepts an invitation to his house to view his paintings, his true feelings for her are uncomfortably revealed, and she realizes that she should stop gambling with the happiness her own family provides her.
The Immigrants
On a stormy day in Manhattan, an accident of fate brings together a prosperous young Nepali immigrant named Amit and a wealthy old woman named Anne. At a Nepali restaurant they share momos and Amit learns that Anne’s maid and cook Sabitri is a Nepali woman. Amit hires Sabitri to come to his apartment and cook some of his favorite dishes. She turns down his offer of money and instead asks for English lessons in exchange, beginning an increasingly close friendship complicated by confusion over whether the lower-class Sabitri is Amit’s maid, student, or something else altogether.
Then Amit’s work visa is inexplicably not renewed and it appears his only way to stay in America is to leave his IT job and go to graduate school. To lower his living costs, he takes on a roommate… Sabitri, whose previous seven roommates were mostly illegal immigrants, not full citizens like herself. With her improved English, she makes a bold suggestion to Amit that will banish the doubts about their futures in America, but will force them to define their still-ambiguous relationship with each other.